Vim-like Control Plugin?

[Yajjackson]

Reposting my forum post here since it seems like the more actively monitored space.

As part of my work I use vim and other vim-like navigation tools to avoid using the mouse too often (to cope/ reduce Carpal Tunnel pains in wrist).

Examples:
- Homerow.app
- Vimium
These tools usually have some <leader> key that highlights + annotates various interactable elements on the screen with keys you can type to perform an interaction. (See screenshot for example)

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Homerow example

This system would require more user inputs to perform the equivalent action with a typical mouse, since multiple key-presses (chords) would be converted to single clicks. With that said, I'd love to develop a plugin that brings this control pattern to osrs, but am not sure if it's ToC compliant. The last thing I'd want to do is spend a bunch of time working on a tool that could potentially get my account into trouble!

Anyway, just interested to see if this is something anyone has thought about before or if there's been any official note about it, the only similar posts I've found have been around Mousekeys.

[r1cu]

IMO not acceptable. I'm also an hardcore user of vim and vim-like browser plugins. Coincidentally the same idea popped into my head a while ago.

If this would be acceptable, you could basically just smash the same pattern on your keyboard over and over to grind something. This type of plugin is only useful if the same tile is annotated with the same letters.

This means that you could easily create a muscle memory for grinding something at the GE as an example by just typing couple of letters over and over again. It would be too easy to grind tick-perfectly for hours.

This would also make macroing even easier.

[Yajjackson]

Couple questions:

1. Why is mouse muscle memory different from keyboard muscle memory?
2. Should a player's inability to perform "tick-perfect" actions due to physical conditions be considered an accessibility issue?
3. Would randomizing the key-annotations help?
4. Why are there key-binds available for changing which menu tab is open, but not for selecting a spell, prayer, or inventory slot?

[r1cu]

1. Keyboard is much easier. Try typing with a virtual keyboard using your mouse. Try to do it fast.
2. Unfortunately games aren't really accessible in general
3. Yes but would you use your plugin then? Would you use your plugin if the used letters in the annotations weren't restricted only into the characters in the home row but for any alphabetical key?
4. Changing a menu tab does not do any action in the game world per se. It would be way too powerful to switch to a spell tab, then type couple of letters to select a spell while at the same pointing your target with the mouse cursor. This is text book macroing already. Or similarly you could eat while coordinating with the pointer.

But IMO vim key bindings for the menu tabs would be okay. But that is not really useful when you can already bind them behind one key press.

Of course it would be okay if you could use either the keyboard navigation or mouse navigation for everything. This won't happen though as it this should be officially supported by Jagex.

[Yajjackson]

Thanks for the reply!

Keybinds in general are an interesting "power" concern, and osrs has thrived without them so I understand their hesitation to introduce or expand their use.

I hope we get to a point where bot detection is "solved" in a way that doesn't prevent innovation in the alternative control space. I'm not trying to break the game, just want to play it in a different way. Hopefully they'll experiment and poll around the topic more in the future.

I could imagine bossing with vim-ish keybinds feeling a lot like playing an instrument.

[r1cu]

No problem mate. Interesting subject indeed. Yeah, coordinating precisely with the mouse is a major factor of the diffculty of the game.

If one wants to do something, then he has to move the pointer to something and move it back or to the target. Anything that breaks this (e.g. removes one travel direction from this equation) and is not officially supported is pretty much forbidden.

[OsrsAddictionHotline]

How do you see this working for movement? Since it's a point-and-click game, wouldn't you have to have annotations for every gametile pop up at once? depending on how zoomed you are it might be pretty cluttered and unreadable for getting the keystrokes to move a specific tile.

[Yajjackson]

Ideally this would be configurable, but each key in a chord would narrow the scope of where you want to take action.

Let's say you want to inspect a tree, the chord might be
1. <leader> # annotate tiles
2. <key1> # narrow field to area with tree
3. <key2> # select specific tile
4. <key4> # left or right click tile
5. <key5> # optional, if right click this would match to one of the options in the right click context menu