Re: ts4 key
by EA_PancakesOriginal Post
EA, Maxis, mods, who do I talk to for improving keyboard bindings?
Okay, I like TS4, I spent a lot of time playing. I sometimes get into that state of flow, especially in BB. But more often than not, I found myself annoyed by the inefficiency of key positions, the lack of keys overall and the inability to change any of the present ones.
I do use my keyboard for moving the camera/view/objects, the functional keys in BB (b, e, etc). But they I often found them not placed in an ergonomic way or missing entirely. And it's disrupting the game play.
Cam and Object Movement
I play with my mouse in the right hand, and can use left for whatever on the keyboard. Now I naturally would use lefty for ASDW to move the camera, then I want to rotate an object and place it on the floor above. So this lefty has to move to the right of the keyboard. Now that's bad GUI design. I could use the right hand. And I could also just use the right side of the keyboard with the left hand for cam and object movement. But that's not intuitive to how we use keyboards. And then still I'd use the left side for shift, alt, ctrl and all that. So, It's really an amount of unnecessary movement.
Navigating through BB
I do like the hotkeys for Eyedropper, hand, walls. But there could be more. With hotkey combos we could definitely more around BB much faster. Or at least, allow for navigation with keys in BB.
Switching Swatches is placed on the numpad. This drives me furious since TS4 is always claimed to be made for people with less strong technology. Many play on lower-end lap tops that do not have a numpad (and even some gaming keyboards come without numpad. Yes, we could by an additional one. But we could also ask for you to allow us to edit them, as in most games I know.
Flow in Pies
Have you tested queuing multiple interactions by one sim? Have you counted the amount of clicks it takes to add [deep conversation, tell funny story, ask about interest, deep conversation] with a befriended sim? Have you considered how many clicks could be avoided if I could lock the pie menu with a key and navigate through them even after I clicked? It's common for many other games. It's the one part that sucks me out of flow the most: tedious actions that can be avoided. Why can I not press Tab and have the pie menu visible until I release Tab? It saves a bunch of clicks that would enhance the game flow by A LOT.
So to sum it up, what can be done about key bindings and editors? Other modders, what could we do?
- key binding editor
- additional rotation, floors up/down, walls up down on left side/center of keyboard
- alternative key for swatch switching
- navigate through options in BB/live with keyboard
- hotkey combos for features in BB (e.g. floors, half walls, electronics etc.)
- lock pie menu for multiple interactions
