Spring RTS Engine

I really dislike the current rotation system using the [ & ] keys. In fact, I don't like using my keyboard for rotating at all.

What I think would make a nice feature would be when you're building a unit, you can hold right click and draw it in the direction you want it to face. Or something similar...

This would make it faster and easier to rotate stuff and would also stop me hitting the wrong rotation key by accident every now and then.

it should be widgetable - maybe a pretty gui, maybe some key chord. the current ui for that isn't perfect but is good enough for most people.

oh, and the widget will be much easier to make in the next spring version.

afaik footprints only work int he cardinal directions. have fun with units exiting the sides of factories.

i would prefer mousewheel (e.g. shift + mousewheel), BUT mousewheel isnt supported within uikeys.txt (yet)

Mousewheel might be nice, but there is a risk of changing the rotation several times during the game by mistake.
There is an auto rotate widget that usually does a good job rotating buildings toward the enemy.

I couldn't stand the [ ] rotation. I bound numpad 8,2,6,4 to face north, south, east, west, respectively. Much less annoying than "Doh, I turned too far, hit it three more times. Doh again!"

Doh again? If you can't triple-tap a key without screwing up you don't have much business playing an RTS.

lurker wrote:Doh again? If you can't triple-tap a key without screwing up you don't have much business playing an RTS.

You obviously don't play the game so I'll let you know that it would be faster to use the mouse for rotation rather than the keyboard.

In fact, using your right hand for anything on the keyboard ingame is pretty slowing.

Chances are, everybody in this community has screwed up rotation at least once. Especially players who play at a fast pace.

JAZCASH wrote:using your right hand for anything on the keyboard ingame is pretty slowing.

you haven't figured out how to cover the whole keyboard with your left hand yet?
it's not a fps; you don't need to keep your fingers on wasd.

aegis wrote:

JAZCASH wrote:using your right hand for anything on the keyboard ingame is pretty slowing.

you haven't figured out how to cover the whole keyboard with your left hand yet?
it's not a fps; you don't need to keep your fingers on wasd.

I have most of my important and useful commands bound to the left side of my keyboard, yes, for easy access with my left hand.

If you think using the mouse would be slower, you're very mistaken.

JAZCASH wrote:you're very mistaken.

hmm... I think they'd take me about the same time... I tap the rotation keys while I'm moving the mouse to the building's position.

lurker wrote:Doh again? If you can't triple-tap a key without screwing up you don't have much business playing an RTS.

Thanks man. I'm very fumbly (I possibly just made that word up). But I can't screw up hitting the 8 to point north. But it's not really that...

You usually can't tell from the weird green blotch which way the building is currently facing, and I'm sure plenty of people look at a fully built structure and not know for sure the direction it's facing. So it's the slow and irritating process of rotating once to find out your direction, reading it in the console (oh, now I'm facing east) then rotating back or forth to the direction you wanted. Whereas with the 4 buttons I can instantly point to where I want. This gets annoying and is error prone.

Edit: back on topic, OP suggestion is a good one, but is widgetable and thus not needed as an engine feature.

CarRepairer wrote:I couldn't stand the [ ] rotation. I bound numpad 8,2,6,4 to face north, south, east, west, respectively. Much less annoying than "Doh, I turned too far, hit it three more times. Doh again!"

Same for me. Tapping the key of the direction you want is incredibly more efficient than taping the rotation key, squint your eyes at the ghostly frame, analyse which direction it is facing, computing how many time you must turn it in which direction, pressing the corresponding key the corresponding number of time, recheck, and validate. With the 2,4,6,8 numpad keys I don't have to think, I don't even have to look at the screen. (And for KP it made it even more efficient by associating those keys to the minifacs buildbuttons.)

still it sucks a FAT PENIS that e/w rotated buildings sometimes get units stuck in them. :\