Factorio Forums

Factorio is a very compelling game, but it is doing a terrible job in the Keybinding department. Here are some suggestions to help the keybindings not be so frustrating.

• Escape - This is currently a high-priority interrupt for the main menu. This is an extremely jarring effect, as the typical use of the escape key in every other program is to cancel the current state. In Factorio, this should cancel building or close a window as appropriate. You have a separate pause button, use that for the menu.
• Windows (and closing them) - Windows are currently all closed with the E key. It's an awkward keybinding to have 1 key close all the windows. If you open something with a key, you should close it with that same key. E for inventory, E to close inventory. T to open technology, T to close technology. Right Click to interact, Right Click to stop interaction. Keep the Escape key useful for closing these windows though.
• Quickbar 6-10 - While the current setup is ok, and once you get used to it, kind of nice to have the Quickbar be reachable without moving the right hand, the game never tells you that Shift is used to reach the right side, and it's not intuitively obvious that Shift means go to the right side of the bar at the bottom. I would suggest labelling the quickbar with the keys used to get to each slot. (This is in the tips and tricks a few times, which makes it less obfuscated)
• Building Placement - By default left mouse button should be the button you click to place a building (considering you cycled to it, and left mouse button is the main mouse button). That brings us to:
• Cursor Clearing - This should be the right mouse button by default, not Q (Escape should act sanely and clear the cursor when it's full too). Q has a function of cycling weapons.

Here's a configuration file, with the default keybindings adjusted to be better. Escape is the new close window key, and works pretty well; you have to close all windows to hit the menu with this setup. The mouse buttons are mapped to place and clear cursor appropriately, quickbar uses all ten number keys (for testing, though it is definitely less efficient once you understand how the quickbar works).

Escape: Yes! Pressing escape while a window is open should close the window, instead of pausing the game.

Quickbar: I think it's in one of the tips.

Cursor clearing: The right mouse button already has a function - it drops one item, or picks up half a stack, or places/uses an item.

immibis wrote:Quickbar: I think it's in one of the tips.

Tutorials should not need to be necessary. If it is in the tutorial or tips, then that's ok though.

immibis wrote:Cursor clearing: The right mouse button already has a function - it drops one item, or picks up half a stack, or places/uses an item.

Right, forgot to mention that one. The left mouse button should be the default place, the right the default clear-cursor and interaction button. Left can still be dismantle. I've updated the first post accordingly, thank you.

I want to mention, that it is possible to setup most of those key bindings yourself.
And I recommend that, because this is alpha and before we change the defaults, it must be played with it.

I recommend to setup a key-binding, play with it for a while. If it is ok, save the config (it's just a text-file near in the application data) and put it online (here into forum) so that others can test it too.

ssilk wrote:I want to mention, that it is possible to setup most of those key bindings yourself.
And I recommend that, because this is alpha and before we change the defaults, it must be played with it.

I recommend to setup a key-binding, play with it for a while. If it is ok, save the config (it's just a text-file near in the application data) and put it online (here into forum) so that others can test it too.

I set them up and uploaded a configuration file that enables most of them. Multiple button-mappings and context-aware button mapping needs to be implemented to improve things further though. It feels a lot better to play with even with just the 3 major remappings (Close Window -> Escape, Build -> LMB, Clear Cursor -> RMB). The file isn't uploaded through the forum, because the forum won't let you upload .ini attachments.

Yeah. The forum let you upload only pics.

But just use [/code]
for that.

I would like to use the mouse wheel to scroll through the quick-bar items, this of course would require the zooming to be bound to something else. Maybe shift + mouse wheel.

There will be some changes to the controls in the 0.9:

1) Escape closes the GUI.
2) Default setting is left click build, right click mine (just flipped those two).
3) Capsules behave as regular items (you take them into the hand and then use them by "building" action).

Edit: The idea to use shift + wheel for something is compelling, because wheel is super easy and natural to use.

slpwnd wrote:There will be some changes to the controls in the 0.9:

1) Escape closes the GUI.
2) Default setting is left click build, right click mine (just flipped those two).
3) Capsules behave as regular items (you take them into the hand and then use them by "building" action).

Edit: The idea to use shift + wheel for something is compelling, because wheel is super easy and natural to use.

Mmmm I liked how capsules work, not intuitive but I liked it, could it work with the two ways?
And I also dont like the second one because im alredy used to it but I can change this one.

ficolas wrote:Mmmm I liked how capsules work, not intuitive but I liked it, could it work with the two ways?
And I also dont like the second one because im alredy used to it but I can change this one.

The left <-> right switch will affect only new players.

I was a proponent of the original capsule solution, but after I programmed the new version just to try it I realized that it is actually way more intuitive to use. The big advantage now is that the keyboard kung-fu necessary before is gone. We will see how / if the people like it.

slpwnd wrote:

ficolas wrote:Mmmm I liked how capsules work, not intuitive but I liked it, could it work with the two ways?
And I also dont like the second one because im alredy used to it but I can change this one.

The left <-> right switch will affect only new players.

I was a proponent of the original capsule solution, but after I programmed the new version just to try it I realized that it is actually way more intuitive to use. The big advantage now is that the keyboard kung-fu necessary before is gone. We will see how / if the people like it.

What about using left click to build and open the GUI? I use that config and works fine except for the modular armor because left click also selects an item from the hotbar and the inventory wich prevents opening the armor's GUI, it only selects it. I was thinking on having the armor GUI opens only when you put it in the slot, since battery and shield internal energy remains in them even when unequiping the armor