Keystroke Catastrophe

[Keystroke Catastrophe]

You can't remap function keys. Or top row numbers for that matter.

[Interface discussion]

Another annoyance with the interface:

Function keys and top row Number Keys should be re-assignable in the controls interface. The defaults can certainly be the functions they do now (selecting squad members, AI commands, etc), but they should be able to be changed to things that players are more likely going to use more often especially because the left side of both the function keys and top row numbers are within reach of the player's left hand.

I'd love to bind common functions I currently have to scroll through in the action menu to buttons 1 through 6 (such as Get Out).

And finally, I think there should be a "Prime Grenade" and/or a "Throw Grenade" button with the option to prime while holding, throw when releasing. Having hand grenades tied to the weapon toggle function doesn't seem correct as I think of that function as the setting for the current weapon I'm holding (burst/semi/full). To have hand grenades buried in that menu is cumbersome and not at all clear. I had to ask experienced players how to actually throw a grenade last night, and throwing a grenade should be obvious.

[Interface discussion]

- Looking around in air vehicles should allow finite turning in not only vertical looking but horizontal looking. Currently the only way to get a good look around while flying is by spending 150 US on TrackIR5. Ideally pressing your Look Left key/button/POV hat direction should turn your head a little then leave it there when you let go. This is how looking up and down work, so I'm not sure why looking left and right should be different. Then just utilize the "Center Look" function for when you want to snap back to center.

The above issue was the result of some strange corruption in my player profile as I was going through and replacing many of the default controls. For some reason it was removing left/right looking. After creating a new profile and trying it again, left/right worked fine, so I went into my original profile and attempted to set all the "Look..." functions to default, and the game crashed half-way through the process. I had to start another profile from scratch to get it to work. :(

- Would be nice to offer FreeTrack support, as I don't believe TrackIR is worth that much money and I have plenty of Wii remotes at my disposal. I'm more likely to do a do-it-yourself weekend to create a FreeTrack setup than I am to shell out that much cash.

- Remove the lag that the gun has when moving the mouse around quickly while using Infantry controls. It seems like this might actually be a technical problem with low frames per second, but it half feels like it is intentional to give player models some time to catch up to very fast mouse movements. It can be forgiven to see other players do a near instant 180 spin if it means the in game controls benefit.

- Revamping of entire Load/Save functionality for Single Player. There are many examples of this functionality in many different games that could be used for an example of an easy to understand save system, and this game's doesn't adhere to any standards in this regard. There doesn't seem to be a way to go back and load a specific save if you restart a mission for any reason. I recommend something where the entire list of all saved games appear in a scrollable dialog complete with screenshots of what you are looking at, the name of the chapter (in your case, the name of the mission), and the date/time it was saved, and then listed in ascending order by that date/time.