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Driving controls can kill.


Erasmus Crowley

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I just lost a character in an interesting way, and it revealed a very frustrating systemic issue that I wasn't aware of before.

The whole story starts as I was driving down the highway, dodging the occasional pack of zombies. All is well.

While driving, I tend to tap the "W" key at a rhythm, because laying on the gas pedal is a good way to wrap the car around a tree and die. So by tap-tap-tap-ing on the "W" key, I can regulate my speed to whatever I find tolerable that allows me to avoid zombie and tree collisions. While on highways in particular, my tapping tends to get faster because I allow myself a higher maximum speed.

Now what happens next is slightly confusing. A few times while driving, it seems like if I tap W too rapidly it seems to count as a double-tap, and it takes the car keys out of the ignition. The car stops dead in the middle of the road. I'm not 100% sure that tapping "W" is responsible for this, or maybe I held "W" too long, or perhaps it was just a poor engine quality causing the car to randomly die. Either way, the car stops, the keys vanish from the ignition for seemingly no reason.

Zombies immediately start to bang on my car as it coasts to a stop.

I think, "This is fine. The windows have plenty of durability. Just don't panic, restart the engine, and then start driving again". I click on the ignition to insert the key, and I start the car with the "E" key.

Which brings up the next fun fact. Tapping the "E" key causes the character to Enter or Exit the vehicle. HOLDING the "E" key starts the car. At this point, when I thought my character was going to calmly start the car, he immediately opens the door and gets out of the car in the middle of the hoard of zombies where he is instantly gets pulled down and killed before I have a chance to react at all.

 

This was a very unsatisfying way to lose my character.

So this all brings me to my suggestions, in order of importance...

 

  1. If you can start a car's engine with "E" you should not also Enter/Exit with "E".
  2. If double-tapping or holding "W" does actually cause the character to shut off the car and pull the keys, then it should not also be what you use to accelerate and control your speed.

 

In both of these cases, one of these functions should be disabled or moved to a different key combination.

Edited by Erasmus Crowley
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Huh, that's weird. I've always used W to start the car and hold E to shut it off, I didn't know tapping/holding W could shut it off too.

But the real problem here is that the camera doesn't do the old GTA games thing of shifting further ahead of the car the faster you go, so our vision range is always proportional to our stopping time. Nobody likes having to feather the throttle all the time.

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5 hours ago, Laird Thaddeus said:

i use W to start and N to stop and take the key out of the ignition then press E to get out

Yes, I've only ever used E strictly for getting in and out of the car. Didn't even realize it'd start/stop the engine.

 

Debatable if it should be removed, but it might explain some complaints we've had. E and W are rather close to one another, after all.  

 

The W key doesn't stop the car.  It only auto-inserts the key if the car is off.

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On 11/11/2019 at 2:21 AM, Loskene said:

But the real problem here is that the camera doesn't do the old GTA games thing of shifting further ahead of the car the faster you go.

 

Fun fact: you can actually do this manually - but only if the window is opened, and you won't be able to steer the car while doing it.

Apparently, the character lets go of the steering wheel and leans out the window at 100 mph to focus on the road. Like, dude, stop doing that.

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On 11/12/2019 at 7:19 AM, ZombiesLoveBrainiacs said:

 

Fun fact: you can actually do this manually - but only if the window is opened, and you won't be able to steer the car while doing it.

Apparently, the character lets go of the steering wheel and leans out the window at 100 mph to focus on the road. Like, dude, stop doing that.

 

Can you elaborate on this? Is there a button you need to hold or something?

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19 hours ago, ZombiesLoveBrainiacs said:

 

by pressing "aim" & moving the mouse,, the same way you do it when not in a car.

 

And that works so long as the driver side window is open? I need to try that next time.

 

This is completely anecdotal but I feel like zeds are less likely to notice you driving if you are crouched when entering the vehicle. Give it a shot next time you play. It could very well be confirmation bias so I'm interested to know what you find.

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