No mouse, no touchpad, just good old keyboard ...

[kgish]

I like to pass away the time during my long train commute by playing Wesnoth on my laptop.

However, not being able to use the mouse properly is a big frustration, and I am not such a fan of using the touchpad either.

Would it be possible to make the user interface fully hotkey compliant so that the game could be played easily using just the keyboard, e.g. not depending on the mouse at all?

Thanks alot in advance?

[appleide]

IMO the problem with most touch pads are that they are too slow. I turned up my touchpad's speed to the max and its a big improvement but it is barely enough for me. I think you should give that a try though.

[mameluke]

how should this work?
Then you should type some coordinates?

Like $hotkey_move $from_x $from_y $to_x $to_y

Or do you have a better idea?

[EDIT]
Hmmm... maybe move the cursor/focus with arrows?

[turin]

[EDIT]
Hmmm... maybe move the cursor/focus with arrows?

Clearly...

[Wesnothphile]

I remember being able to play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri entirely via keyboard, without using a mouse or touchpad. So such an implementation would certainly be possible for a turn based strategy game.

I actually prefered playing Alpha Centauri that way. Not only was it quicker and easier to play this way, but also better for my wrists. My wrists didn't hurt as much after hours of gaming when I only used the keyboard.

Come to think of it, the keyboard only interface is also one of the reasons I like rogue-likes such as Nethack.

But the switch from squares to hexes may make such an interface more problematic, since the directional keys are not as intuitive.

[rchandra]

But the switch from squares to hexes may make such an interface more problematic, since the directional keys are not as intuitive.

This won't be a big deal. Obviously up-down arrows will move North and South, and diagonal can handle ns/ne/sw/se. Many laptop users would prefer not to have to use their "emulated" num-pads (likely to interfere with other hotkeys), and so left-right should be one of the West and East directions. Which one doesn't matter, if it wasn't the desired one hit up or down.

[Sapient]

right, but the arrow keys are already in use by the game.

another idea: if your OS is Windows, you can use the Accessibility features to turn on MouseKeys.

(this lets you emulate mouse activity with your numpad.)

[turin]

right, but the arrow keys are already in use by the game.

Shift + arrow key could be moving the mouse, perhaps.

[Dave]

IMO this would be very nice.

It'd be also nice to be able to control it entirely with a gamepad.

[megane]

You don't have to use the arrow keys; just use uiojkl. Seems like there just need to be hotkey definitions -- which start out unassigned by default -- for "move cursor north," "move cursor north 8 hexes," "select hex" etc. Then you could just set up your own scheme.

[AI]

u is used for undo, which is quite useful. I haven't checked for other hotkeys, but qweasd should work.

[qweo]

By the way, Vi-style navigation would be really nice, even more nice if take into account that Wesnoth commands is already Vi-like. Something like :move-cursor 10 north or :mc 10 n should look good. And if extend Vi-style to the "command", i. e. normal mode, there may be something like 10mn or 10mcn.

[cool evil]

It's possible. What you need is a slightly modified version of wesnoth that has a whole bunch of hotkeys. For example, CTRL A could activate attack sequence, a mouse appears, and you can use the directional keys to navigate the hexagon map, hit ENTER to attack a enemy, or to select one of your own units, and hit ENTER again to move to a specific hex. At other times the directional pad does only fast-scroll around the map and stuff.

[Unnheulu]

CTRL+A is already used, how about SHIFT+A, or CTRL+SHIFT+A?

[Wintermute]

today: keyboard only Wesnoth.
tomorrow: Wesnoth on cell phones.

soon enough people can be LITERALLY calling each other noobs!