azerty keyboard

[Rackatack]

Just a little (stupid question)
I coul'nt find the place where I can change the key bindings
I have an azerty keyboard, and it's kind of hard to play with the querty layout
can someone help me?

[The GoldFish]

Hi, I had similar woes about not being able to remap the controls.

Currently the only means to do this is to edit one of the game files which is contained in the dat files, or to get a copy of this file. Since new players in no way deserve to have to decompres the game files, here's a copy of the text file you need to edit.

There is a much better method for doing this later on in this thread, from lorant, I suggest you use the txt file above as a reference point to get the command names for any you wish to change and use his method

If all else fails, or things don't behave how you'd like, using lorant's method, your only alternative is the below, I think.

Create a folder in your multiwinia directory named data, then another in that called input, and place the above file in that folder, to follow the scheme below;

somefolder/multiwinia.exe
somefolder/data/input/input_preferences.txt

The majority of controls in this file are irrelivant to you, you probably want to edit the "cameraleft" looking controls, left, right, up down shake it all around etc.

OR ALTERNATIVELY, A rar with all the input related files can also be obtained here, which can just be extracted to the multiwinia dir. You might find this a lot easier.

Note however if the controls get updated you'll need to get a fresh copy of this file out of main.dat - main.dat is secretly a rar (just like in Darwinia) so just rename it, extract it, and name it back if the controls ever get updated. Hopefully by then youll be a little more confident or not have to do this - who knows. Right now, though, you should be able to sidestep with the files provided above.

(Thanks go to Jelco for hooking me up with the latest copy of the file)

edit - as an aside, there DOES appear to be special keyboard options for French and German keyboards, I'm not sure if these are azerty or not. However I have no idea how to make use of these options in game, if they're automatic, or what. Hopefully the above will provide you with a simple enough means to at least start playing comfortably.

edit 2 - elDiablo suggests that these options are automatic, with apparently no way to manually select them. I'm not sure if they're being automatically selected for you or not (the theme of your posts suggests that they aren't)

[frenchfrog]

What is your Windows Keyboard set-up? If it's french I think it should switch automatically.

[Coren]

I'm having the exact same problem. My keyboard layout is Belgian (period), if I'm not mistaken, which is an AZERTY layout. I remember it was really easy in the original Darwinia to get it working right (I don't remember if it worked out of the box or if there was a configuration option for it, but it worked), and I think it's a bit ridiculous that there's no easy way to change it in Multiwinia. Hope the people at Introversion fix it soon.

Anyway, I tried The GoldFish's method and that apparently worked, so thanks! At least I'm no longer forced to use my Xbox360 controller, that one's not nearly fast enough for RTS games.

Okay, let's give this game a try now

[Rackatack]

I'm sorry that i could'nt try it before, but I was out the whole weekend.
Yes I have a belgian french keyboard (belgian period) and configured as belgian period. thank ou verry much The GoldFish, your solution worked great.
I don't know why it did'nt select the right layoyut ...
I don't know if it's because the language of my OS is English and the keyb Belgian ...
But my brother has a French keyb and an English OS and didn't had the problem...
but, It works by changing the keys in the text file, so I'm happy thanx

[The GoldFish]

No problem! I'm sorry you had to jump through wierd hoops in order to do something so very, very simple as changing the controls.

[Rackatack]

well, you know, it was'nt that "complicated" and I think I'm feeling a little dumb because I did'nt searched enoughin the gamefiles. I think I'm getting lazy

[The GoldFish]

I wouldn't feel dumb for not checking through hidden, compressed game files that the consumer is never supposed to have to go near.

And, well, generally most people don't know that the dats are rars, and trying to explain that and then have them safely handle the game files is a difficult step, including the part where you overide the dat contents with files in the data directory. rather than try to remake the dat file with the modified controls. On top of this, it's editing a file that is subject to change, so they need to keep it updated because, if things do change, they'll get themselves in a lot of trouble, especially if they extract /all/ the game files and not just the ones that specificaly are to do with the controls, since they'll overide any level patches that get made and cause sync errors galore, and any other file changes for that matter. Then they need to work out which file to edit.

Some people can pick these things up and run with them and account for the issues they'll cause later. Other people can't, and really they just wanted to change their controls.

So yeah, I'd say it's more complicated than say, just changing the controls in game like you might typically expect - and you're only doing it to make use of the azerty keymappings that should have been automatically selected for you anyway, but due to the oversight of expecting automatic detection to work in all cases and provide, once again, no manual options in that regard, you've had to resort to editing game files.

Seems like a bit of a crappy deal to me, really, and I'm trying to help people customise their controls (as I have to, though only out of habit) in as simple manner as possible.

[Rackatack]

I unerstand. I'm (or I was) used to check the different files in some games to make them work especially winh linux or in old dos games.
And I did a lot of "custommer support" but I think that I lost a lot of "guessing around" now that I do more server related work

[lorant]

On top of this, it's editing a file that is subject to change, so they need to keep it updated because, if things do change, they'll get themselves in a lot of trouble

I've noticed that instead of replacing "data/input/input_preferences.txt", it's enough to replace "data/input/keyboards/fr_FR.txt" (obviously replacing fr_FR with whatever is your language and country). This file contains only 8 key definitions, so overriding them should lead to less troubles with future updates.

So for an azerty keyboard you just have to create the file "data/input/keyboards/fr_FR.txt", containing:

Code: Select all

CameraLeft                        = key q pressed
CameraRight                       = key d pressed
CameraUp                          = key a pressed
CameraDown                        = key e pressed
CameraForwards                    = key z pressed
CameraBackwards                   = key s pressed
CameraZoom                        = key w pressed
CameraDeZoom                      = key c pressed


Of course in-game keyboard settings would be better (I guess it'll be implemented at some point, since Darwinia has it).

EDIT: actually it probably won't work if the keyboard is not correctly recognized in the first place... silly me. Maybe replacing fr_FR with the correct language code would do the trick, then.

[Rackatack]

When I'm back for work, I'll try to rename fr_FR.txt in be_FR.txt or fr_BE.txt and post an update

[lorant]

In fact, there's already an fr_FR.txt in the keyboards directory - if it's not by default, that's a download error probably.

When you say "in the directory", you're speaking of the "main.dat" rar file, right? I think by default there isn't any data directory after installation: everything is contained in the "main.dat" file. At least this was like that here, and my azerty keyboard was correctly recognized. Later I created the "data", "input" and "keyboards" directories myself, because I wanted to customize some keys.

When I'm back for work, I'll try to rename fr_FR.txt in be_FR.txt or fr_BE.txt and post an update

You could also try en_US.txt and en_UK.txt, as I think it there is only a few locale recognized (in the locales.txt there is only de_DE, en_US, fr_FR, en_UK and en_CA). I guess it defaults to some english locale.

So to summarize:

- Create the three nested directories "data/input/keyboards" inside your multiwinia installation directory (not the profile directory),
- open the rar file "main.dat" (which is in the installation directory),
- from this rar file, extract the "data/input/keyboards/fr_FR.txt" and copy it inside the just created "data/input/keyboards" directory,
- rename this file to... whatever works for you. ^_^ Probably "en_UK.txt" or "en_US.txt".

[The GoldFish]

You can obtain a copy of all the files being mentioned here in the input.rar I linked to previously (provided by jelco). This may well gel with people better than the renaming of the dats process.

Edit also the post above mine sounds like really good advice - refer to the txt file I linked but don't follow most of my steps, just use it as a reference to create your own keyboard replacement file as detailed in the post above this one (assuming that that all works)

Here's my en_UK.txt in

somefolder/multiwinia.exe
somefolder/data/input/keyboards/en_UK.txt

and it works just as good for me as the much more annoying pain in the ass version that I'd been using previously;

Code: Select all

CameraLeft                        = key q pressed
CameraRight                       = key e pressed
CameraUp                          = key w pressed
CameraDown                        = key x pressed
CameraForwards                    = key a pressed
CameraBackwards                   = key s pressed
UnitCycleLeft           = key control pressed && key tab down



However, there is a caveat, it looks like you can only have ONE binding per control in this file, so there is still a place for the original method - do correct me if I'm wrong. D no longer made me move right, as it would be expected to if it had not been unbound.