Keyboard control to move around?

tgx

Hey, so I was just curious. Do many actually use the keyboard to move characters around?

I've been playing a lot of Castle Story lately, and I just tried to play some NWN (1.71 version), and I found it odd that the wasd keys weren't for camera movement, but for character movement. Odd. Odd. Odd.

So, is there any discussion as to whether Beamdog will modernize the control scheme? Like, does anyone at all use the wasd keys to move characters around? Or do we all just use the mouse to do that? I'd find it more useful if wasd moved the screen around, more than the camera, but that's only because I never once used it to move the character like that. Maybe I'm odd though. I dunno.

Anyway, anyone use the keyboard for movement? Or not?

Edit: Oh yeah, I should also say I'm not at all familiar with how NWN:EE handles, since I don't have it yet. I won't be getting it for a while either, I suspect. Not until bigger things happen. But, I'd still like to comment on what I think would be good to improve on. Hence the inquiries.

DerpCity

Every game I've played uses Wasd for keyboard movement, and if they don't I change it. Considering NWN's hotkeys are bound to the F-Keys and Ctrl/Shift buttons, I'd rather have my hand close to the vicinity of all of them, seeing how my other hand is on the mouse and I only pause the game for half a second when something gets hit. I don't know why I do it, it kind of comes and goes.

However, movement using the keyboard is incredibly clunky for numerous reasons. First, you can't precisely turn. You kind of arc like a car, which makes it irritating to use when a few simple mouse clicks can get me out of any bind I might have gotten stuck in. Meanwhile, you're considered flat footed for some reason when using the keyboard movement because you're not technically performing any actions. In short, I really only use the keyboard to move when I'm going in a straight line or focusing on something else.

FreshLemonBun

Q & E are strafe, A & D are turn, they work well for position change but using mouse to run to a point is usually better. You can't accurately strafe or turn on the spot with a mouse.

FreshLemonBun

Also to move your camera you use the arrow keys, up down left right, and the page up and down keys to change the pitch.

KaosWarMonk

The camera is always tied to the PC. You can't pan around the map like Divinity or NWN2.

I often use WASD for character movement when exploring in driving camera mode. In other modes it's usually point and click. I do camera control via middle mouse button and the scroll wheel.

You can also move the PC by holding down the left mouse button and then moving the mouse around but I find that the most clunky.

All that can be re-mapped in the controls menu.

Proleric

WASD can be useful if the player gets stuck in a tight spot.

Mordaedil

I always move around with the keyboard, constantly.

And I find NWN2 and Divinity really frustrating to play because they won't let me do that.

Libertyisback

pvp movement for top down 3d is a very refined affair.

you need to be able to quickly scan your surroundings for threats, as well as position your character into the fight. if you are running a flag or playing a ball-carry team match, situational awareness becomes even more important.

so, i generally only play top down 3d team pvp - and only play games which let me set up the controls (iirc) this way: wasd for movement of character. Q and E for turning left and right. A and D for strafe or sidestep left and right. A and D is really important for ducking out of corner, shooting and ducking back. Mouselook is absolutely essential. So press and hold (iirc)centre mouse button and move mouse to re-pan and position camera. MOuse scroll wheel for zooming in and out. Ability to click the mouse to target where the character must move to is really essential, and the game's movement AI has to do it correctly.

afaik, NWN is one of the very few team pvp mmos which allows all of this. One other mmo which allows this is Regnum Online. And that's all of them. No other mmo with good team pvp allows it. Without this kind of movement detail, the mmo cannot even hope ot have good team pvp.

I played a bit of Dota (ie: LoL), Smite, Halo, Counterstrike etc some other pmp mmos -- NONE of them matches this control scheme, situational awareness or strategy like nwn's top down 3D does. All the rest are clickfests-- especially FPSes. Overwatch might be good enough, but i doubt it would beat nwn in all pvp aspects.

ProphetSword

I always use the WASD combination to move my character with the driving camera. I combine it with the occasional click, but I'm mostly comfortable using the keyboard to free up my mouse to do other things. Doing away with this would make the game annoying for people like me, I think.

And, in reality, that's always what's been great about NWN to begin with. It is a game/toolset that allows for multiple kinds of play...even with the control scheme. More games should work to allow as many options as we have with NWN.

BetterMouse

Below is an email I sent to an Arelith developer friend of mine in hopes that she could use her leverage with the NWN developers. She told me to post it here...

"NWN (specifically the world of Arelith) is the single greatest MMORGP (that allows actual roleplaying to occur) that I have ever played (which doesn't mean much given I've only played Ultima Online and World of Warcraft, albeit extensively).

The reason I do not play NWN anymore (or rather, can't play it anymore) is because of the character/camera controlling via the mouse and keyboard. I cannot tell you how annoying it is to control my character within NWN, especially having played World of Warcraft for over six years.

Please, please, change the character and camera movement to exactly match that of World of Warcraft because:

1) one cannot do a better job than WOW in this respect (which is to say that is how it SHOULD be done),
2) one will be able to easily move from a non-roleplaying game like WOW (an important demographic) to an actual roleplaying platform like NWN.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your endeavor to improve NWN."

tgx

Well, after playing around with an old module for a bit, I'm more and more inclined to want some kind of alternative to the default handling.

It seems to me that the entire control scheme is centered around how the camera handles in Driving Mode. I come from more of a 4x background, so I'm used to being able to move the camera across the land to peek at the terrain, this independent of where the focused-on unit is.

This is pretty much how I'd like to control my PC in nwn:ee too. Right now I can't. The camera revolves around the PC. Edge scrolling only goes round and round the PC. In and out too, but mostly it's round and round. The arrow keys do the same thing. Round and round.

A more sensible scheme might be to allow edge scrolling to move the camera wholly. Edge scrolling doesn't even work on the top and bottom of the screen, hence why I'm suggesting it only goes round and round. But look, if edge scrolling moved the camera in the direction the mouse directed it to, we'd leave the PC behind and shift the viewport to where I'd like. This would be many many times more natural for me. I hate that the camera is so tied to the PC like it is.

So, what about having alternative control schemes. OLD STYLE, NEW STYLE. That way, if you don't like the updated controls, you can just slip back to what it currently is. I really hope this is given more consideration by the developers.

FreshLemonBun

How about instead of changing the control scheme to the kind used in another game, they provide the facilities to bind your own keys and displace the camera. I think that would be a request that gets a lot more serious attention.

BetterMouse

How about this for an idea...

There is an option screen that has many of the different ways other games control their character/camera movement. Just click on the box next to the game you are used to playing and your mouse and keyboard match that of that games default settings. With a single click, I could set up my character/camera controls to WOW default settings making my transition seamless. Again, I can't tell you how annoying NWN is with regards to character/camera movement which is why I will not play this game until this feature is implemented.

But please note that I care enough about NWN to post. I've never posted to a forum in my life.

JuliusBorisov

https://trello.com/c/zqB0HJCW/193-improve-mouse-and-keyboard-controls

JFK

I love the way NWN controls camera and PC. Simply the best. I use keyboard movement almost exclusively, and control the camera with my mouse. Holding down the wheel gives me freedom to position the camera anywhere around my player character, tilt, zoom, etc. It has become as intuitive as breathing.

Options are good. Forcing everyone else to change what already works well for them, not so much.

My take on centering on PC is that it makes a lot of sense for RP purposes. If you want to zoom across the land with the camera, far from your PC . . . well, unless you're using magic or possessing a familiar . . . eh, stay in your own head?

Just my opinion, nothing more.
Nothing less, either.



-JFK

hfm

I was partial to the way Divinity: Original Sin does this, in which I can use a keyboard key (in my case Q) to hold down to position the camera with the mouse. Holding down the wheel as a button is clunky and uncomfortable, for me anyway.

I used AutoHotKey to remap Q to double as the middle mouse button while in this game and I'm liking it a lot. Something so small significantly increased my enjoyment.

That said, I up-voted adding more ability to remap all the controls that currently aren't remappable in the game options (like the camera rotate trigger). I don't see a good reason people shouldn't just be able to do it. It's just an input.

voidofopinion

I use the keyboard for 90% of my movement but will use mouse+strafe in combat for fine controll.

Driving camera.

NWN controls more like an MMO in my mind than a tactical RPG.

ThaRealCuber

When I started NWN:EE, It was 10+ years since the last time I played NWN (with a test run on an old laptop a year ago) and what strikes me most is how easy it was to get back into the game and how to play the game. Either via keyboard, keyboard+mouse or just mouse or alternating. The controls game back automatically to me, while with most modern games you have to look op the exact controls in the menu's if you haven't played them for a month. So if this is going to change, keep changes as a option, do not remove the original controls!!!

Calgacus

I am getting more interested in full keyboard control lately. I find myself wanting a few things for this:

1) finer control of camera mode toggle eg: I want to toggle to a driving camera mode with a favorite angle/distance for wandering around in and then a top down mode with a different favored distance/angle for combat.

2) a way to left click/right click on stuff via the keyboard. We can already bring up a radial menu on self via
0 on the numeric keypad, I would like a keybinding to allow me to left/right click on anything currently highlighted by the mouse. Also a way to sort through multiple overlapping objects that are hard to focus on normally would a help here too, for example if there are 3 items dropped on the same spot we cannot select whichever we want or if several creatures are bunched up together it can be very difficult to examine the one you want. maybe a new keybinding like alt-arrow to get finer control of the camera to help select objects/creatures to interact with.

3) after looking around with the arrow keys I want to quickly get back into my normal perspective - so I want a toggle key that can return my camera to where it was before using the arrow keys without having to move my character or change camera modes.

4) when in driving mode and with a low camera angle my character often blocks my ability to click on things and to see things - so can there be an option that makes my character invisible to me or close to invisible and also that prevents it from absorbing my interact clicks (mouse clicks)? On a related note when playing with a zoomed in camera and standing near a door or area transition it is difficult to avoid accidentally clicking on them when trying to click on something else.

5) the games main menus "New, Load, Multiplayer, etc..." and others need to be operable without a mouse too.

Can any of that be done already?

6) for when I don't have my full sized keyboard and am just playing on my macbook with no numeric keypad and lacking some other keys I need a way to remap some bindings with key-combos eg alt-arrow to move around a radial menu and ctrl-arrow to move the camera, fn-arrow to max-move the camera, fn-c to toggle the camera mod etc. Though in the macbook I guess I could use the trackpad for some of the camera stuff.

Calgacus

Maybe a simple way to do some of this would be to:
A ) remap numpad-0 to open a radial menu on anything under the pointer and then add numpad-/ to open radial on self
B ) add a mapping for numpad-5 (or numpad-+) to perform a default action (same as left mouse click) on anything under the pointer unless a radial menu is already open in which case it should continue in its current form.

Is it possible to do this now with the keymapping section in player.ini? If so how - is there a guide? What Action## is open radial menu on object under pointer? which Action## is for perform default action on object under pointer?

Calgacus

One useful trick is to set the camera turn speed to a minimum, this helps make the control of the camera via the keyboard a bit better for carefully positioning the pointer.

Calgacus

BTW, in case this hasn't been mentioned before, on Windows 10 you can try "Mouse Keys" but it is not quite good enough at first - maybe with some practice it will feel better but one thing I am wanting to a quick way to get the pointer back to the center of the screen after moving it around and it is still too slow to accurately select things, also it basically breaks numpad control of the radial menus - try it you will find it necessary to toggle numlock over and over again. All I really want right now is a way to left-click/right-click on things via a the keyboard, I can control the camera at least nearly well enough via the keyboard. Is there a third party app for that?

Calgacus

AutoHotKeys may be the answer. Here is a small script I wrote for it to allow me to use the delete and end keys to left and write click.

Delete::
Click, right
return

End::
Click
return

Home::
MouseMove, 960, 350, 0
return

To make that run first empty the games key bindings for the Home, End and Delete keys. I set my arrow keys to control the camera pittch and yaw and the PgUp and PgDn to control zoom.

Remember to exit the script once done playing NWN to put those keys back to rights.

Calgacus

And here is a much more fully featured script on github which controls the mouse, camera and radial menus via the keyboard. nwn_autohotkeys

It uses the numeric keypad to move the mouse around from its current position.
Use Shift-numpad# to slowly move the pointer and Shift-numpad5 to stop the moving pointer dead.
Use numpad5 to left click and Control-numpad5 to right click.
Use Control-numpad# to control the radial menu branches. Numpad5 to back up when your pointer is on the center.
Use Alt-numpad(2,3,4,6,7,8,9) to control the camera.
The numpad-/ pus the pointer up near the top center of the screen, the Numpad-0 puts the pointer on the PC.

To use it like I do set up your Controls->Key Settings like this: