CydandClaude Opus 5
9d536294e4
BUTTONS (shipped). Win32 hands mouse buttons out as virtual keys, and the
binding path already stores VKs and polls GetAsyncKeyState -- so this needed no
verb, no parser change and no new machinery, just names:
key MOUSE4 button 0x40 # side buttons
key MOUSE5 button 0x46
key MOUSEMIDDLE button 0x41
MOUSELEFT/MOUSERIGHT are named too, with a warning in the file header and the
docs: they are how the player presses cockpit buttons (left = press, right =
latch), and the poll is focus-guarded but not click-aware, so binding either
ALSO fires on every panel click. The side and middle buttons are the free
ones. Axes work as well (`key MOUSE4 axis Throttle slew + 0.7`).
One guard: the RGB lamp mirror skips mouse VKs when building its map -- a
keyboard lamp array has no mouse buttons to paint (BTPadBindingIsMouseKey).
Verified live: a bindings.txt carrying two mouse rows loads 76 keys (74 + 2),
and a real injected XBUTTON1 press produced `[emitter] FIRED #1`. Clean A/B --
the earlier run whose SendInput failed the struct-size check logged no fire at
all. Shipped commented-out examples in the default profile so the capability
is discoverable.
LOOK (scoped only). docs/MOUSELOOK_PLAN.md. Mouse MOVEMENT is a real feature,
not a table entry, and the hard part is not reading the device:
- The cursor is already spoken for. The glass cockpit's premise is that all
72 buttons are mouse targets; mouse-look wants a captured, hidden, recentred
cursor. Both cannot be true, so this is a MODE question first -- four
models compared, recommending hold-to-look (costs nothing when unbound,
cannot strand a player, behaves the same in surround and exploded layouts).
- The channels are POSITIONAL (JoystickX/Y are -1..1 deflections the mapper
reads per control mode); a mouse gives deltas. Accumulate-into-a-virtual-
stick reuses every existing rule; a rate model would need new mapper
semantics.
- Control mode changes what it MEANS: BASIC steers with the stick, MID/ADV
twist the torso -- so mouse-look steers in one and aims in the other.
Proposed grammar (new row type, so old builds skip it with a warning),
where the code goes, ~250 lines, and a verification plan whose load-bearing
item is "panel clicks still work when a mouselook binding exists but is not
engaged". Also flagged: the pod had NO mouse, so nothing here is
reconstruction -- every choice is design, judged on feel, and it must stay out
of the pod build's path.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
5.4 KiB
BattleTech 4.11 — controls reference
Two ways to fly: the keyboard/pad (the ~25 core actions) and the cockpit panel, where every one of the pod's 72 illuminated buttons is mouse-clickable exactly where it sat in the cabinet. Left-click presses; right-click latches a button held.
Rebind keys in content\bindings.txt (delete it to regenerate the defaults).
Cockpit layout and display sizes live in content\environ.ini (likewise self-documenting).
Keyboard — the keyboard IS the button board
The letter and number rows are the MFD button banks, laid out where they sit on the panel. Flight lives on the number pad so the board stays free.
Flight — the number pad
| Key | Action | Key | Action | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NumPad 8 / 2 | torso aim up / down | NumPad 7 / 9 | left / right pedal | |
| NumPad 4 / 6 | torso twist left / right | NumPad 5 | all stop | |
| NumPad 0, Space | main trigger | NumPad 1 / 3 / . | pinky / middle / upper | |
| Shift / Ctrl | throttle up / down (the lever sticks) | Alt | reverse thrust | |
| ← ↓ → | look left / behind / right | ↑ | torso centre | |
| ` | cockpit / chase camera | − / = (see below) | — |
You spawn in BASIC control mode. In BASIC the stick steers and the pedals do nothing. Press F7 once for MID, where the pedals steer and the stick twists the torso — the full pod experience. If "turning doesn't work", this is why.
The panel — letter and number rows
UPPER DISPLAYS Heat / coolant Engineering Comm / hotbox
top row 1 2 3 4 | 5 6 7 8 | 9 0 - =
bottom row Q W E R | T Y U I | O P [ ]
0x2F..0x2C 0x27..0x24 0x37..0x34
0x2B..0x28 0x23..0x20 0x33..0x30
LOWER DISPLAYS Left Weapons Right Weapons
top row A S D F (G unbound) H J K L
bottom row Z X C V (B unbound) N M , .
0x0F..0x0C 0x07..0x04
0x0B..0x08 0x03..0x00
COLUMNS beside the map
left F1 zoom+ F2 zoom- F3 thermal F4 CROUCH F5 lamp F6 display
right F7 control mode F8 - F9..F12 Generators A-D
G and B are deliberately unbound: they are the physical gap between the lower clusters.
1 2 3 Q W E are the coolant valves and the detents run 1 - 5 - 50 (max) - 0 (CLOSED) - back to 1. One press past max shuts that loop off and everything on it overheats; boosting one loop starves the others, since the supply is shared. 4 is the flush (hold it) and R re-balances every valve.
The weapon and engineering displays are page-gated: on the Quad page the outer buttons jump to a populated Eng page; on an Eng page they drive generator select A-D, bus mode, coolant toggle, trigger configure, and eject (tap to clear a jam, hold ~3 s to jettison a burning ammo bay before it detonates).
What a bound key gives up
Binding a key removes it from the authentic 1995 typed-hotkey channel so it cannot
double-dispatch. This board binds nearly everything, so those hotkeys are given up by design:
5 = MFD1 Quad page, z = MFD3 Eng1, t/y/u/i/o = pilot select, +/- = target zoom.
Unbind a key in bindings.txt to get its 1995 meaning back. Same rule for the built-ins:
` is the view toggle (V is a board button now), and J/K/L cycle the MFD preset pages only
while unbound.
Addresses with no function at all — the pod never wired them — are 0x16 0x17 0x19
0x1E 0x1F and 0x38-0x3E.
Controllers
An Xbox controller works out of the box.
Flight sticks, HOTAS and pedals: run joyconfig.bat once. A wizard asks you to move each
control in turn — stick, twist, throttle, fire buttons — writes the bindings, and drops you into
the solo menu to try them. It only rewrites its own section of bindings.txt, so hand edits
elsewhere in the file survive.
Mouse buttons are bindable like any key — MOUSE4, MOUSE5 (the side buttons),
MOUSEMIDDLE, and MOUSELEFT/MOUSERIGHT. The side and middle buttons are the free ones; left
and right are how you press cockpit buttons, so binding those fires on every panel click too.
Mouse movement is not bindable — see docs/MOUSELOOK_PLAN.md.
key MOUSE4 button 0x40 # side button = main trigger
key MOUSE5 button 0x46 # side button = middle thumb
RGB keyboards with Windows Dynamic Lighting mirror the panel: any key you have bound to a
lamp button glows in the panel's own colours and flashes in step with the on-screen buttons. Turn
it off with BT_KEYLIGHT=0 in environ.ini.
Cockpit layout
Set these in content\environ.ini:
BT_MFD_SCALE(and_UL/_UC/_UR/_LL/_LR) — size of the five MFDs, as a percentage of their pod size. Turn them up if you want to actually read them while you fly.BT_RADAR_SCALE,BT_RADAR_POS— size the map, and move it out of the middle of the road:CENTER,LEFT,RIGHT,MIDLEFT,MIDRIGHT.BT_GLASS_PANELS=1— break every display out into its own desktop window instead of the composited cockpit. Good for reading one display at full size.
Run with -fit for a borderless window over the whole monitor. The cockpit scales to any
window shape at one uniform scale, so nothing ever stretches — a window that isn't the cockpit's
shape just gets black bars.