Controls

[Stephen]

We have discussed in the past that the controls for Knights could be improved. I would like to make the following proposal (based largely on a suggestion by Mataro over on moddb):

The ACTION key should be split up into four different keys, as follows:

1) Use Held Item -- pressing this will swing your sword, fire a crossbow, set a bear trap etc. Basically use whatever you have in your hands.

2) Pick Up / Drop / Open Door / Push Switch -- basically this is the same as "tapping" the Action key at the moment. It's used for picking up items, dropping your held item, opening and closing doors, pushing switches, etc.

3) Throw Daggers

4) Open Menu -- this is for other, rarely used actions, such as picking locks, setting poison or blade traps, or dropping gems.

I know (3) is controversial because it might make daggers too powerful. My suggestion is to require the key to be held down for a while before the daggers start firing. This will be the equivalent of holding down the "menu" button in the current system, and should mean that daggers are basically unchanged (in gameplay terms) from the current system.

The buttons would of course be mappable to whatever keys you want. For example:

WASD keys: Movement
Left arrow: Use held item
Down arrow: Pick up / drop / open door / etc
Up arrow: Throw daggers
Right arrow: Open menu

For Chat, we would probably have to change this back to how it was before, i.e. you have to press TAB (or some other key) to activate the chat box -- otherwise there won't be enough keys available :)

The main advantage of this new system is that it reduces the reliance on key combinations (e.g. pressing move+fire together) and allows most tasks to be completed with a single keypress. The exception is the menu key, which is still there, but should be needed much less often now.

Also the new system maps very nicely onto an Xbox/Playstation type controller, should we decide to go down that route.

I would like some feedback from players before I implement this. What do you think of this proposal? Do you have any alternative suggestions?

[Moo]

So there would be no need to "approach" things any more?
This system seems fine to me, and might be easier to learn for new players.
As long as the original system was available as an option too. And hopefully have the chat key optional too.

[Stephen]

You would still need to approach things. E.g. suppose there is an item on a table, and another one on the floor in front of the table, and you press the "pick up" button. Without approaching there is no way of knowing which of the two items you want to pick up.

I am not sure if we can make an "approach-less" system, I would have to think about that.

I was thinking of having the new system be the default, but the old system would be available as an option.