Lowering the amount of time to switch to auto-fire

[rotalihinna]

In MM6-7-8, when you press A the character shoots an arrow immediately. If you keep it pressed, it'll wait for something like 1 second, and switch to some auto-fire mode that will keep firing as long as there's somebody available to fire (and if there isn't, will wait until there is).

I've always found that 1-second interval a bit problematic in both real-time and turn-based modes. My questions:

1. Is there a way to lower this 1-second interval between the first shot and when it starts auto-firing?
2. Is there a way to maybe make auto-fire a completely different action (that you can bind to a different key)?

Thanks!

[Tomsod]

I believe that delay is not the game's fault, it's just how held keys are handled by your OS (Windows or what have you). You can probably lower it by changing your keyboard settings.

[rotalihinna]

Oh ok! I hadn't considered that, thank you. Question then, why aren't the arrow keys having the same interrupt, for example? You start going forward or turning the moment you start to hold them down.

[Tomsod]

Good question! At least on my machine, arrow keys do have the same delay, which can be observed e.g. through moving the cursor in your favorite text editor by holding down the left/right key, but the game indeed ignores it. Perhaps it checks for press and depress events rather than the repeating presses generated by the OS. This suggests that by giving the attack key the same treatment, we could fix your problem too... but fiddling with keyboard settings is, like, dozens of times easier, if a bit less elegant.

[cthscr]

You can either wait for OS KeyPressed (of how it is called in your OS/library) event or check status (up or down) of the key periodically. MM8 uses both (well, one of them depending on key). If I got it right Game.KeyTypes (in upcoming MMExtension) could be what you look for (see also Game.KeyCodes).
[OS/library can generate repeated KeyPressed events for a key that is held down. Application might use or not use them - see for example https://linux.die.net/man/3/glutignorekeyrepeat]

[GracieFay]

Oh ok! Thank you, I hadn't thought of that. So why, for instance, don't the arrow keys have the same interrupt? As soon as you begin to hold them down, you move forward or turn. monkey mart