Oolite Bulletins

The default Oolite keys are... a bit hard to get a hang of. Especially the whole "up/down is pitch, but left/right is roll" thing. The keybindings are changeable, but IMHO it would be nice to have a couple different default keybinding modes that could be selected from.

Example: "Wing Commander keybindings," based loosely on the ones in WC Prophecy (I know, I know).

Up/down -> pitch down or up respectively (yes, reversed)
Left/right -> yaw left or right
q/w -> roll left or right
[/] -> decrease or increase speed
Tab -> inject fuel
Space -> fire lasers
t -> toggle missile target
Return -> launch missile
e -> activate ECM
Ctrl-escape -> launch escape pod
Shift-return -> energy bomb

I think that's it, the other keys would remain the same... But you get the idea. This configuration would, I think, be a bit friendlier to newbies (and fans of other space combat games).

What do you guys think?

You can put it (or any other keyconfig you like) in an OXP and publish it for everybody who likes to have it.

These are my flight and fire control keys. Forgive the crudity of this illustration.


Left hand: Ring finger on fire key, middle on pitch down and index on pitch up
Right hand: Thumb on inc. speed, index on roll left, middle on roll right, and ring finger on dec. speed. This is how I played Elite back in the 80's.

Edit: I don't use the yaw keys at all.

Personally I've gotten so used to the default keys that I wouldn't think about changing them, even where they don't make sense on a non-US keyboard.

For instance, the pylon-handling keys are R, T, Y and U by default, which form a neat row on your US-keyboard. But on a German keyboard the Y and Z key are switched. Thus I have the scanner zoom key right in the middle of the neat row, and the select-next-pylon key on the other end of the keyboard. But that's how it's in my muscle memory since the days of old, so I would have a hard time changing it to the configuration which was actually intended.

The only key bindings I have changed are those for keys that don't even exist on a German keyboard, notably ~ and \. I had to find other keys in order to address their functionalities at all. Therefore my comms log pops up when I press RETURN, and the advanced navigational array is activated with #.

I also had to change the keys for toggling between targets in the target memory expansion (- and + are not close to each other on a German keyboard; also I needed - for switching the advanced space compass), and then I had to re-learn them twice because of new functionalities. First I had put them on , and . which are located next to each other. Then , and . became the most logical choice for the newly introduced yaw control, and I moved them to B and N (two conveniently unused keys in the neighbourhood). Then N got used for primeable equipment, and I had to relocate my target toggling keys again. Now they are on ; and : which are SHIFT-, and SHIFT-. respectively. I'm getting used to it.

What bugs me a little is that I cannot seem to use Ü, Ö and Ä. Three keys conveniently close to the arrow keys, and easily usable with the right hand. But Oolite doesn't recognize them. At least I haven't found a way yet to make Oolite recognize them. So there is a sizeable uncharted territory right in the middle of my keyboard, and I have to somehow work all around it.

Commander McLane wrote:

What bugs me a little is that I cannot seem to use Ü, Ö and Ä.

That’s odd; Å, Ä and Ö work fine for me (under Mac OS X; it works differently on other platforms). Are you using the lowercase forms in the key config file?

I just tried again, using the lowercase 'ö' for previous target and 'ä' for next target. The problem is that the 'ö', while selecting the previous target, also activates and then toggles between the chart screens.

So the problem is not that I can't assign something to 'ö', but that the '6' gets also assigned to 'ö', which makes the key useless. And in the same way the 'ü' key mirrors the right arrow key.

There is a small difference, though: 'ü' and right arrow seem to be perfectly mirrored. If I assign the next target function to 'ü', I can press either 'ü' or right arrow. In both cases the next target is selected and I roll to the right. '6' and 'ö' are only connected through a one-way mirror, so to speak. Pressing 'ö' selects the previous target and switches to the chart screen. Pressing '6' only switches to the chart screen without selecting the previous target.

The 'ä' key seems not connected to anything else, at least not something which is used in Oolite during flight.

And my problem is that I haven't yet found a way to address 'ü' and 'ö' independent from right arrow and '6'. Perhaps if I choose the correct numerical code instead of 'ö' and 'ü' in keyconfig.plist. I have no idea, though, what the correct numerical code for that would be.

Uppercase umlauts don't seem to have mirrors, but then I have to use them with SHIFT again, which is no advantage over using ',' and '.' with SHIFT.

Commander McLane wrote:

Perhaps if I choose the correct numerical code instead of 'ö' and 'ü' in keyconfig.plist. I have no idea, though, what the correct numerical code for that would be.

I have recently been re-configuring my keyboard. The cunning plan is to adapt an old keyboard into a dedicated Oolite control panel (with functions grouped logically) to work with the joystick.
The problem is I also don't know the numerical code for the keys and have had the same problem. I use a standard (US/English) keyboard and the O/S is Ubuntu.
It would be really useful if there was a Wiki page or similar with all the keycodes and details of differences between O/Ss and keyboard layouts.

for ubuntu (and other linuxes) run ' xev ' from a terminal .

this will give you lots of info abut what events are generated when you do something, INCLUDING decimal and hex Keycodes when you press a key.

Thnks LW, I'll take a look.