I got started in my MMO hobby back in the UO days, but the game that has kept my attention for the greatest duration has been City of Heroes. I don't like how it does everything, and I can think of a lot of ways I would prefer it to be vastly different... but the Control Interface is one area of CoH that satisfies me in functionality where almost every other game I try (except to some extent SWG) leaves me severely disappointed to the point of becoming frustrated and quitting.
First off, I'm not talking about where I move windows on the GUI, or being able to give something a Hello Kitty layout like some other games. That's nice, and I like being able to put my windows where I want them of course, but what I'm talking about is what most people view as their macro/keybind system. Unlike what some people think, this is not a method by which you can turn your character into a bot and have it play while you go to work (ok, you probably could with the use of external products, and I know there was limited capability for this using in game macro code back in SWG), but rather the capability of being able to tell the game how it should react to what input you choose to give it.
I don't type very well. I have big fingers, never learned to type, and have to look at the keys to do so with any accuracy. I'm also painfully uncomfortable just being hunched over long enough to type forum posts. I'm almost 40, and having used computers more or less the same way for the past decade, I'm unlikely to go take a typing class and suddenly be just like everyone else who grew up on them. None of this qualifies me as having an interface disability like some people do, but it gives me some limited understanding of their plight, and makes me view a highly customizable control interface as an extremely important aspect of any game that I may be interested in playing for more than 10-20 hours total.
For my CoH gaming experience, I use an old XBOX S-pad controller (not 360), some nearly impossible to find drivers, and a program called Joy2Mouse2 that allows me to redefine joystick buttons as keyboard or mouse activity as needed. Add this to the tremendous flexibility offered by the City of Heroes keybind system (including the capability to have a button press load a new file and rebind itself), and I can play every aspect of the game aside from chatting in game and some seldom-used utility abilities (like costume changes or fast-travel teleport powers) without ever touching my mouse or keyboard.
This means that City of Heroes adapts to me and my playstyle, unlike most other games that expect me to adapt to a playstyle favored by the lowest common denominator. This is what I'd like to see from a lot more games in the future. This is what I'd like to see from Pathfinder Online. Furthermore, it has the added benefit of opening up accessibility to a wide audience of people with physical disabilities that prevent them from being capable of adapting to traditional control interfaces. That's gotta be worth something.
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Starhammer, I will be eternally grateful to Blaeringr for pointing me to AutoHotKey. It's a free-standing freeware application that gives you really incredible power to keybind. If PFO doesn't support the kind of keybinding you need, you should seriously consider using this.
For my part, the thing I am most looking forward to using it for is creating "chorded" keybindings - basically a series of keypresses, rather than a single keypress with one or more modifiers.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Isn't there a similar thread about this? Something about UI and Mechanics? Ah well, more noise in the forum.
Controller compatibility! I hadn't even thought about that, though it could work. My main concern is the other way around; I have a USB controller, though I don't use it often; I prefer keyboard and mouse, but maybe that's because I was raised on WoW. (Never enough action bars in that game...)
I can talk about another superhero MMO I played: DC Universe Online. That game is coming at a control scheme from the opposite direction: It was designed for the PS3, so it's based on a controller-layout, with keyboard presses simulating controller buttons. My main problem with that assumption is that it doesn't take advantage of the keyboard's many buttons; opening up chat is a menu option. A menu option! I don't have time during a fight to just press Escape and click a button, all so I can tell my groupmates what's going on. Mind you, I played the game right at launch, so maybe they've patched some of this... still, it got annoying after a while.
Thank you for the Autohotkey link. It looks promising. I'll look into it soon. Do you know offhand if it can kill ALT+F4 default functionality while leaving ALT & F4 as ALT and F4? If so, that would be awesome all by itself. This might open up a few other games for me that I otherwise don't care for much.
I too played DCUO from launch, and a wee bit before... I have a great Batman bust to show for my very short interest in that game :( Beautiful graphics and compelling storylines, unfortunately shackled to a less than mediocre game. Just another example of how you can do so many things wonderfully, and drop the ball on something important that doesn't get enough attention during the marketing hype, and end up with "Dear God I hope we can make our money back with microtransactions if we go F2P."
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Thank you for the Autohotkey link. It looks promising. I'll look into it soon. Do you know offhand if it can kill ALT+F4 default functionality while leaving ALT & F4 as ALT and F4? If so, that would be awesome all by itself. This might open up a few other games for me that I otherwise don't care for much.
I believe it is as simple as adding to your script
!F4::return ; disable 'alt-f4'
Thank you for the Autohotkey link. It looks promising. I'll look into it soon. Do you know offhand if it can kill ALT+F4 default functionality while leaving ALT & F4 as ALT and F4? If so, that would be awesome all by itself. This might open up a few other games for me that I otherwise don't care for much.
I believe it is as simple as adding to your script
!F4::return ; disable 'alt-f4'
Ahh, I think I read about this recently when I was looking for a solution to ALT+F4 for my SWTOR play, and if I recall correctly, the script sterilizes the functionality of pressing ALT+F4, but doesn't actually allow the "Shut Down Current Program" to be replaced with Right Hotbar, Slot 4...
Useful if you have a habit of accidentally pressing ALT+F4 because it works in City of Heroes, but doing nothing if you actually want to assign something else to it without redefining ALT or F4 as something completely different, then redefining something like Pause/Break as F4 and then having to go in and fix all the keybinds so they follow the progression of F1, F2, F3, Pause/Break, F5, etc...
Not quite the elegant solution I hoped for.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Thank you for the Autohotkey link. It looks promising. I'll look into it soon. Do you know offhand if it can kill ALT+F4 default functionality while leaving ALT & F4 as ALT and F4? If so, that would be awesome all by itself. This might open up a few other games for me that I otherwise don't care for much.
I believe it is as simple as adding to your script
!F4::return ; disable 'alt-f4'
Ahh, I think I read about this recently when I was looking for a solution to ALT+F4 for my SWTOR play, and if I recall correctly, the script sterilizes the functionality of pressing ALT+F4, but doesn't actually allow the "Shut Down Current Program" to be replaced with Right Hotbar, Slot 4...
Useful if you have a habit of accidentally pressing ALT+F4 because it works in City of Heroes, but doing nothing if you actually want to assign something else to it without redefining ALT or F4 as something completely different, then redefining something like Pause/Break as F4 and then having to go in and fix all the keybinds so they follow the progression of F1, F2, F3, Pause/Break, F5, etc...
Not quite the elegant solution I hoped for.
Ah, actually allowing the computer to know it is alt F4, without activating the close program command in windows will likely require a registry hack, as windows will override any program when it see's the command coming in.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
If AutoHotKey is able to trap Alt-F4 before Windows processes it, then I don't see any reason it couldn't make it do something else, but I haven't tested this myself.
I'll try to check it out over the weekend and get back to you.
Well I think what he's wanting to do, is have SWTOR still detect it as alt F4, but windows not detect it as a close instruction. Autohotkey can make sure windows dosn't see it, but that would also make sure SWTOR doesn't either.