Many modules use keyboard combinations like CTRL + [ that are easy for English users, but difficult or impossible to use on non-English keyboards.
I would suggest that a setting is introduced in Vassal that can override the keyboard combinations, and map them to something defined by the user. This would help many of us using other keyboards to access functions as easily as users of English keyboards.
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As a German user - and module designer - I really agree with this.
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As an English user and module designer, I also agree it would be wonderful to have a solution to this issue. It is frustrating to think that one’s “carefully considered” keyboard shortcuts are useless to many players.
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We’ll have remappable keybindings in V4. Retrofitting this to V3 would be quite hard.
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That sounds good. I didn’t expect changes in the current version. Will this be a general Vassal feature, or something that a module will have to support, or to implement itself?
It will be a Vassal-level feature.
The next best thing you can do as a designer is to include a list of all the shortcuts used in the module. Fx. in the readme file.
That way, those who know how to edit a module can fix the offending hotkey, without having to browse through the whole module for fear of overwriting an existing key.
Recent versions of Vassal don’t rely on designer documentation… you can list all shortcuts using a Tools utility List Key Commands:
The extra benefit of this utility is that you can search for shortcuts and see exactly what traits etc are using them.
This makes me wonder if the search tool could be the basis of a static re-mapping utility, able to export & import its settings and convert a module to a different keyboard. The point being that such a utility would allow localisation work to be re-applied between module versions.
Doh - never noticed that. Thx. for the enlightenment…
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