rhet0rica Resident
The provisioned features and power of the game_control() event are impressive, and miles ahead of the support available to scripters for processing input events for standard keyboard+mouse usage. Currently there's no way to respond to other mouse buttons (scroll wheel, middle click, right click, shoulder buttons) and there are no vectors for user input aside from the standard movement keys.
Thus if someone wants to make a game for users without a controller, they're limited to the interactivity of Quake 1, which is notable as being an aggressively minimalist design (shoot only, all doors open automatically) that was largely abandoned by other games.
For SL to really work as a game environment, we need a way to bind a "use" key, or keys for reloading weapons, or for using special powers like a quick melee attack. I'd like to propose the following:
- Adding 6 new mouse button bits to control(): scroll up, scroll down, mouse 2 (right), mouse 3 (middle), mouse 4 (shoulder 1), mouse 5 (shoulder 2)
- Adding 4 new general-purpose control inputs to control(): action 1, action 2, action 3, action 4
- Adding the general-purpose action inputs to Preferences › Controls
- Allow all control() bits to be mapped to controller buttons so vehicles without game_control() can be used with controllers and receive all the benefits of these new features — though this could/should be a feature request on its own
The bitmasks for level and edge have plenty of room for these 10 new bits, so I don't think this is too crazy a request.