Spacebar to pause

It’s a common convention in games that support a pause feature, as well as in media players, for the space key to toggle pause/unpause. I continuously find myself hitting the space key, then 5-30 seconds later realizing that the game is still running, or still paused. Currently it appears that clicking on the UI overlay is the only way to pause and unpause.

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Yeah, I agree. We could have hotkeys for the speed feature.

Currently the space bar is used to pan the terrain together with the mouse. (As alternative to this, the wasd keys are used)

I think someone mentioned some time ago that they should make the hotkeys configurable…

Yeah it’s old. Here it is. Keyboard Hotkeys

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Simple enough :slight_smile:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BynmPA83eY4PM1dMYnlic2hCbE0/view?usp=sharing

I know you didn’t ask but this will do it for you, it’s a mod, put it right into you mods folder :slight_smile:

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Maybe pressing the letter P?

I believe that is the place menu hotkey

user mappable, mapped to spacebar or even the pause key would be great

Now that you mention it I remember this from the tutorial. I recall thinking it was a very strange choice to make an instantaneous key act like a modifier key. The usual convention in games like this is to use shift, ctrl, or alt as a mouse behavior modifier. 3d graphics programs like Maya, max, and sketchup also use this convention.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever paused the game so I don’t really see much use in this. I do agree with mapping spacebar to something more useful though. User-defined controls would definitely be best, especially since players will have different goals with their games - e.g. spacebar for commanding parties for a more war-oriented player, or space for any future merchant/trading menus for a resource-oriented person.

I agree that spacebar would be an ideal pause key… having an option to remap keys would be preferable though! :smiley:

Is Ctrl a hotkey? It could be that…

Escape brings up a menu, which also pauses by default. Escape doesn’t seem to be an uncommon pause/menu hotkey.

I agree with what’s been said about eventual custom mapping of hotkeys, but I also agree that it doesn’t make sense to implement until the core game is a little more fleshed out. Maybe this can be one of those how-many-features-and-fixes-can-we-get-done-before-Beta-release items.

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Except bringing up the menu prevents me from working in the build overlay or examining the roster. I’m not pausing the game so I can walk away from the computer; I’m pausing the simulation so I can make instantaneous commands.

I agree that this is not a high-priority change request, but it should definitely be in place prior to a wider release.

So, I searched for other people who had “Pause” issues, thought I should throw my two cents in this hat rather than starting a new thread.

Right now you can pause with the “1” key, and resume the game with “2”. Seems more intuitive to have one key as toggle, rather than two separate keys for the “pause/unpause” function.

Also, I’m not sure if this should go in “bugs” or not, but when the game is paused, if you go to build something and press the 2 key, say you want to build 2 doors, it will unpause the game when you type that in the text box. Minor thing, but should be fixed before it gets out of alpha/beta.

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always a good thing to do!

[quote=“Mikael, post:14, topic:9838”]
Right now you can pause with the “1” key, and resume the game with “2”. Seems more intuitive to have one key as toggle, rather than two separate keys for the “pause/unpause” function.
[/quote]i’m pretty sure the main reason for this is because 3 is for 2X speed. the 1, 2, and 3 keys are close to each other, thus keeping all the speed keys close together.

make sense?

That does make logical sense, and I see it now, but it isn’t intuitive. I’m sure I would get used to it, especially if additional speed options were added in the future, 1/2 speed, and 4x speed. Although I’m not sure how useful those would be.

Speaking from an intuitive perspective, based on UI in other games like this I’ve played, I would expect the space bar to act as a toggle for pause/pause, terrain scroll attached to something like Shift, and the 1-10 keys attached to something like Scrolling through parties of hearthlings, quick map locations (1 zooms the map onto your Town center, 2 to the mountain branch etc), or workshops. Similar to Starcraft or Darwina.

For speed changes I would actually assume that they would be attached to an f1-f10 key.

And while we are talking about hotkeys… Currently TAB isn’t hot keyed to something but I would expect it would be attached to town information, or some other info you would want to assess regularly.

Not that it has to be done like that, it’s just my bias and it may be useful feedback.

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