[color=#ff6600]Hello all!
We are looking at introducing a hotkey for docking/launching in the next patch to allow the experience to be a bit more fluid for players. We currently have this mapped to E, but we’re unsure if this feels like a natural key for this function. We’re really interested to hear people’s thoughts on what would make sense as a hotkey for docking and launching.
Cheers!
Liam[/color]
edited by challis on 6/4/2014
For me, space bar feels the most natural for a docking key - it’s big, at the bottom of the keyboard like the ‘dock’ button is at the bottom of the screen and you can really smack it down with an air of finality and relief - but that’s taken up with a pause function. I don’t know why we need a pause key so readily available in Sunless Sea, tbh.
E would work well enough. It’s easy to hand when your piloting by WASD and has a tactical feel.
If you based the hotkey on what I do every time I want to leave port, it would be a rapid-fire seizure on the W key. But either Q or E would be good second choices.
E certainly seems like the natural and logical choice to me. Then, all of the shortcuts are easily reachable with the left hand… except for Lights, actually. If we can customise controls, I’ll probably move Lights to Q.
As a southpaw who hate having things hardmapped for righthanders, I just want to vote for remappable keys in the final build.
[color=#009900]There will absolutely be customisable keys in the final build. edit: oh, and the reason for space-bar pause is that quick-pause is essential in combat, and although it’s much less important in the sailing screen it would be pretty ghastly to have two different pause keys.[/color]
edited by Alexis on 6/4/2014
Thank you.
I’m sure that I don’t have to elaborate on how frustrating hardmapped keys forcing lefthanded people to reverse their hand use (and sometimes desk layout) can be.
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]There will absolutely be customisable keys in the final build. edit: oh, and the reason for space-bar pause is that quick-pause is essential in combat, and although it’s much less important in the sailing screen it would be pretty ghastly to have two different pause keys.[/color]
edited by Alexis on 6/4/2014[/quote]
Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever paused in combat except when someone is distracting me IRL. :)
[color=#C2B280]Liam and Alexis have done a lot of work on combat over the last week: the pause key will almost certainly be of more use to you in the next build.[/color]
Haha, I was playing just now and thinking I bet they’ll be making combat more frantic. Excellent. My vote is Q for docking but that’s because it feels chunkier on my keyboard for some reason but E as in Egression could work just as well.
E would be perfectly acceptable…although I am glad that re-mappable keys will be available in the final build.
E works well for me, it is right by where my fingers are whilst I am a controlling the ship
E works for me, too. I’m glad to have it. More for launch, though I need it more on docking.
I don’t use the keyboard shortcuts very much, but I keep hitting E by accident when I’m trying to steam out of a port.
I really like the hotkey, as it works with the setup I have. Saves me precious seconds if I’m trying to dock in a nightmare layout port like Whithier or Port Cecil.
Why not just have docking happen automatically without a hotkey? If you’ve moved into a port there’s really no situation where you want to keep moving and ram the quay.
I wish the docking key was at least one key removed from the “increase speed” key. The first thing I do on leaving port is to increase speed. Sometimes I miss and strike the key next to the w. Sometimes this results in repeatedly docking and undocking, which is annoying and slightly disorienting when I’m not expecting it.
I’ve started using the docking key more and more since its introduction. Yes, sometimes I miss and hit the W key instead, but it’s been an over all benefit.
There’s a bad interaction between docking and pausing the game. If you’re paused when you’re docked (and that seems to happen automatically) then you can’t undock before you unpause. And even once you’ve undocked, you don’t do anything until you’ve fired up the engines.[li]
So the usual undock process for me is <undock hotkey>, damnit, <unpause hotkey>, <undock hotkey>, <increase engines>, <increase engines>.
I can’t think of any situation at all when I wouldn’t want the undock key to also unpause me, if I’m paused while docked. And if I’m docked, and I hit the <increase engines> key I wouldn’t be at all surprised or upset if that undocked me.