Small default control change suggestion

[Caydr]

Hi, I was playing earlier today (wow!) and I several times found myself queuing up lots of buildings and needing to move the camera. Since I was using windowed mode at the time, it didn't feel natural to move to just the border of the window. ANYWAY, the point is, holding down shift I hit the middle mouse button hoping to put my camera in free movement, but obviously instead I wound up in a different camera mode altogether.

IMHO I don't think there's a person alive that feels the need to switch camera angle on a frequent basis, but I think the situation above happens often. Sure, I could've just zoomed out, but then I wouldn't be able to select locations as accurately.

So what I propose is that shift + middle mouse react the same way middle mouse without shift does, and the button to switch camera mode be changed to something less easy to do by mistake.

I know if I was a newbie (well, I play like one, but that's a different story), I would be very frustrated and confused if my view suddenly switched to a different mode like that. A newbie probably wouldn't even realize that he/she'd done wrong and might get stuck in FPS camera mode for the rest of the game or something.

Yes, I know that we can define our own keys, but since the issue would affect newbies primarily, and newbies won't know about custom keysets, my suggestion seems prudent.

I don't know what would be a better combination. Alt+F3 or Alt+F5 are what I'd pick, but I'm an evil bastard so someone else can probably come up with something better.

[SeanHeron]

There's truth to this - but then the default UI is in need of a pretty thorough overhaul, and I'm pretty sure every game that is released as a whole package (ie Installer, S44 or such) can set things the way they feel like anyhow.

[imbaczek]

smoothscroll widget.

[SinbadEV]

this is not the answer to the real problem, but when you are in that situation again... zooming in focuses on the cursor so you can zoom out a little and then zoom back in where you want to look.

[Peet]

wouldnt this already be in uikeys.txt?

[SeanHeron]

That's what I was trying to say (guess I failed...) - yes it's in UIkeys, so any bundle release can change this at will (and I see bundle releases as the way to go).
My understanding of Caydr is that he'd like the default uikeys setting to be changed, so that shift+middle mouse no longer switches views.

[Beherith]

default:

Code: Select all

//  bind            Ctrl+f1  viewfps
//  bind            Ctrl+f2  viewta
//  bind            Ctrl+f3  viewtw
//  bind            Ctrl+f4  viewrot

Afaik mouse binds cannot be changed.

[SeanHeron]

Ah, I'm sorry, I was in error :/. You're right and the mouse-binds are not changeable. I was talking about stuff I didn't know properly...
Well the nicest solution would be to have mouse buttons as part of uikeys, but I can remember it being said they're all coded in in various places, so it would be a bit of a job to do that (and I'm afraid I don't think I'd be up to that).
So sorry for disrupting the topic .

[Caydr]

Just in case it's not known by the entire universe:
-It's impossible to disable all the view modes because some of them don't have sliders. For instance, the Orbit and Smooth ones I think. Ideally I would disable all but TA style...

[SeanHeron]

Just remember a hacky way you might be able to "switch off" this behaviour - if I remember correctly, you can use Lua to intercept all keypresses (and mouseclicks, I think) - so you could make a widget that always looks for middle mouse clicks, and if it intercepts one and shift is also held, doesn't pass on the one or the other.

Not done much Lua yet though, so not really sure.

Edit: yes this is possible - have a look at the camera_smooth_move.lua widget (included in standard install) if your're interested.
The relevant code is at: "function widget:MousePress(x, y, button)" (and perhaps MouseRelease). I'm working on a camera widget, that's how come I stumbled over that. (I'm afraid I don't understand every part of that code, or I'd be happy to explain - just know it works, at least in parts.