Factorio Forums

TL;DR

The game forces us to use a mouse shortcut for removing filter on the quickbar and inventories.
This is a problem when playing on a laptop without mouse and there is no apparent reason to force that.

What ?

As a person playing a lot of factorio when traveling for work, I can't use my mouse.
The new quickbar uses links, so the filter removing button is now a core action in the game.
When I tried to remap this action the game told me I had to use a mouse related shortcut.
Why is that ? Why can't I use a keyboard key ?

Why ?

Arbitrary constraint that is detrimental to laptop and trackpad players.

Does your laptop have left and right mouse buttons? I'm assuming you meant that your laptop doesn't have a dedicated middle mouse button.

A quick google of "middle mouse click without mouse" led to this site: https://www.maketecheasier.com/simulate ... windows10/ which offers two methods of solving this problem. Either with a custom mouse gesture, or with autohotkey and making it so pressing both buttons sends a middle click. I assume it would also be possible to make an autohotkey script to send a middle click when you press a certain regular key or key combination.

Or you go into the key bindings and change it?

Yes, my laptop doesn't have a middlemouse button.
Thanks for the workaround but we shouldn't have to use one in the first place.
Especially since I don't see any reason to force this shortcut to be mouse related. Just let me use '!' or whatever

BenSeidel wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:15 am Or you go into the key bindings and change it?

The game prevents me from using anything that isn't mouse related.

FitzFitz wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:15 am Yes, my laptop doesn't have a middlemouse button.
Thanks for the workaround but we shouldn't have to use one in the first place.
Especially since I don't see any reason to force this shortcut to be mouse related. Just let me use '!' or whatever

+1
Yeah, sorry, I didn't read your entire post before making my first reply. Agreed, there's no good reason why you should need to use a mouse shortcut. The game can already detect if you're mousing over something when using Q, so the shortcut bar filters should be the same.

FitzFitz wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:16 am The game prevents me from using anything that isn't mouse related.

There are a few that require this, basically because there is no keyboard focus in the game - except to say that the game world always has focus. Clicks go to the control under the cursor, key presses go to whatever has focus.