New in ChoiceScript: Keyboard Shortcuts, Disable Touch-Slide Controls

Announcements
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ChoiceScript now includes keyboard shortcuts, as well as a way to turn off touch-slide controls on mobile.

Keyboard Shortcuts: ?

Here they are:

  • Scroll Down: Space
  • Scroll Up: Shift + Space
  • Next Option: J
  • Previous Option: K
  • Next (Press and Hold): Enter
  • Jump to Option: 1 - 9
  • Show Stats: Q
  • Menu: W
  • Show Shortcuts: ?

For years, ChoiceScript has been accessible using the keyboard, by using Tab, Shift+Tab, and Enter keys, as well as the browser’s built-in shortcuts to scroll up and down (e.g. the PgDn and PgUp keys).

All of those still work, but the Enter key now requires you to press and hold the button for half a second to activate it; if you start holding it and realize you’ve made a mistake, you can press any key to cancel.

(We’ve also long supported the lesser-known accesskey shortcuts. They’re different on every browser and operating system, but, for example, Google Chrome supports Control+Alt+N to press the “Next” button, or Control+Alt+1 through 9 to select an option. They still work, too.)

EDIT: Pro tip, did you know that our forum also has keyboard shortcuts? Press the ? key to see them.

Keyboard shortcuts will support improved Steam controller support

We’ll roll out the keyboard shortcuts to all of our games over the coming weeks. When we do, we’ll also enable Steam controller support, allowing you to use the left stick to scroll, the right stick to select an option, and the A button to click.

We think this will make our games substantially more fun and easier to use on Steam Deck, especially when it’s docked to a TV and you’re playing on a regular controller.

Try it in Choice of the Dragon, and tell us what you think!

We’ve rolled out the new keyboard shortcuts and improved Steam controller support on Choice of the Dragon on our web site and Steam. We invite you to give it a whirl!

Here are questions we’d like to hear your feedback on:

  • Do you like the new keyboard controls?
  • Do you wish we’d chosen different keys? Which ones, and why?
  • You have to press and hold the Enter key for half a second to click Next on each page. Does the half-second delay help you to avoid mistakes? Is the delay too long? Too short?
  • Try plugging in a controller to your computer and playing on Steam. Do the controls make sense? Would you prefer to change them? How?

The “Settings” button is now the “Menu” button

We’d already made this change on Steam apps, but the “Settings” button is now the “Menu” button. We’ve moved the “Restart” button into the new Menu, as well as options to browse Achievements, discover the keyboard shortcuts, and subscribe to our mailing list.

(This makes all of our options accessible with just J, K, Enter, Q, and W.)

On Steam Deck, the menu will also include an option to quit the game.

Options to Disable Touch-Slide Controls

On touch screens (like iPhone, iPad, and Android), you can select any option by sliding your finger across it from right to left. Some people like it, but others don’t.

You can now go to Menu → Change settings → Disable touch slide controls to turn it off. (You can re-enable it in the same place.)

In our mobile apps, you’ll be able to disable or re-enable touch-slide controls on the Settings tab, on the first screen of the app. In our all-in-one “omnibus” Choice of Games app, you’ll be able to turn it on/off for on all games at once.

Note that this has only rolled out to the standalone Choice of the Dragon apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android, but not the omnibus app, or our other games yet. I want to make sure today’s changes work OK with Dragon before we upload new versions of every app we make.

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What happens to the jump to option shortcut if there happens to be more than 9 choices?

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Wrestlemania Vii Crying GIF by WWE

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Truth be told, the 0 key works, too, to select the tenth option.

(I just didn’t put 0 on the list, because it’s hard to write it out cleanly. Writing “0 - 9” makes it seem like 0 will take you to the first option, but it’ll take you to the tenth option. “1 - 0” doesn’t look like a numeric range at all. I guess I could write “1 - 9, 0”??)

Anyway, if you’ve got more than ten options, you can jump to the tenth option with 0 and use J / K to select the other options. Or you could press J fourteen times or whatever.

Also note that if you use K to go up from the first option, it will wrap all the way around to the last option. Similarly, if you use J to go down from the last option, it will wrap around to the first option.

(In my experience, having more than ten options is extremely rare, in any case!)

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If anyone’s having issues with the keyboard shortcut overlay popping up and not leaving, either in the browser or the app, could you write in to support@choiceofgames.com with details? We’ve had a couple reports of something like that happening, but we don’t reproduce it in our testing.

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Neat!

This is a change to CS and not just to official Choice Of games, correct? Once this rolls out beyond just Dragon, will it automatically apply to any games made in ChoiceScript hosted anywhere, or will some updating/script-editing be required, or…?

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It normally takes a while for Dashingdon and CS IDE to update to the latest version, but they can upgrade at any time.

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I may be a bit late to responding, but I do not see a better place to put this.

I greatly, greatly appreciate the improvements made for gamepad support, and the way CoG games now work on the Steam Deck. I removed my custom controller configuration in favor of it.

I only used it for perhaps 15 minutes… but the only notable negative I can state, off the top of my head, is the delay for “enter” was not obvious. It took me… perhaps a minute to understand what it was doing? Once I understood it, it was fine, and honestly preferable to instantly selecting a choice. I am uncertain of what would both make it more obvious, and be reasonable to implement.

Also, simply as a matter of stating my (minority) factors in continuing to purchase CoG games… the biggest factors in it are, in order: being based in the World of Darkness world, Linux support, and Steam Deck (including gamepad) support. So this update is huge for me.

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Hi! I’ve been using the keyboard shortcuts for the last few months and I must say they indeed improved my reading experience (especially to check the stat page after, like, every choice - it’s become super fast now!).

However, I was wondering if it would be possible to bind more buttons for the same action. Now I usually select the choices with the mouse and mainly use Q,W and Space to navigate the window because I like to use only one hand (the left specifically) and to select and confirm the choices I have to jump with the hand all over the keyboard.
So I was thinking that it’d be wonderful to have all the shortcuts localized in the left area of the keyboard. That way I wouldn’t have to use two hands or jump across all the keyboard and could do everything without moving the hand much - obviously the same applies if one wants to use the right hand, so in that case everything should be localized in the other side of the keyboard.
If your read a lot the repetitive movement across the keyboard can become a bit tiring.

I was wondering if it would be possible to do something like that and if there are others who would prefer to have all shortcuts at their fingertips - literally.