Shortcut Keys for All Towers

[Guest mrchak]

Currently, I think there are only shortcut keys for SOME towers. There should be shortcut keys for all.

Has to be well planned for dual / triple towers to ensure that no 2 towers have the same shortcut key if they can both be built from a common tower.

[Guest xSolmyRx]

mrchak, you're on a roll. :]

I think you woke up with a plan today!

Shortcut keys are ALWAYS a must!

Will get a bit tricky, incorporating keys to all dual/triple towers, though. Much confusion will be at bay, but will get used to it. :]

[Guest Sancdar]

This is on the same level as making prices equal no matter the path you take to the tower, unfortunately. I do hope that it gets done eventually (hint: U for upgrade, D/E/F/L/N/W for adding that element into the tower).

[Guest xSolmyRx]

What about a combination of 2 or 3 towers, Sancdar? Unless I'm misunderstood as to what you're saying.

There's always a choice of using numerical shortcut keys, I guess.

[Guest Sancdar]

If you're building a tower from the builder, it would work the same - F for fire, etc. If you're upgrading a current tower to have the same elements as it already does, U would put it to the next level. This would hold true for cannon and arrow towers as well. No more leaks because I hit X instead of C when trying to upgrade all my cannons... When creating an elemental arrow or cannon, you'd hit the element's letter, same as now. When creating a dual- or tri-element tower from an existing single- or dual-element tower, you'd hit the key corresponding to the element you're adding. For example, making a Steam tower from a Basic Fire tower would have you hit W for water. Making it instead from a Basic Water tower would require hitting F for fire. I'm pretty sure you can get to every tower through all the paths you currently can using that method, and implementing it would be just about as time consuming as implementing stable prices.

[Karawasa]

Exactly, there would have to be multiple versions for each tower for hotkey reasons alone...

[Guest Sancdar]

Or rather, a smart dummy "Upgrading..." tower that stored what to morph into (and what it came from, in case of cancelling). I can see it being done fairly easily now that I think about it. The only part I don't know how to do in JASS would be making sure it worked fine with multiple towers on the map being upgraded at the same time.

[Guest mrchak]

Interesting ideas... So to make a Flesh golem tower

B N

N

E

W

it would simplify things if UPGRADE was always U for multi-element towers.

But at the same time, the shortcut for a Flesh golem tower would be W, N, or E depending on what you're upgrading. The alternative, if it was F (assuming the Well, Roots and Clay towers didn't already have an ability with an F as a hotkey, which they wouldnt) would always upgrade to a Flesh golem.

I'm undecided.

I'm going to go through the exercise of mapping out what the shortcut keys would be for all of the towers, and posting my findings here, if nothing else, just to prove that its possible. Then we can decide which alternative is best, they both have their pros and cons.

[Karawasa]

The bottom line is that each tower should only have ONE hotkey associated with it. Unless there is some easy to way get around the problem mentioned above, for multiple towers across the map at the same time, it cannot be done.

[Guest Sancdar]

The problem with having a hotkey relating to the name of each tower is that some keys would overlap. I'm too lazy at the moment to find an example with two towers that would logically have the same hotkey and can be built from the same building, but for example the Summoning Tower would be a problem with name-based hotkeys. It logically has the 'S' hotkey, which is taken by Stop. The second letter is 'U', which would probably go to Upgrade. You'd have to drop all the way back to 'M', which was probably the hotkey for the Magic Tower, which you just built to get to the Summoning Tower.

Either you have a logical system that takes knowledge of which elements go into which tower, or you have an illogical system that takes knowledge of which hotkeys go into which tower. My feeling is that if you don't know what is used in your tower, you should probably be mousing over it for the tooltip anyhow. Also, if you already have an element in your tower and you press the key for it, nothing will happen because there won't be an upgrade containing that element available. If you use name-based hotkeys, I'm sure there's at least equal possibility for confusion.

I'm also pretty sure that with arrays keeping track of what's being done it's entirely possible. I would know how to handle the problem if WC3 used C or Java code, I just don't know how to do it in JASS. I'm sure your coder could handle it.

[Karawasa]

I'll pitch the idea to him.

[Guest mrchak]

I don't think its impossible. I went through all of the dual element towers and determined the best shortcut key for them and it all works out with no overlaps. Now its a matter of going through the triple element towers;

For most towers its the first letter of the name

Money for example, will work

But for others it will necessarily be the second or third letter

Arrow is a perfect example of that; since A, S are reserved for Attack and Stop. But Magic can also use M, because no tower upgrades to both Magic and Money towers.

It can be done, just has to be done carefully is all.

I'll post it all here when I've done the planning.

[Guest mrchak]

Ok, I've worked out the Shortcut keys for all dual/ triple towers as 3.0 currently stands. In most cases the first letter is used, but of course there are necessarily some conflicts so I have to use the second, third etc letter in a handful of cases

Dual element Towers

C - Clay

E - dEath

F - liFe

G - liGhtning

I - Ice

L - weLl

L - Lava

M - Money

M - Magic

O - mOon

P - Poison

R - Roots

T - sTeam

T - Tech

U - sUn

Triple towers

I - acId

C - Crypt

D- Dinosaur

D - Drowning

C - enChantment

F - Flamethrower

F - Flesh golem

E - gEmstone

G - Glacier

H - Hail

N - iNfernal

R - laseR

T - meTal

N - Nova

R - Rainbow

L - sLudge

O - stOrm

G - summoninG

T - Tidal

U - Undead

There are no conflicts, i checked it out.

[Guest sillyboy_tomato]

absolutely positively I agree!!!!

[Cisz]

Hey, great work.

[Guest mrchak]

When upgrading a dual element tower, like from Lava to Magma, should the shortcut button stay L, (likewise for upgrading a lv2 dual element tower to a lv2 triple).

The simplest way would be to keep the same shortcut key for the lower level, only problem is the name changes so the Letter may not make "sense". But, this way will avoid all conflicts of letters at higher level upgrades as well.

However, on the other hand, after a while you'll learn "L = Lava, Magma, Volcano" and so on, so it shouldn't be hard.

[echinodermata]

Or rather, a smart dummy "Upgrading..." tower that stored what to morph into (and what it came from, in case of cancelling). I can see it being done fairly easily now that I think about it. The only part I don't know how to do in JASS would be making sure it worked fine with multiple towers on the map being upgraded at the same time.

I don't see what's so hard: You hit the hotkey. The dummy "Upgrading..." tower is created. When it's finished, switch it with a real tower. Cancelling is no big deal because each dummy "Upgrading..." tower only has one associated "From" tower and "To" tower.

[Karawasa]

Great work indeed....but more than half the towers are changing. Once the element makeup for towers is decided, and they survive testing, this would be great to have done.

[Guest Cataras]

I use Warkeys for that but somehow i can't assign a hotkey to Sell!? Someone knows why?

[Guest Sancdar]

Sell is already assigned to X, why would you need a new one?

[Guest Cataras]

Never noticed, lol.

[Guest mrchak]

After we decide on all of the new tower names, I'll give my suggestion for the shortcut keys.

My suggestion: To upgrade a dual, you use the same shortcut key as the LV1 tower (regardless of the name of the lv2 dual). Same goes for Triples. This is consistent with the single-element towers, and the arrow/cannon towers.

I don't like the other idea of "U" button always upgrade a tower to its next level. Makes the game development needlessly confusing.

[Guest Cataras]

What about this:

The hotkey for the normal towers stays like it is: W = Water, F = Fire etc.

When you want to upgrade a tower you have to hit the first letter of the element that is missing; for example:

You have a fire tower and want to upgrade it to Lava then you hit the E key.

You have Steam tower and want to upgrade it to Acid you have to use the D key.

Not sure if it works though: Is it possible to create different hotkeys for the same towers depending on which one or two element towers you upgrade it from?

[Guest mrchak]

It's possible if we want to make it really complicated! I suggest we keep it simple. Shortcut for lava tower is always L, whether you're upgrading from fire or from earth. In the long run that will be much more intuitive.

[Cisz]

Agreed. One key for each tower. That should be rememberable.

This calls for a decent naming of the towers, so the can all be invoced with the first letter. If we chose names carefully, this will be very easy to use.