I am thinking about potential Forum Rules for Mechaenetia Mods

[Gregorius (Gregorius Techneticies)]

@Max

If the modpack ships without default keybinds for those actions, then by default there won’t be a keybind to flip to page 3 (casting the spell could be the “use” function for the speedbook). Flipping between pages would be part of the action menu by default, right?

Yeah everything you can do in the Game will have an Action that you can assign a Keybind to, and I mean EVERYTHING you can do. If there was no quick select of a certain page in a book, then the Modder would be at fault for forgetting to add an Action to it (which people will quickly point out when that happens, since then you cant put Keybinds for it at all either, because Keybinds go to Actions).

@Max

So by default, the player picks up the spellbook and has to press ‘f’ to bring up an action menu, then move the mouse cursor over the page they want to turn to (or the spell they want to cast), then left click to select that action, then right click to cast. All of this will happen in the heat of battle.

In the heat of Battle nobody in their right mind would pick up a Spell Book, then NOT READ THE SPELLS TO SEE WHICH THEY ARE (while doing so you can also quickly assign the ones you need to direct Keybinds), and proceed to cast the Spell they did not bother to check which Spell it was in the first place, resulting in some random ass spell flying over the Battlefield, or worse, you casting a Support Spell against an Enemy.

@Max

Yes, the user is free to bypass the action menu with keybinds. It will probably only take a minute to set that up. But what you are saying is that modpack and mod authors are powerless to make the default process any less painful.

The Default Process takes less than a second to set up per Keybind, if you have a little bit of workflow, it is that simple. And in case of the Spell Book, there could be additional “Assign to Input” Buttons inside the Book itself, not just the Action Menu. More importantly you could put those Actions not to the Spells in the Book but to certain Page indices of the Book, so another Book has other Indices so you swap between two Books and your Keybind Layout instantly switches from Battle to Support for example.

The worse Process would be “oh shit the default Keybind collides with my own Keybinds, I need to find the binding and remove it” which is insanely painful.

@Max

There’s a problem, however, if you have multiple mods adding their own multitools. Let’s pretend this roguelike pack includes both the speedbook and the swiss army knife. Players will use both tools quite often. The modpack author would like it to be so that the keyboard’s number row flips to pages 1-12 of the speedbook or switches the mode 1-10 of the army knife, depending on which is being held. But the modpack is not allowed to ship default keybinds for action menu items, and neither are individual mods. That means the player has to go to the trouble of assigning 12+10 = 22 keybindings.

Do you see how this might be a problem if a modpack includes lots of multitools? You might end up with hundreds of action menu items that the modpack author knows will fit on just twelve keys without conflicts. But according to your rules, the player has to personally set every keybinding.

I see what kind of problem you are describing, but switching Modes to certain Indices of the Item held in Hand is ALREADY a possible Action, you dont have to “Switch to Knife” in your Swiss Army Tool, you can just “Switch to Index 1” which happens to be the Knife. And that same binding would work for the Book too whenever you hold it.

And I am pretty sure that the Numbers Bar will have a Default Keybinds Set that can be turned on optionally on initial Game Setup, so it’s a single click to setup those 10 Keys. (There is Localisation reasons I wont put 12 Keys in that Bar, because some Keyboards have Stuff like ß or ’ at those locations)