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Changing arrow keys to WASD

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2015 6:59 pm
by porousshield
I've been fooling around the Merc's controls for the last five or six hours (seriously) and I've finally managed to get WASD to work properly. The arrow keys just kill my wrist and I don't have a good joystick or an HOTAS so I've been trying to change them. Also, just for the heck of it.

If you're just trying to edit controls ingame you can't change the keys, however, if you use AutoHotkey (free program) and write some simple scripts you can change the arrow keys to WASD. Scripts are as simple as : a::leftarrow.

After doing that, when trying to control the mech, it would turn left when you pressed the "a" key but the computer would still say "Autopilot engaged" when you pressed the button and that got real annoying fast. When pressing "s" the mech would promptly shut down so not good.

After rooting around a bit I edited some keys in the file GAMEKEY and put down "Left" for autopilot and "down" for shutdown and when I got in game pressing the L key engaged autopilot and pressing the D key shut down my mech so the first letters of both keys I chose. Rediting these keys to G and H respectively, WASD is now fully functional.

I only briefly tried it out so maybe it will break but it worked for the entirety of the instant play mission I tried. Are there different easier ways to do this? I'm all ears.

Step 1: Look for GAMEKEY.map in your Mercenaries installation folder. Mine was MechVM->Games->mw2-merx
Step 2: Backup this file before messing with it
Step 3: Change autopilot and shutdown mech to desired keys
Step 4: Download AutoHotkey (or similar program) and install
Step 5: Create a notepad file with the following and save as an .ahk file:

a::left
d::right
w::up
s::down

Step 6: Double Click the script and it will run (Autohotkey will reside in your system tray and you can turn it off or exit the program from there)
Step: Try it out!