Developer Response 2 arguments...

[DevilSlayerDante]

1) My keyboard has a backlight, which is switched on/off by pressing the SCROLL LOCK key. Please change the console key (may I suggest CTRL+SHIFT+TILDE [~]).

2) I created this account just to post the previous suggestion, and I found a thread which covers the topic already, titled 'console', but I don't have enough privileges to post on that thread. WTF?! I can't add my two cents to the very thread that discusses the various problems people have with the console key? Instead, I have to waste more space with a new thread, I really dislike doing unnecessary work, it's wasteful and inefficient.

 

[Noontide]

1. Currently, there are no plans to change the Console key as part of the maintenance updates. We may approach this differently as we wrap up long-term maintenance as we have discussed in the past allowing general usage by all users. But for now, we're happy to keep it out of the way and on a single press key for the benefits it provides for our team. The console is not intended for general use (hence the password).
   1. To explain, we don't want to receive bug reports caused by incorrect usage of debug commands.
   2. I will hover note that there's still an interest in this for players, so when we next do a maintenance patch we'll consider it again.
2. The thread in question is in the suggestion Archive which is where old suggestions are eventually dropped into. No one has posting privileges there to prevent thread necromancy.

 

[DevilSlayerDante]

It seems you have missed the point in my first argument. My keyboard backlight is toggled with the SCROLL LOCK key. If I forget to turn it on before starting the game, it opens the console window, and the only way I can get rid of it is to quit the game, turn on the backlight on my desktop, then start the game again. It wouldn't be so inconvenient if it didn't take more than 30 seconds to go from desktop to actually playing. But it takes roughly 1 minute to start the application and reach the main menu, and between 30 & 60 seconds to pick a map, load it, and start playing. That's when I typically realize I have to turn on my backlight. So double those times when I have to quit to the desktop, hit SCROLL LOCK, and start over, it's a serious inconvenience when considering any other game takes a fraction of a second to do the same thing. The first time this happened, I had no idea why the console was open, and I couldn't close it, so I searched the discussions on Steam, found that SCROLL LOCK opens and closes it, and I thought "that really sucks, no other game I play intrudes on my ability to play just because I turn on my backlight."

As for the 2nd argument, I didn't see anything anywhere that suggested the thread was closed or archived, just a message saying I didn't have enough privileges, which historically means I have to gain reputation to earn those privileges, so the "not enough privileges" message is very misleading.

 

[Noontide]

I understand your issue when it comes to how the input conflicts with your chosen keyboard. I suspect that unless you set this key yourself the keyboard manufacturer had the same thought we did with regards to choosing a key that is out of the way and very unlikely to be pressed by accident. It seems strange that they would not include the ability to change this key or that they would not provide a dedicated lighting control key/software.

Unfortunately, it's simply not viable for us to change the debug key to enable compatibility with a single, esoteric peripheral. There are a number of reasons why the debug key is assigned to scroll lock and it's unfortunate that it conflicts in your case.

That's not to say I don't take your issue under advisement and I suspect we would change the key in the event of making it more public. It's possible that with the next patch we may decide to do so, removing the password in the process. In this sense, it's entirely possible that your issue may be resolved in the next patch, but it would actually be unrelated to the issue you face if it does happen.

As for how to work around it for now. Short of changing the key in your keyboard settings then have you considered alt-tabbing from the game, pressing scroll-lock and then returning to the game? If your problem is that the scroll lock key does both while in WFTO it seems to me all you'd need to do is minimise WFTO so it doesn't accept input and then adjusting your lighting as you desire before returning to the game. This means you won't need to start the game again and will take you a maximum of a few seconds at most.

With regards to the issue on the forum I've fixed that now. It seems for whatever reason when these threads were moved they were not appropriately tagged as locked and were instead locked by permissions, hence the message you saw. Now I've tagged them all as locked so they should appropriately display a locked message. I'm sorry for the confusion in this regard.

 

[DevilSlayerDante]

Well, I didn't get the impression you understood what I was getting at based on your 1st reply, so thank you for clarifying. It didn't even occur to me to try to alt+tab to the desktop, a few games behave strangely when I do. Nevertheless, your suggestion works. My keyboard is a CM Storm, a cheap multimedia keyboard, no customization whatsoever, if you're curious.

 

[Noontide]

Well, I didn't get the impression you understood what I was getting at based on your 1st reply, so thank you for clarifying. It didn't even occur to me to try to alt+tab to the desktop, a few games behave strangely when I do. Nevertheless, your suggestion works. My keyboard is a CM Storm, a cheap multimedia keyboard, no customization whatsoever, if you're curious.

Good to know. We'll try to bear it in mind in the future, I'm familiar with the brand and actually use a CM Sentinel Advance mouse at work.