Thread: Key Mapping for Plugins

So many incredible plugins could be even better if Turbine API (I think that's the technical jargon, my knowledge is limited) supported key mapping for plugins. The purist don't like it for some reason because they're afraid of cheating and scripting together abilities and such. That's all good. I don't want cheaters either. Limit plugin key mapping to outside of PVMP to ensure fairness if that's the issue. Mess with the skill queue to add a global cooldown if you need, though this seems less likey as it's a finely tuned system. Surely there is a way to do this efficiently and limit abuse. Don't let a couple bad apples ruin it for everyone. Try it out and it will probably only take a few little patches to get around the cheaters anyways. LOTRO doesn't have near the dirtbag playerbase of some mmorpgs (by that I mean gold sellers, account hackers, etc) that still manage to allow keybinding plugins without massive amounts of cheating. Thank you.

please give an example of a plug-in that could benefit from keymapping - and what you want to accomplish with the binding?

It may be that this functionality can already be achieved through shortcut/aliases and the keymapping supported in the LOTRO options...

It can but it's incredibly tedious and the effect is not the same. My main example is TonicBars. I like to set up my quickslots in a keyboard style layout onscreen for maximum efficiency during combat. I can do this with standard LOTRO bars but I also like to shorten the bars for the keys I don't need on the end (ie ,./;'[]\-=7890 ) to free up screen space. LOTRO quickslots do not offer this. Also, I like my bars to make my bars invisible out of combat, also not offered by LOTRO quickslots. I can achieve this by setting the view of each LOTRO quickslot to a key map, but I want to see all bars all of the time I am in combat so this is not very efficient. I also like to make additional quickslot bars, and if I could would make one and bind it to the number pad. This is GREEEAT for emotes, especially with ctrl, shift, and alt variations! I can achieve this with LOTRO bars by using the aforementioned unsed LOTRO quickslots ( ,.;'[]\-=7890 ) but it looks ugly (I don't even want it visible). Also, ctrl, alt, and shift variations of the num pad are almost impossible to pull off due to the # of LOTRO quickslots. Think of what binding num pad could do for roleplayers!! If there are better ways to pull these off without API keybinding, please let me know because I loooove getting my game fully customized. Other small examples of plugins benefiting from keybinding API that I don't care as much about include: Palantir slots for disease/wound/etc, Random Mount buttton, Emote (so made for the num pad but I can't bind *cry*), Buffbars low morale/power quickslots.

yeah - i see what you mean - and unfortunately LOTRO doesn't offer any support for macros other than its "macro-like" shortcut/aliases and I dont think that will change this late in the game - but who knows?

Some of this may be address with hardware that provides keyboard macros like logitech KB , mice and game pads but all the appearance stuff could be done with other plug-ins that you or somebody else could write.

The thing about "cheaters' and what not is that no unattended combat or auto fire is allowed - so there is wiggle room for stuff like you are talking about.

So even those dirty boxers (in the moors or otherwise) are not really "cheating" according to the EULA (and by Turbine implicit or explicit actions) as long as they stay to the "one keystroke = one in-game skill action" and are not auto-firing or having unattended combat scripts running.

anyways I hope you find a solution - I would look in to logitech gaming devices or... perhaps you could find some macro software that doesnt support auto-fire or automation (read nothing in game happens unless a live person is pushing a button for every action that occurs) Google could be your friend here...

Well, thanks for the help An alternative to them offering keymapping, they could Turbine could improve their own quickslots. If amateur LUA programmers can make quickslot visibility toggled by combat status surely turbine can do it without much effort. The same with allowing us to create extra bars (for emotes and the like). *crosses fingers*

*edit* lightbulb just went off for what you meant about using macro keyboards in a way that would be okay with the Eula. You're saying I could program the whole "/exampleemote *return*" into a macro slot on a keyboard or external program. awesome idea! thank you! I'm going googlin!

You should be able to do the in-combat only quickslots pretty simply.

1) Layout your regular quickslots.
2) Hide them (as much as possible).
3) Get a plugin that displays quickslots only while in combat.
4) Mirror your regular quickslot layout in the plugin's quickslots.

When you're not in combat, plugin won't show anything and the regular quickslots are already minimized (you probably can hide them completely with an appropriate UI skin). When you're in combat, the plugin shows all of your quickslots.

Basically, treat the plugin as a purely display thing - it shows the shortcuts you want to see while you're in combat, and hides itself otherwise. Then just use the regular quickslots to map what each of your keys actually does, but don't actually display the regular quickslots.

plugins can define their own keys.
"HugeBag" for example overrides the inventory button, prevents the standard bags from opening and opens it's own bag.

I have tried using Tonic bars as purely cosmetic. Couple problems. 1 is it is a lot of work especially when your still leveling to setup standard bars and cosmetic bars every time I shift or get a new skill. Even if I had all my skills it would make rearranging a pain. Also I have a frequent ctd problem on logout or quit that makes saving plugin data not go so well. Thanks for the suggestion though. Point is the code exists for what I'm asking and the features could be useful to sooooo many players. Either API needs to allow keymapping or default quickslots need more customization options since the code already exists and it is just a matter of adding it.

Good point about huge bag. I don't know how they do that.

Finally gave in and cosmetically used tonic bars. Looks like poo because tonic bars don't/can't size skill icons down like turbine bars. Le sigh. Will have to do.

The way the plugin system works with keypresses is, we can detect keypresses - we don't get the actual key pressed, but we get a code representing the particular functionality - so we don't get that the I key was pressed, we get that the inventory key was pressed. So, right off the bat, we're completely limited to whatever you've keymapped.

The other thing we can do is suppress UI elements - there's a limited list - player vitals, target vitals, fellowship and raid vitals, and inventory bags.

So what HugeBag does is suppress the inventory bags and then just listens for the inventory key being pressed.

The primary limitations you'd need to get around are:
1. You need a keypress that is mapped to something that doesn't do anything. A plugin can listen for, say the skill panel toggle key, and then do something when it occurs, but the skill panel is still going to be toggled.
2. What plugins can achieve without direct user input (i.e., the user clicking on a quickslot or manipulating an item of some sort) is pretty limited. HugeBag is just displaying more information as a result of a keypress, not actually changing the game state as a result of a keypress.

Edit: Yeah, I've never been able to resize quickslots - at least not properly. They end up getting tiled, instead of stretched.

Originally Posted by moebius92

The way the plugin system works with keypresses is, we can detect keypresses - we don't get the actual key pressed, but we get a code representing the particular functionality - so we don't get that the I key was pressed, we get that the inventory key was pressed. So, right off the bat, we're completely limited to whatever you've keymapped.

The other thing we can do is suppress UI elements - there's a limited list - player vitals, target vitals, fellowship and raid vitals, and inventory bags.

So what HugeBag does is suppress the inventory bags and then just listens for the inventory key being pressed.

The primary limitations you'd need to get around are:
1. You need a keypress that is mapped to something that doesn't do anything. A plugin can listen for, say the skill panel toggle key, and then do something when it occurs, but the skill panel is still going to be toggled.
2. What plugins can achieve without direct user input (i.e., the user clicking on a quickslot or manipulating an item of some sort) is pretty limited. HugeBag is just displaying more information as a result of a keypress, not actually changing the game state as a result of a keypress.

Edit: Yeah, I've never been able to resize quickslots - at least not properly. They end up getting tiled, instead of stretched.

Whew! That's some deep reading. Thanks for explaining it in laymen's terms. Tried to rep you but apparently I have to "spread some rep" around first lulz.

So I kind of get it. My question then is: Could an indivudual quickslot (seeing as they're individually numbered when doing shortcuts and keymapping) be an object like the skill panel example you gave? More specifically, is there a code representing the particular functionality of each turbine quickslot? If so, it would seem there might be a workaround by providing a few 'preformatted' plugin quickslot bars that have each quickslot 'code' mirroring the turbine ones. Thus turbine keybinds would also work for plugin keybinds as they are both directed to the same individual codes? So when I press a key it activates the turbine quickslot AS WELL as the plugin quickslot. You would just have to leave your turbine quickslots empty and suppress whatever 'quickslot is empty' message that might come up.

Thanks for putting up with my laymen's babble about this. If it's complete fooey lemme know and I'll admit defeat. But if we can figure this out and get the programmers on board, it might happen!