Request: healing shortcuts

[quietlyquietly]

QUICK HEAL: The heal is tied to a single key press.
This is what the magic quick heal does by clicking on the player,it skips all the intermediate steps and makes them automatic.

POTION QUICK HEAL:
The player normally has to open a window, select a potion, and use it. The act of looking away to find the correct potion in the window is what usually gets me killed, as I was needing a heal at the time already. A quick heal uses a pre-selected potion.
There may be a way to do it with some of the other "Quick" features, but I have not figured it out yet.
This is something useful to everyone, and should not require being a programmer and reading the manual to setup.

[Reid]

You can open the shortcut window by pressing F8 or the "SH" box on your top-right button list and drag&drop any potions in there.
This window is useful to drag and drop other useful stuff like common spells!

[Ledmitz]

You will see there also, that each has a key assigned to it so you can just hit it as a shortcut. Most of us leave that window up and just press the corresponding key.

[Livio]

I left many if not all keyboard bindings to default as it makes easier to allow players to help each other.
But, when not chatting, I use a PS3 controller since I started the game. That's my very first setup:

[quietlyquietly]

I am not finding anything in the Wiki manual that explains that, or any of those bars.
I would not expect one of those shortcuts to USE the potion. I have no idea what it would do, try to put the potion on as clothing maybe.

Keyboard only, I do not even have any of those game consoles, nor one of those controllers.

I tried to use the default keyboard setup for a couple months. One hand on the mouse, and the other on the arrow keys. Could not reach the x or a keys that way. I got in trouble often because it was so hard to fight anything without it getting the first hit (clicking on the monster always makes you run over to where it was, which was often fatal if it was coming towards you at the time). That had to be fixed.

I spend more of my time maintaining a free online game, and contributing to others, than I ever do playing any of them.
Every time I encounter one of these user interface problems, I want to get it fixed. Preferably by NOT taking on another project. I already got too many.

[Livio]

I am not finding anything in the Wiki manual that explains that, or any of those bars.
I would not expect one of those shortcuts to USE the potion. I have no idea what it would do, try to put the potion on as clothing maybe.

Wiki is mostly focused on the game rather than client and usually outdated or incomplete.
Pressing F1 in ManaPlus client gives some insight on keybindings.
I actually use shortcuts to use potions. As for clothes, you better use outfit shortcuts instead.

Keyboard only, I do not even have any of those game consoles, nor one of those controllers.

You don't have to but when not chatting it helps for a more "videogame like" experience. Otherwise ManaPlus doubles as a "IRC with hats" client when not playing. I think that ManaPlus allows for hotkeys customization too (never tried that yet).

I tried to use the default keyboard setup for a couple months. One hand on the mouse, and the other on the arrow keys. Could not reach the x or a keys that way. I got in trouble often because it was so hard to fight anything without it getting the first hit (clicking on the monster always makes you run over to where it was, which was often fatal if it was coming towards you at the time). That had to be fixed.

There's nothing to "fix" IMHO. You have freedom of customization. The bad part of it is that takes a lot of time and makes giving hints on client hard to other players if you aren't experienced enough.
You can play with arrow keys and use CTRL key to attack. Right click on target and select "ignore", "remove from attack list" or type "/addignoreattack <name>" or "/removeattack <name>" to filter out unwanted targets.
By fine tuning quick settings you can play without the need for the mouse for many actions.
There are options to show monster's and player's attack range as well.

Off-topic:

Spoiler:

I spend more of my time maintaining a free online game, and contributing to others, than I ever do playing any of them.
Every time I encounter one of these user interface problems, I want to get it fixed. Preferably by NOT taking on another project. I already got too many.

Since you claim to maintain some free games you probably understand that nobody will take orders from you or anyone.
People developing and maintaining this game do not have to work on stuff that bother few players that the next day become bored and definitively offline.

Surely the user interface could be simplified for a more pleasant experience but saying "I want this, I want that and I do not want to download sources and post merge requests" makes people rather useless and unpleasant.

What makes you think people here has to give a damn about your lack of spare time and your projects?
What if I play one of your "free online games" and post only that complaints in your forums telling you that I want stuff done but I want to do nothing?

[ThinkSome]

Spoiler:

that nobody will take orders from you or anyone.

I think we should do kind of a poll for new ManaPlus defaults. Picking a new default layout is already 99% of the work and getting that commited in is just 1% and easy peasy in comparison. Im tempted at just making my own layout the new default.

People developing and maintaining this game

Literally who???

"I do not want to download sources and post merge requests"

But who's going to merge them?

[jesusalva]

I don't mind reviewing MRs, so feel free to submit them (i.e. "patches welcome").

And yes, there's no one developing OR maintaining this game client; so quietly's concern of being forced into team is justified (specially given we have a historic of doing that, e.g. NetSysFire which we stole from ArchLinux Wiki Admin team into our own).

But then, precisely because there's no one doing either tasks, suggestions will be preserved in this forum for posterity but obviously nothing will change on the foreseeable future, as changes are brought forth by people and we lack people.

(But summoning reviewers is always easier than summoning contributors, even if jak1 can no longer spare time even for review I can always do that myself or lure cuoco into doing that I guess )

[quietlyquietly]

I cannot take on any more projects. I already am main programmer for one free online game, and am writing two of my own, fixing another, and trying to fix a simulator that has gotten bloated. Also, I have given up on Windows, and only work Linux now. I have enough work there for most of the next 40 years. So you are going to get my observations.

By "had to be fixed", I was referring to changing the keyboard assignment. I "customized" my keyboard to WASD, so my fingers were somewhere natural, and then moved the attack keys near to them. Had to reassign a number of other keyboard assignments due to conflicts. The default keyboard assignment is crippling.
It is like trying to play the game on a pcjr (I never owned one, worse thing I could think of with a keyboard).

[Ledmitz]

ManaPlus, was for a time, our official client. ManaVerse, a fork of ManaPlus, is maintained by Jak1 and is now our official client, but there is work being done to the original Mana client as well, that gets rid of a lot of bloat and options. We probably won't change the default keys since they've been this way for so long and since almost everyone sets their own. I actually prefer to use the arrow keys, but am a bad example since I'm partially ambidextrous.

But the original post, about healing was answered. The default D key is for magic healing only, while the shortcut bar allows you to set whatever food healing item you wish. You can even assign different keys for that shortcut bar in M+/MV to better match your WASD setup, but I admit that finding the setting you want to change can be a daunting task, at times.

[Bjørn]

I'm open to changing the default key setup. In fact it annoys me as well and we need to consider the new players, who are all used to WASD for example (I try this myself all the time). For that we just need to figure out how to deal with various keyboard layouts, though.

For the oldies who are somehow attached to the current setup, we should be able to provide a "legacy" scheme.

[quietlyquietly]

As someone who has been maintaining a free game for 20 years.. If you try to get rid of some options, there will be an uprising of complaints. Much work for no reward.

There will always be keyboard customization. I do not propose to eliminate the current keyboard assignment, because there will always be those who are using it. I propose allowing new users to select starting from another "WASD" default assignment.
There is a button that reverts the keyboard assignment to default. That should allow you to select which default, arrow keys, or "WASD".