[SUG][EDITOR] Alternate hotkeys for F-button keys

[namida]

Newer laptops often make it awkward to press the F keys. Without changing a BIOS setting, in most of them the user must hold Fn + press the key.

One possibility could be to add alternate hotkeys, perhaps Ctrl + the corresponding numeral. The downside here is, that's still two keys, so does it actually improve anything? Though perhaps some laptops now have reached the point of outright not having the F keys at all? If so, then in this case it certianly is worthwhile. If not... still open to it, but maybe not as important.

What do people think?

[Proxima]

More accessible hotkeys would be extremely welcome. My suggestion would be the corresponding number key, e.g. 5 for F5 and = for F12.

[WillLem]

More accessible hotkeys would be extremely welcome. My suggestion would be the corresponding number key, e.g. 5 for F5 and = for F12.

+1 for this. The number keys are bigger as well, which makes them generally more convenient than the F keys anyway.

And/or, fully customisable hotkeys?

[Simon]

This is about the NL default layout, you can still bind whatever you like.

There are at least 5 styles for skill hotkeys:

• 0 hotkeys, click all skills with the mouse. Icho does this and fares surprisingly well even in multiplayer Lix; but this case can still be ignored here: Changing the default layout doesn't affect this style.
• 2 hotkeys to move current skill left or right, e.g., Z/X. Proxima did this, I suppose coming from Mac Lemmings, but I don't support this anymore in Lix and haven't gotten a feature request in the pipeline for this. I forgot whether I argued against it and cut it, or whether this style has become genuinely irrelevant?
• 10 hotkeys, one per slot, different skill per level, like in DOS Lemmings 2. No clear pattern between hitting skills with the mouse or hitting keyboard keys, mainly because the skill per key changes between levels. This topic (alternate hotkeys instead of F-keys) seems to presuppose this style. Nobody before me here is questioning this presupposition. I assume the style is very popular then?
• 10-15 hotkeys, one per common skill, same skill in every level, all on one hand. Click rare skills by mouse, because there are only ~25 keys easily available to a single hand, and pause, framestepping, directional force, ..., are more important than rare skills. I do this.
• ~20 hotkeys, one for each skill, same skill in every level. This will make for ~40 ingame keys overall. You can certainly flail a single hand across the keyboard to hit 40 keys, people did crazy things like that in Starcraft 1. Does anyone do this in NL?

If this topic is about key-per-slot, thus a different skill per key in different levels, then the top number row is as good as the F-keys.

For direct skill bindings, a long row of numbers is hard to hit. Numbers 2, 3, 4 in particular are easily hit with the left hand, and are premium hotkeys for important stuff. I have framestep backward/forward on 2/3, and the other framesteps on ^/1/4/5.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

Actually, this topic is about the editor hotkeys, which are not remappable

[namida]

^ What Proxima said, but on a side note - both "next / previous skill hotkey" and fixed-per-skill are supported by NL, while fixed-per-skill-slot is not (it used to be, a very long time ago).