Using Shift for skills, so you use 5 buttons instead of 10

Xzait Dgizs

Green Slime
Occasionally, if you are using shift+ Button to reduce the amount of keys you need to press, the game will lock a skill. Every time you change areas, open then close the menu, chat with someone or complete a quest objective, you will go into a skill casting stance, even without casting any skills (i have only played a pure utility build character since i set shift+ button for skills, so not sure if it is utility skills only). The only way to stop it from locking you into a casting stance from what i have found, is completely closing and reopening the game, or figuring out and using the skill it locks you into. Casting the right skill seems to effectively 'reset' the skill and no longer cause it to lock. However, even after casting the right skill, it can still take only 1 more skill cast to cause another skill lock to occur. It seems especially bad in multiplayer (being more common of an occurance, possibly due to ping). I think it may possibly be the game not knowing what to do if you click shift at the same time as the button, possibly trying to cast both skills and not just one of them (say, teleport jump and damage boost), causing it to cast one, and lock the other, but again, i am unsure. Also, just for extra reference, i have numlock active all the time, and use the numbers on the right number pad... 1,2,3,4,6... thus meaning, holding shift changes them to end, down, page down, left and right respectively. I don't think you can use lower case letters and upper case for different skills, but i havn't tried that either. That is why i think the game is thinking i am pressing say, both 1 and end at exactly the same time. Also note, if the skills are locked, you can cancel them by casting any skill, or attacking or blocking, however, if it isn't the skill causing the issue, it will only make you able to move until you open a menu, swap areas, etc. again.
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
What an... interesting and inconvenient thing! It's actually not the game's "shift +" code that does this, but the fact that the game apparently is getting fed the shifted input rather than the number when shift is being pressed. That is, holding shift and pressing numpad 7 tells the game "Home was pressed" rather than "numpad 7 was pressed".

I suspect the charging thing happens to you when you hold shift, press a spell button, and then release shift before releasing the other button (or the other way around). In that case, XNA reports different buttons being pressed and released to the game, jumbling the inputs.

When this happens, one or more inputs might also get stuck at "being pressed" since it was never resolved (such as 7 was pressed, and Home was released, leaving 7 in a state of flux)

Since the system does not recognize shift in combination with numpad, there's not much I can do about this I'm afraid, as there's no way for me to differentiate the numlock arrows/home/end etc from the actual buttons in the code.

You could use Ctrl as a modifier button instead of Shift, but I realize that button is less comfortably placed if you're using WASD!

Sorry for the inconvenience ; (
 

Xzait Dgizs

Green Slime
Ah, very interesting. Thankyou for the very detailed reply. It explains everything! last time i tried to use Ctrl+Button instead, it wouldn't let me use it for keybinds. I wonder if it was because it wasn't implemented back when i tried to do it? Either way, thanks heaps for the help and explanation on why it was happening. Also, best of luck with the advancements in the awesome game, that is, Secrets of Grindea!! Woo :D
 
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