FEATURE REQUEST: vi keybindings

[TheLastProject]

Nowadays, modern people like me barely ever use their mouse. We Meta+J between windows, Meta+1-9 between workspaces, Meta+P our Red Eclipse. Everything works with a keyboard, and it's amazing. There is absolutely no reason to use the mouse anymore nowadays, and it is good that this antique piece of hardware is dying.

However, there is one big problem: Red Eclipse

Our favourite game is starting to show its age, as it is missing keybindings for a lot of features. For starters, you can't go through menus using only your keyboard. It gets worse, though, without your keyboard, YOU CANNOT WIN.

You need your mouse to aim and to shoot! There are no good keybindings!

So, it is time to upgrade this game so we can make it playable in the 21st Century again. It won't be a small undertaking, but just imagine how much better the gameplay would be!

To get the server overview, one would simply type :serverlist. Here, you can join servers using :join X, with X being the number the server has been assigned. Scrolling up and down would logically be done with J and K or, for those who aren't really up-to-date with everything new, PageUp and PageDown. After joining the server, one would simply type :join, optionally defining their favourite team, to join the match. This would be slightly more complicated in arena, but still pretty easy, as you would only need to type :weapon1 flamer and :weapon2 shotgun to select both the shotgun and the flamer.

When in the game, the gameplay would be a lot easier. Of course we could keep the old keybinding (for the emacs-users among us), but we should get some vi keybindings as well. For example, :walkforward 100m would make the character walk forward for 100 meters. Without argument, it would make one step, which is logical behaviour. Of course, one should enter Gameplay mode first by pressing G. I mean, you can't expect to be able to play in Menu Mode, can you? Of course, the thing that makes a shooter great is the ability to target things. For that, we first exit Gameplay mode by pressing ESC, and we will enter View Mode by pressing V. At this point, a full list of entities will pop up. To select the omega flag as target, which we will assume to be entity 134 for simplification, one would exit View Mode by pressing ESC, enter Gameplay Mode by pressing G again and then type :targetentity 134 to target the enemy flag. At this point, one simply has to type :moveto target. To make sure the game will still have a fair challenge, the character will only move STRAIGHT towards the target, and won't automatically avoid anything in the way.

For the emacs-users we could implement emacs-bindings. Just type M-g C-M-t M-m C-M-Anythingispossible to target the closest enemy player and commit suicide.

It's pretty insane I'm only calling this a "Feature Request", as I believe the fate of our favourite game depends on upgrading it to a way which is consistent with how we use computers these days, but I couldn't think of any better topic title.

Please support this idea so quin will be able to implement this before it's too late.

[ballist1c]

IMO, this entire post is absurd, and TLP needs to check his sanity

[arand]

I know this has been ranted about several times, but seeing how it keeps popping up I feel the need to comment.

I really dislike this modern idea of moving stuff towards being completely dependent on the keyboard. And frankly I think that the arguments that it makes for an easier and more coherent experience are rubbish. The modular combination of mouse and keyboard, or even gamepads, for those inclined, has been the core principles of both the desktop and games.

Dumping everything into this Single Controller to Rule Them All is not only stupid, but also a poisonous idea: It's just a huge lock-in scheme; Red Eclipse just recently removed the relative pointer styles which made gamepad-style controls possible, and now you're suggesting we should be moving away from the possibility of using the mouse as well?

I'm tired this zealous drive toward narrowing down options, and I feel like we're slowly loosing the core values of FPS games, they are not meant to be only keyboard-driven, how hard is that to understand!?

Could we please stop with this silliness, please, it's destroying FPS games

[bonifarz]

I think that's the second funniest post I have read on these forums

I find Vim quite practical and use it frequently, but for beginners it can indeed be frustrating to get used to. Heck, I never managed to convince an undergrad student it is worth using

[Ulukai]

I guess TLP meant to make us smile because he put it so absurd and I certainly did

I have to agree with arand here so I'm not going to repeat all his arguments. Maybe being able to navigate through the menus with the arrow keys, pressing spacebar to select/unselect something and pressing enter to click would be nice, but what's the need anyway? you'll be needing to use the mouse in a minute anyway to aim and kill your opponents.

Besides all that... you play a game because you have some spare time, so saying that you lose some precious seconds while navigating with the mouse would be nonsense

[Calinou]

*high fives arand for using nano*

The ability to navigate menus with keyboard would be kinda cool (ability to search in menu text? good for menus with long lists, eg. maps), but there's no point in playing with the keyboard only. Go play consoles if you want to use one device only. :P