FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Thanks, Jordach. I am glad to see that some work is done here.
But I was actually more focusing on the controls of Minetest, the engine.
I don't care too much about Minetest Game.

I had an idea as I was playing Portal 2 last night:

Left/Right mouse buttons:Left/Right hands (mine/use tool when holding a tool or nothing, build when holding a node)

E: Use/Interect with object

Q: Drop

WASD: Move, double tap to sprint

Space: Jump

Shift: Sneak

I: Inventory

etc.

benrob0329 wrote:E: Use/Interect with object

I use E for the inventory.

WASD: Move, double tap to sprint

I hold F with fast enabled to use fast movement

I: Inventory

Too far away from the other buttons, if you play with a touchpad, maybe, but it's not a fast way if you are playing with mouse and keayboard.

E has been the interact button in a lot of games, so how about having q be inventory and z be drop? Or maybe the middle mouse button?

F being Sprint isn't a bad idea...

That is a good choice, Q is near all the other keys, and it's a fast way to access inventory, about z being the drop button, looks good enough, maybe some players might drop things by accident with that, but I don't think it's a real problem.

Dragonop wrote:That is a good choice, Q is near all the other keys, and it's a fast way to access inventory, about z being the drop button, looks good enough, maybe some players might drop things by accident with that, but I don't think it's a real problem.

I've dropped so many items by having my fingers improperly placed and using Q as forward lol Z would work much better on my keyboard, only problem I can think of is if someone is trying to sneak instead...

Backspace is another option.

What about Alt?

Why not just have controls completely bindable, so punch could be bound to keys(instead of hardcoded or mouse buttons only, and movement could be bound to mouse buttons?

kaadmy wrote:Why not just have controls completely bindable, so punch could be bound to keys(instead of hardcoded or mouse buttons only, and movement could be bound to mouse buttons?

+1

Kpenguin wrote:

kaadmy wrote:Why not just have controls completely bindable, so punch could be bound to keys(instead of hardcoded or mouse buttons only, and movement could be bound to mouse buttons?

+1

Lol, that was my suggestion all along...

This discussion has pretty much derailed, all the talking about default keys is pretty much bikeshedding IMO.

I don't care much about the default bindings as long as they are consequently bindable and not absurdly overused (like the sneak key now).

Wuzzy wrote:

Kpenguin wrote:

kaadmy wrote:Why not just have controls completely bindable, so punch could be bound to keys(instead of hardcoded or mouse buttons only, and movement could be bound to mouse buttons?

+1

Lol, that was my suggestion all along...

This discussion has pretty much derailed, all the talking about default keys is pretty much bikeshedding IMO.

I don't care much about the default bindings as long as they are consequently bindable and not absurdly overused (like the sneak key now).

Thus my suggestion to use the "use" key instead of right-click, it makes more sense and means that you don't have to hold shift to build on things that you can interact with.

@benrob0329
The "use" key is a good idea, but it still doesn't solve the problem with apples and food. How do you make an item edible and at the same time placeable without using the punch button to eat?
Would we need yet another key? Wouldn't that be too much?

To me, the apple problem is more annoying than the right click issue.

Well, you could use the "use" key to eat, or better yet hold it down any a little animation plays (like in MC)

I want to be able to have engine handled throwable items, so moving the eat function off of the left mouse button is a good idea.

benrob0329 wrote:E: Use/Interect with object
Q: Drop
WASD: Move, double tap to sprint
Space: Jump
Shift: Sneak
I: Inventory

"I" is way too far to the right. Just set inventory to TAB. (ESC already closes it, nicely close together)

"e" for use and "q" for drop are excellent choices. This works nicely with right-click build.

right-click eat. There's nothing in the game right now that is edible that also doubles as a buildable node. Item frames can just be formspecs, really.

left click for hitting things or digging.

Please do not make nodes that require punching them to switch states (I'm looking at you, mesecons!)

as of right now Mesecons uses right click, it changes recently.

A lot of people complain that q is too close to w and that they end up dropping their diamond sword into a pool of lava far too often, so z would be close, but out of reach if your trying to hit w.

TAB is another good option for inventory, but is a bit harder to reach than q.

sofar wrote:[...]
There's nothing in the game right now that is edible that also doubles as a buildable node.
[...]

Ahem, apples? You can eat them, and you can place them.

If you think pc controlls are horrible try punching someone/something on android device...

Yeah, I think that MT touch controlls need to be closer to Survival Craft (Tap and hold = dig, Tap = place/punch entity)

davidthecreator wrote:If you think pc controlls are horrible try punching someone/something on android device...

Ya, I still haven't figured out how to craft stuff on Minetest for Android!

Same.
Items have to be placed in full stacks, you can't copy 1/10 items at a time.

Afaik, yes, you can: Hold the item stack with one finger/tentacle/etc, and then, tap where you want to put only one item from that stack.

Dragonop wrote:...tentacle...

-_____-

kaadmy wrote:

Dragonop wrote:...tentacle...

-_____-

That's racist against squid people
EDIT: stay on topic please, I was just adding some humour
EDIT2: It's a metaphor: you never really know who you are talking to in the Internet

kaadmy wrote:

Dragonop wrote:...tentacle...

-_____-

Ever heard of iBallisticSquid? If not, search him on youtube.

Dragonop wrote:vote for more control config options:

I would like to also have an alternate key for each function,
e.g. forward = W or CursorUp, inventory = I or Tab, etc.

BTW, there are no keys for turning the player.
Adding turn-left and turn-right would also improve the controls for the boat.

Sneak would make sense as a toggle (like fly),
so pageup/pagedown could be used for up/down
without interfering with jump or sneak.

Also, it would be nice if commands could be assigned to keys,
e.g. T = "/time; /days" (better yet, a sequence of several commands).

Minetest 0.4.15 now has been out for some time,
but there were no changes with regard to keys & controls.

When looking thru the threads 'how to make minetest more popular'
and 'portable minetest', I also noticed that F1 doesn't do 'help',
as almost every new user would expect.

F1 really should be "Help", instead of "HUD on/off".
HUD on/off can use any other key (say, F4).

And as a first step, we don't even need a real help-system,
just make it an alias to the ESC-to-pause-menu,
where the standard-keys are listed.

To drop item with [Q] button is the stupid decision.
[Q] is right in the middle of [W] (forward), [A] (left) and [1] (first item in hotbar).
When you want to press any these buttons without looking, you drop item instead! Damn! It's especially great if you are at the edge of abyss!

At least you can change keybindings. So I changed drop function to [L] — far button from main ones.

I think long discussions about default keybindings are pretty much pointless, since there are many keyboard layouts around anyway.
Just pick a more or less sane default and be done with it. It's not worth spending too much time arguing what is the “best” default. It's still OK to discuss defaults, I just don't think we should waste too much time on this.

It is much more important to make ALL actions at least bindable. Currently, one of Minetest's biggest problems is that many actions have hardcoded key bindings which can't be changed (not even in minetest.conf), as many people already pointed out. Fixing this would be an important improvement.

Another annoyance is that the controls menu is very, very incomplete, forcing you to go to minetest.conf for some keys. I think it needs a major rework to show *all* possible key bindings.

Yes, it's sad that Minetest 0.4.15 has not seen any improvements in controls whatsover. Even I have 2 open PRs:
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/4929
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/4537

I totally agree with you. Every action player can make must be bindable. What is bindable now + what is hardcoded.
For example, sometimes I think it would be better to build not with right mouse button, but with plain keyboard button. Same for dig/punch.

Also it would be great to bind keys to any action player can make or is allowed to do.
For example, imagine my home at (5, 2, 10). And when I press [H], /teleport 5 2 10 command executes and now I am home. Of course, that will work if I have corresponding privilege to execute teleport command. I press [U] and now I am underground in place I define ( [U] => /teleport 10, -200, 20). And so on...