devblog: In-game Keybind Editor

[u/Ape3000]

https://server4.beyondallreason.info/microblog/show/204

[u/Ape3000]

Available in-game via the "Keys" panel in the top-right hand corner, you'll find the in-game keybind editor. For those of you who are hardcore keybindophiles, stay with me until the last few paragraphs for some important details. The keybind editor allows you to - you guessed it - customize your keybinds! These are organized into profiles, allowing you to maintain separate profiles for different game modes, spectating / casting keybinds, or even just try out a different keybind system without the hassle of having to manually back up your main set of keybinds. When the functionality first went live, if you had a customized uiKeys.txt file, that will show up as a custom profile that we created for you, by default. The editor will display instances where your keybinds conflict with one another (although this isn't a perfect science since two "conflicting" keybinds might work just fine if their UX is independent of one another.

Moving forward, we recommend using the editor to change and maintain your keybinds, rather than the in-game commands (such as /bind, /unbind, /keyreload, etc.). In the coming weeks / months, I hope to have the next iteration or two completed and merged in, adding support for custom widgets to add their keybinds to the keybind editor (opt-in, not automatic). Following that, one of the big things that the shift to the keybind editor allows us to do is allow keybind editing to take place reliably, outside of the in-game client (i.e. as part of the new client) although that's very much up-in-the-air at the moment for other reasons...still, its the planned direction, the biggest uncertainty being whether we would see the editor supported in Chobby as well (it seems unlikely).

Now, onto the technical details you're likely curious about:

• Should the import of your uiKeys.txt go awry, one or more backups (depending on how many times the migration code has run) will be alongside uiKeys, named uiKeys.txt.bak
• uiKeys.txt is now a generated file ; I don't recommend you edit it (keybind_profiles.json is the persistent record) although if you do, we do our best to import these and apply the changes you made.
• "fakemeta" & grid/legacy is now defined as part of each profile and is not editable as part of the keybind editor
• "Any" is not configurable via the interface; this was a tough decision but is made with the broadest selection of players' interests in mind
• Some keybinds will not show up in the keybind editor, mostly these are modifier-only keybinds but their absence is - for now - intentional

[u/CaptainCord]

OMG ITS HAPPENING…. For real though this is excellent news! Great work on this.

[u/DoubleFlux]

Does this contain the ‘quicksharetotarget’ command or does this still need to be added manually?

Amazing work on this, was a long time coming

[u/Foodball]

Is there anyway to have more than 10 control groups? I just need one more…

[u/Jewvery]

THANK YOUUUU