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  PLEASE make the civ3 keyboard laptop-friendly

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Author Topic:   PLEASE make the civ3 keyboard laptop-friendly            Current Date/Time: April 06, 2000 17:33:55
tobyr
Warlord
From: Princeton, NJ USA
Registered: Oct 1999
posted April 06, 2000 10:24   Click Here to See the Profile for tobyrClick Here to Email tobyr Edit/Delete Message Reply To & Quote Message IP: Logged, Admin Access Only


(I'm afraid this topic has been inadequately discussed.)

On a laptop, it is often incovenient to use a mouse, and some "normal" keys (like diagonal cursor keys) may be missing, or hard to emulate.

CIV3 should be much better than ToT at supporting the keyboard. Most the possible improvements are developmentally "cheap" (neither hard to program nor hard to test). Here are some examples:

- let me MAP the keystrokes I want to use for the 8 cursor directions of movement.

- let the ESC key and ENTER key consistently close a screen (it doesn't, in ToT).

- if you have a city screen open, do not allow ANY keystroke to escape through the city box and be processed by the current unit. (In ToT, pressing space in a city display can cause the currently active unit to skip its turn!)

- Make sure all the menu selections can be reached from the keyboard. (In ToT, the civilopedia texts can not be brought up by the keyboard; you MUST mouse click them.)

- the DEFAULT "globe" display (or whatever civ3 has instead) should have one little button for each map. Using two buttons to cycle through the maps is dumb, especially when the UP arrow goes DOWN to the next map. THERE WILL BE MULTIPLE MAPS IN CIV3, WON'T THERE???

- give me a keyboard shortcut to bring up displays like "who wants the commodities". Let me click on a caravan to get the display of who wants what it is carrying.

- let me select a terrain square or unit, and press a function key to get its help (cilivopedia) text.

- let me BOOKMARK a few terrain squares so that I can easily return to them.

- and so on, use your imagination please, developers...

tnx for listening!
- toby

------------------
toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

pris
Chieftain
From:
Registered: Oct 1999
posted April 06, 2000 15:40   Click Here to See the Profile for pris  Edit/Delete Message Reply To & Quote Message IP: Logged, Admin Access Only


The game should also be runnable without the CD in the drive.

Forcing the CD to be in the drive doesn't make it any harder for pirates to copy the game so don't make things hard for honest users.

Slingshot
Warlord
From: Alberta, Canada
Registered: Jun 99
posted April 06, 2000 17:33   Click Here to See the Profile for Slingshot  Edit/Delete Message Reply To & Quote Message IP: Logged, Admin Access Only


Being a child of the DOS era, I still prefer using the keyboard.

CTP's mouse-driven interface is not very convenient. It is far better to have fingers planted on the keyboard for hours on end!

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