Guide to key mapping

Building A Key Map
Why bother? In most games that allow it, you usually have to go in to that long disorganized list and change at least one key, the one you keep hitting by accident. For example, in DDO: and because of my "ergonomic" keyboard, and my tilt chair, and too many keys and not enough fingers, I was always hitting the "c" key after grabbing the "6" key. "6" was usually assigned something important like a heal wand/potion. Tense situation, hit the heal and get the hand down to W-A-S-D, and suddenly the character panel is blocking my view of my impending death. So, what then? I suppose I could get some mad hardware like a G13 gameboard on the left (I guess), and a Mad Cat on the right (I guess). But, sorry, the only reason I play DDO is because it runs on what I have already. Piano lessons to sharpen up my fingers? Not to happen.

But! Maybe I can dare go into that Options/"Key Mapping" list (probably one of the longest in any game) and find that one pesky "c" key and clear it or move it to say the "y" key. Well, like most things in DDO, homework pays off. It is also one of the better organized key mapping lists I have ever seen. At first it is daunting, but it is well organized. For instance, I was so busy bashing through things in a typical shooter/action way that I didn't realize that the auto-targeting (default "G") was preventing me from getting head shots with the bow. In researching what "auto-targeting" was I found out that it was on by default, but aims at the mid section of the target. Great for bashing, not so great for bows and spells.

In the end I found that only had to remap a few keys. But they made my simple hardware setup capable of supporting a mega-toon despite the fumble-fingered wizard behind the curtain.

Working the list
Correct me if I am wrong, but I count 7 sections in the Key Mapping list. Interaction, Movement, Camera, Panels, Interaction (I call it "interaction 2 or Combat"), Selection, and Shortcuts.

Shortcuts is about 2/3 of the whole list and that totally depends on how you set up your shortcut bars for whatever character you are building. The only thing to notice other that under the shortcuts is that Bars 1-10 can be assigned to keys other than the "control+1,2,3,..." Bars 11-20 cannot be assigned to a single key. So, lets think. My left hand: all the movement keys and the number keys 1-6 which fire the commands I have put on the Currently Active shortcut bar. My right hand: on the mouse (common wheel mouse: left-click=button0, right-click=button1, and wheel which is Also a button=button2). On the right side of the keyboard, a numeric keypad. What if my big old warforged thumb could reach over and change the Currently Active Bar to another one. I happen to have 4 keys right next to the right edge of my keyboard, but maybe you only have 3. Now, that is 3 or 4 Shortcut bars that thumb can send to busy left hand by one press. So, shortcut bar 1 has a bunch of battle stuff in slots 1-6, shortcut bar 2 has dungeon crawl stuff like sneak and search in slots 1-6, Bar 3 has other stuff (heals, spells, items...), and Bar 4 has more other stuff like potions.

Lets add it up. Regular old keyboard, regular old mouse, regular old right thumb. Busy left hand has movement and slots 1-6. Right hand has aim/attack and whatever you put on the regular old mouse. But now thanks to some Key Mapping of the right hand side of the regular old keyboard, the regular old thumb becomes an important support character because it can completely alter all of the 1-6 keys for the left hand. Now busy left hand does not have to use a lot of ctl+whatever commands to change Bars.

Of course nothing beats preparation and caution, but if you should suddenly find yourself in a tight spot, nice to know that you have 3 or 4 times more options.