Better Keyboard useage

As great as SL is, Keyboard useage is NOT up to par with almost any other game in existance today. Mostly there doesn't seem to be any way to configure keys to the keys you want.

This is a simple feature and allows the user to customzie his/her keyboard to their liking. Most other major games offer this option, there is really no reason why SL couldn't support this as well.


Also MORE control keys would be nice for scripting and vehicle purposes. For example what about allowing keys 1 thru 0 be accessable for control keys in scripts. This would allow you to have more button control of objects and or vehicles. There have been many times when coding something that I would have liked to add another feature to the object, but there was no way for the user to control it. Text commands often can not be used while driving a vehicle for example because you are using those keys to drive. Having another 10 buttons they could push to control other options sure would help.

C:\Program Files\SecondLife\app_settings\keys.ini

Man, can't we have a freakin UI for this? It wouldn't be rocket science. How many standard users are going to go in and hand edit text files?

I dunno... How many 'standard' users are going to remap their keys in the first place...

I think a lot of gamers map their games to a common keyset so that regardless of the game they are playing they can use the same keyset for movement and game control.

They will probly add a GUI for this later down the road, maybe 1.4 or 1.5, I dunno, it hasn't been mentioned at all by any Lindens. If you're really good at programming you could whip up your own key-switching application to edit the .ini as Michael Small did for the colors.ini file (or get on Michaels case to write one for the keys.ini, hehe).

As for the vehicle controls, I agree it would be nice to take input from ANY key on your keyboard, but I'm not sure how possible that is to add into LSL.

With more keys to take input from you could whip up a vehicle with a whole arsenal of weapons on it, or some other neat effects.

I think why we don't have this NOW though is because its not really *needed*, up,down,left,right,back,forward are really the only keys you *need* for a vehicle.

I'd say 60% of the userbase of SL are not gamers, per se. Most are people who simply don't play games except SL.

LF

Hey, thats not a bad idea to make an external keyboard map editor, I might do that.

I'd still like to see more control keys for objects, particularly vehicles.

A ton more than people who edit INI files, that's for sure.

But isn't there ALREADY a UI for this? I coulda sworn there was one.

Not to mention that all the .ini files get overwritten when SL is updated.

With 1.3, there is a way to use function keys for script control, even though I'm not sure if it was even intended that way, it's probably just a nice side-effect.

In 1.3, you can talk in channels other than 0, by using /<channelnumber> <message>, for example: /42 Don't eat yellow snow.

Now you can abuse the gesture menu to make function keys for your scripts with this.
Just make a new gesture (without any animation or sound), assign it a function key (for example F2), then put the above into the chat output field on the right (for example "/5 monkey").
Voila! Now every time you hit F2, your (listening) script will receive the preset text. Tons of function keys to use as script input. Only downside, if you give your script to someone else, they'll have to make their own gesture-functions.

With this little trick you can use the function keys with scripts, to shift gears, start/stop your vehicle, drop anvils on people or whatever you choose :)

Space bar for JUMP! Grrr.

I have a whole set of keys for common movement that I am going insane for not being able to use in SL. I will be editing that .ini file for sure, now. But since there is already a UI for changing gesture key mapping it makes zero sense that the other, much more important controls, do NOT have one. Please fix! This is a serious bug!

I don't think anyone's mentioned the need of a keyboard map for people who don't use the standard keyboard. I've talked to quite a few new users who are from Sweden, Germany, etc. who can't do a simple thing like put a question mark at the end of a sentence.

Just bumping the request for configurable keys. I'll go edit that .ini file, but it'd obviously be better to have an in-system GUI.

I come from the FPS genre and have a pretty standard system for my keyboard, so it's painful to have to use the default keys.

EDIT- If anyone knows the syntax for specifying keys on the NUM PAD, could you please let me know what the format is? Thanks.