WANT: Esc key to exit conversation dialogs

Why don't we have this option??

from Stardock.net Forums

At the end of any conversation dialog, I want to simply hit the escape (esc) key to exit it -- especially if there is only one option left at the end, like "Goodbye" or "Close Connection". Currently, I must hit the corresponding number key (usually 1). This drives me nuts, as Esc works to exit from just about anything else, including exploring planets.

What's worse, in the dialogs where your planet exploration crew narrator guy (I don't think we're ever shown his name) is speaking, I don't see any number keys shown on the screen; so the only ways to exit those dialogs are to click on the X icon or press the 1 key. Seems small, but this game has a TON of (absolutely amazing) dialog, so the sheer number of times I have to deal with the "1 instead of Esc" issue makes it super annoying.

It seems like this should be a relatively trivial fix, and would make my gameplay experience significantly better.

119,913 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from StarControl Forums Top

Lt Kerry is your XO. I'll make a note of this.

Reply #2 from StarControl Forums Top

It's something we've talked about.  It's an easy change that carries a fair amount of risk.   Exiting in the middle of the conversation (or where the end has more than one choice) may break to quests or events in unexpected ways that would be hard to debug after the fact.   

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Reply #3 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Yeah that makes sense about it carrying some risk. I have been a product manager for a video game studio before, managed several titles, and I am still in the software development field; so I feel that feature-risk all too real.

In the quite-often use case where there is a single, simple dialog option remaining to end a conversation, like "Close Communication" (or "Close connection"... I don't recall which, but I see one of those pretty often), I'd imagine it's pretty low risk to implement a mapping of the "Esc" key to simply act the same as the "1" key, to select that remaining option. I'd be happy with that.

In the less-often case where there is a multi-choice ending to a dialog, I can see why there's higher risk involved... so I wouldn't be upset if the Escape option didn't work in those cases. Same for mid-dialog use of Esc... makes sense to me why it would pose high risk to have it there.

I got yer code right here:

If ( isFinalDialogChoice && $numOptionsRemaining == 1 ) then MapKey ( "Esc" ; "1" )

;)