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Up Topic General / Feedback and Ideas / Idea: Secondary Equipment Action
- - By Wasserwipf [ch] Date 2018-03-19 14:39
Playing a bit of OC lately I struggled a lot with the Inventory, Items and Equipment, For Example in Hot Ice that you have to switch weapons to do the 2 Main actions (shooting and Airgust). So I came up with two concepts that cover the same thing and could work hand in hand (or maybe substitute each other)

1: Secondary Action: Many Tools use the left mouse button to perform their primary action. With the right mouse button you can throw them away. My suggestion is that it should be possible to assign a secondary action to Tools and weapons of all kind. It would be used via middle mouse click! I could imagine a gun that shoots on primary and can reload with the secondary action, or perform a strike with a mounted bayonet. It could also be used to perform a blocking action with a melee weapon or thrusting with a spear instead of throwing it.

2: Secondary Tool: If a weapon or tool has no defined secondary action (or that function doesnt exist), you can perform the primary action of another tool without choosing it first. This would also be used via middle mouse button. it would allow to have a bow equipped and be shooting arrows, and when an enemy gets close you can strike him with your sword without switching weapons (maybe with a small delay). Which tool gets selected could be decided on different ways. Maybe its the next tool in the inventory (if you have a Bow on 1, a stone on 2 and a sword on 3, it would skip the stone and the sword would be the secondary tool), it could be defined via script (in hot ice the windbag could be accessed way faster and easier this way) or some tools get prioritised via script, it could auto select a melee weapons if you're using a ranged weapon and so on. The main disadvantages would be that it might looks silly, turn out unexpected (you wanted to use your sword but the it selects a flint) and might be OP because an opponent wouldn't know what weapon you're "hiding".

I would love to see any of those or even variants addressed and maybe included in future releases to enhance the gameplay experience :)
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Parent - - By Clonkonaut Date 2018-03-19 21:26
First of: Requiring the middle mouse button (or Mouse3) will exclude certain setups: Trackpads, mouse with two buttons, graphic tablet. Also, it doesn't transpose well to gamepad controls. Not saying it's impossible but I'd rather think of something else that doesn't make it mandatory have a third mouse button.

Back when we started, we had two items readily usable on mouse left and right. It was a mess, because you always confused what button did what (even with seasoned players). And that was you being able to pick a secondarry action, not an automated system. Such a system could very well lead to more confusion.
Throwing was set to shift + mouse button and...it wasn't good really. Throwing during combat was not impossible but rarely done because it was very slow (jumping an throwing was especially bad). So keep in mind that using both buttons for item actions will hamper with everyone's ability to throw stuff.
The next problem is that most objects simply don't have something useful to do on secondary action. It makes sense with weapons, yes. But everything else won't have a secondary action (Randomly throwing in melee attacks to hammers or similar won't do the trick). So, you mostly sacrifice a major button just for weapons (having throw on mouse right is btw a terrible idea as you never know whether an object does something on right click or is thrown. Controls should stay consistent. Thinking about bombs or dynamite, I guarantee you, you won't find a solution that doesn't regularly confuse people and make them blow up their clonk).
Saying as much, there is a need for quicker actions, yeah. We (I?) have been thinking about using Q or number keys as quick use buttons (instead of quick switch). A custom pack can of course focus on two weapon actions and have throw on something else.
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Parent - - By Luchs Date 2018-03-19 22:30

>Also, it doesn't transpose well to gamepad controls.


To add to this: Our current controls already have more mandatory buttons than you can comfortably fit on a gamepad. Any new actions that use additional keys or mouse buttons should also be achievable with our current set of keys.
Parent - - By Maikel Date 2018-03-19 22:51
To add to this even more: The biggest flaw of OC compared to CR to me is not being able to play split screen at all. Two ingredients are missing, proper gamepad controls (which are mostly finished!) and fixing the engine (most of the work). I'd really like to see this working in the 9.0 release.
Parent - By Clonkonaut Date 2018-03-19 22:52
The biggest to do is keyboard controls for menus.
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Parent - - By Sven2 [us] Date 2018-03-20 02:02 Edited 2018-03-20 02:05
I think left=grenade launcher, right=windbag would work nicely for HotIce though because you just have two items. So you'd never have to switch.
Parent - - By Maikel Date 2018-03-20 08:06
I'd like to try Marky's idea (with number keys for quick use of items) in an alternative form. Briefly:

* Drop quick switch (Q).
* Allow to make one slot the quick use slot (the selected slot will be the quick use slot with Shift + Q).
* Then Q works as the LMB for that slot.

I think then you can use the windbag with Q in hot ice and the grenade launcher just with the mouse. I think in Marky's idea the number keys are too far away to be convenient for this.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2018-03-20 09:34
Sounds worth a try. And if we combine that with the ability to reorder your inventory, then you could e.g. always put your bow on [1] and maybe those two things combined can already reduce a lot of confusion
Parent - By Clonkonaut Date 2018-03-20 11:33
You can already reorder your inventory! ;)
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Parent - - By Marky [de] Date 2018-03-20 12:18
I had this idea, too. Then I made it more generic by saying: why limit this to one item only? Anyway, any step in this direction seems good.
I even started implementing this (the Q version) in OC Classic, but I didn't get far, because holding control was somehow not forwarded.
Parent - - By Maikel Date 2018-03-20 12:20
I did not mean to steal it in any way. The reason I would not go beyond one item is twofold: number keys are hard to reach and there is typically one item you want to be able to use fast (sword, shield, windbag) and you can remember the position of.
Parent - By Marky [de] Date 2018-03-20 12:24
I am just saying that I had difficulties implementing it and any version of this control scheme seems good. You are right about the number keys.
Parent - By Sven2 [us] Date 2018-03-20 02:05
As other posted, secondary tool was tried and was generally more confusing than helpful.

Secondary Action is something I could imagine works. This could be used in HotIce to add a combined "Windbag + Grenade Launcher"-tool, and then you'd have that tool in the only inventory slot.

It would also be nice for e.g. a magic wand where different spells would be on the wand.
Up Topic General / Feedback and Ideas / Idea: Secondary Equipment Action

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