interface: equip screen - "next/previous soldier" by arrow keys?

[moriarty]

the soldier inventory / equip screen has huge arrow buttons to go to the next/previous soldier, but shouldn't it also be possible to use the right/left arrow keys?

you could even think about using the mouse wheel, but that would possibly be too sensitive and skip to another soldier when you don't want to...

the arrow keys are not used for anything else here, so it shouldn't interfere with anything. maybe the up/down key could also switch to the soldier stat screen (like clicking the rank insignia on the top left does). 

speaking of that, perhaps we could implement a third screen for every soldier: "statistics"?

it would show things like
- recruitment day
- days in service
- missions survived
- wounds received (total)
- enemies killed
- enemies stunned
- civilians killed
- shots fired

I know that some of these are not recorded as of now, but it might be worth the effort these statistics could even stay for a "memorial" after the soldier was killed.

[Warboy1982]

bump for this, also maybe use mouse 6/7 (the forward and back buttons on my mouse, second scroll wheel on others, not present on yet others) for next/prev unit? not only on the equipment setup screen, but also in the battlescape. maybe also next/previous base in the basescape, and hell, why not even cycle through bases/discovered targets on the geoscape?

third soldier screen with extra stats would be cool, and i'll definitely look into it for my mod branch if you don't end up using it in the main branch, but this feels like it warrants a separate thread altogether.

[alienjon]

clever idea.  I imagine it wouldn't really detract from the original design either.

[SupSuper]

Keyboard controls are on my TODO list. My plan is if I'm gonna implement them, I'll implement them everywhere!

[papamaanbeer]

i really like these ideas

[Daiky]

I was playing with TAB to scroll through units, once you get used to it, it's actually nice. The TAB works on battlescape, inventory screen, stats screen. I decided to push the changes to master. So you can try it too.

Another key that I implemented is "r" to reload. It uses a piece of new AI code that will check your weapon to see if it is out of ammo, if so, run through your inventory to look for compatible ammo and reloads the weapon.

SupSuper, feel free to change these keyboard shortcuts to whatever system you had in mind, it are just placeholders to play with in the meanwhile.

[re-mind]

It's a great idea to make keyboard shotcuts but please.. PLEASE make an option screen for them. I would love to use wsad for scroll when on the battlescape. Using a and d to skip between soldiers when equipping is a good idea though, if wsad was used on the battlescape, q could be used as "previous soldier" and e as "next soldier". 1234 could be the hight of the map.

I often find it very distracting to play a strategy game on my laptop, when I have to rely on the arrowkeys, and my mousepad, when wsad could have solved it for me :/ but often it's not possible to change the settings.

I'm danish, and my english is not used often, but I hope you understand

ps. first post, been following the game for a loooong time. Can't wait for 0.5.

[Volutar]

Another "hotkey" idea is to move soldier step-by-step, like in "laser squad". Have 8 keys for "one step" for any of direction (keeping sight direction), plus 2 turn keys, plus up/down, plus stand/sit.
And really diagonal steps with keeping sight direction is advanced "strafe" movement, and can be used actively even in mouse-controlled combat.
Or even better if it will get 8 keys for "move/turn" and modification key for "keep sight direction" (strafe modifier).
One can use numpad keys as step direction, like 9 is north, 1 is south, pgup/pgdown - up/down, 5 is stand toggle, 0/"." - left-right turn.

[re-mind]

Almost two years old would really like to see this implemented.

https://openxcom.org/index.php/2011/03/shortcut-to-success/

[moriarty]

okay, we have "tab" to change to next soldier, which is working great... now what about "shift-tab" for previous soldier? having "shift-tab" do the opposite direction of "tab" appears to be a cross-platform convention, right?

[Warboy1982]

there's also the back/forward buttons on your mouse to cycle soldiers (where applicable)

[moriarty]

wow, I think we need to re-work the wiki

there's a tiny section https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Options_(OpenXcom)#Keyboard_Shortcuts about keyboard shortcuts, maybe that could be re-worked into a full "interface" section? does anybody have time for this?


EDIT: so I started a new page https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Interface_Features_(OpenXcom) and linked to it from the front page... I think I missed a lot of stuff, so perhaps somebody wants to add to it

[SupSuper]

Personally I would just update this: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Differences_to_X-COM_(OpenXcom)

Of course at the rate everyone throws random features at the game, it's hard to keep track.

[moriarty]

yeah, I considered that, but I thought it would be nice to have a separate interface page - something that can be treated like a cheat sheet for quick reference.

I always liked those sheets that the old games had which listed all the controls on one page. that's why I started that page.

EDIT: btw, your link somehow excluded the last bracket and doesn't work. the correct link is https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Differences_to_X-COM_(OpenXcom)

[moriarty]

okay, we have "tab" to change to next soldier, which is working great... now what about "shift-tab" for previous soldier? having "shift-tab" do the opposite direction of "tab" appears to be a cross-platform convention, right?

I was just playing around looking for more undocumented hotkeys and realized that "shift" changes to previous soldier. so forget my post above

this proves to me that an interface summary page is a good thing. at least for me


EDIT: did some more playing around, and found that the tab/shift-function for next/previous soldier is missing from the basescape soldier stat screen view.
also, all buttons in the can be right-clicked, which produces the audiovisual feedback where applicable, but does not trigger the respective action. I guess the feedback (button sound and color-inversion) shouldn't trigger on a right-click.