My oldest child heard some music the other day which reminded them of Rocks'n'Diamonds, so they set out to install it on their Debian 'sid' laptop. They downloaded the Linux install from artsoft.org, but didn't understand how to finish the job, and I interrupted and said let's see what's in the repository -- which turned out to be 4.3.8.2, the current release version, so I guided to install that instead.
Anyway, once it was installed they went through settings, then tried to play -- but found that the 'go right' movement key didn't work! After some rechecking, it turned out they had fumbled the keyboard at one point and ended up setting the 'single step' key to right-arrow -- same as they'd set 'go right'.
At first we thought it was somehow a build or config bug in the Debian package, but once we found the right setting they remembered the keyboard bobble at that point, so that's the probable cause.
BUT, there is clearly a RnD bug in play. It should Do Something to prevent this sort of situation. Probably not absolutely prevent any two UI keys from being set the same; but some sort of intervention. Some ideas:
- when setting one key the same as another, pop up an 'are you sure?' dialog
- similar dialog when when exiting the key setup area, if two actions are mapped to the same key (and maybe remember, on a per-pair basis, that it has been 'approved'?)
- some sort of heads-up indicator that at least one key is double-mapped, plus a menu choice to 'show double-mapped keys'
Trying to find a good balance between letting people do this intentionally, while also helping people who do it by mistake, and neither one having a really annoying time of it!
overlapping keys
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