Short-cut consistency?

Miwarre · May 11th 2016

While pulling the few hairs remaining on my head trying to place blueprints, luckily I discovered this thread (thanks to @Ruxandra for raising the topic and to @red51 for the answer)!

Now, I notice:

1) To "freeze" a blueprint you are placing, [Left Click] is used, while to freeze construction elements [Right Ctrl] is used.
2) To raise / lower a (frozen) blueprint, [NumPad +] / [NumPad -] are used, while with (frozen) construction elements [PgUp] / [PgDn] are used

Also, with the terrain tool:

3) in Mode 1 (Add/Remove), [Left Click] adds and [Right Click] removes, while in Mode 2 (Smoothing), [Left Click] smooths by removing and [Right Click] smooths by adding.

Is there a reason behind this discrepancies?

(Aside: Some of the short-cuts listed above can be customized, other cannot. Even assuming in the future all short-cuts will be customizable, a consistent default set of short-cuts is important for the user experience and to ease the learning curve)

red51 · May 11th 2016

Sounds crazy, but actually it is a bug that PgUp and PgDn does not work for blueprints Originally the first blueprint releases only used Numpad + and - to raise/lower a blueprint, but we changed it at some point so it uses Numpad +/- as well as PgUp/Dn. Unfortunately the blueprint preview does not listen for the PgUp/Dn input, so only Numpad +/- can be used at the moment. This will be changed with the next update

Quote from Miwarre

Aside: Some of the short-cuts listed above can be customized, other cannot

Nearly all keybindings can be changed (with the exception of some very few hard coded keybindings, like the ESC key). But some keybindings can only be changed in the "config.properties" file in the game directory. What keybinding are you looking for exactly?

Miwarre · May 11th 2016

Ok, if 2) is a known bug and will be fixed, it's fine!

Of all the short-cuts listed in 1) and 3), IIRC only [Right Ctrl] appears in the Settings dlg box. I have no problem in editing a setting text file, but I know from personal experience that:
1) settings and configurations not exposed through a specific dlg box can result in increased user support load;
2) many users do not even look at the settings dlg box and therefore a consistent default set of short-cuts is important for the user experience.

Not urgent, of course, but sooner or later it will become relevant...

Thanks,

M.

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