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I wrote this in hope this can help other lefties like me.

PROBLEM FOR LEFT HANDED
I am strictly left handed and am using mouse in left hand and keyboard controlled with right.
Also I am using a trackball without school wheel.
Now the game don' let you reconfigure keyboard layout. So there is no strait way to rebind movement keys from wasd to arrow, same goes for Scroll wheel to some keys and so on. So at first this can be a show stopper for the likes of me...

HOW TO FIX

In the following I will describe how I did change that:

1) get/download a program called autohotkey, this is a is a free, open-source utility for Windows that let you remap key exactly as you like it, It is also useful for creating keyboard macros, just be careful if running it together with on-line games. Because these might catch it as a cheat program because of the macro ability in it.
If you make a google search for autohotkey it's homepage should appear first and the Wikipedia description next (did for me).

2) install it, and run it. Now expect a green icon with a white H to be visible in the notification aria.

3) Right click on the "green-H" autohotkey icon and select "Edit This Script".

4) copy and paste the following script to the edit window you just opened. (and change the mapping to your liking)
It do remap the key controls so they are useful for left hand, without destroying right hand use.
It do move the camera controls from arrows and up to home Del End PageDh.
Remember to save the edited script.

5) Right click on the "green-H" autohotkey icon and select "Reload This Script".

the line
#IfWinActive, ahk_class opengles2.0
is to ensure that the script is only active if Dont Starve's window is active.
Otherwise the keys wold be remapped in all windows whenever autohotkey is running.

Hope this will help, someone.
PS. If someone can explain me how to make a proper code block window here, tell me and I will change this post accordingly.

_______ copy from after here (Sorry I do not know how to make a proper code block here) ______

#IfWinActive, ahk_class opengles2.0
;
; Don't Starve
;

; walk
; You can walk using [WASD].
;
; Camera
; Pressing [Q] (or left [?]) and [E] (or right [?]) will turn the view 90º
; (useful for picking up things that are behind larger things).
; Pressing up [?] and down [?] will zoom the view in and out respectively.

; Holding [SHIFT] while clicking an item on the ground or in the inventory
; will force the "EXAMINE" option, showing you its description.

; Control key
; Holding [CTRL] while unarmed will force the "ATTACK" option when clicking,
; if it's possible.
; Holding [CTRL] while clicking an item on your inventory will split the stack in 2
; (useful for storing on chests or dropping on the ground just a set amount of items).
;
; While holding items in the air, holding [CTRL] and clicking
; (either on the inventory or the ground) will release 1 item.

; Spacebar action key
; Pressing/Holding [SPACEBAR] will perform an action in the direction faced (pick-up, attack, etc)
; but won't attack non-hostiles by default, [CTRL]+[SPACEBAR] will, though. Kevin + Moonphos

; quiick select
; Pressing [1], [2], [3], [...], [8], [9], [0] will use the first 10 items of the inventory, from left to right.
; The 11th and 12th hotkeys are [+] and [-], which may or may not be besides [0], depending on your keyboard layout.

;Pressing [TAB] will show the map.
;Pressing [ESC] will show the menu.
;
;Pressing [BACKSPACE] will toggle the game's debug rendering.
;
;Pressing [CTRL]+[P] will freeze the camera in place.
;Pressing [CTRL]+[H] will hide/show the GUI (a.k.a. HUD, a.k.a. UI)
;
;Pressing [~] will bring up the console.
;

; Movement To arow keys
$up::w
$down::s
$left::a
$right::d

; Camera to Editor control keys
;home::up
;end::down
$home::Send {WheelUp}
$end::Send {WheelDown}
$ins::MButton

del::left
PgDn::right

; Map key
m::tab
Backspace::tab

; DeBug Key
b::backspace

;Action key
NumpadIns::Space
Numpad0::Space
Enter::Space

Numpad1::
NumpadEnd::1

Numpad2::2
NumpadDown::2

Numpad3::3
NumpadPgDn::3

Numpad4::4
NumpadLeft::4

Numpad5::5
NumpadClear::5

Numpad6::6
NumpadRight::5

Numpad7::7
NumpadHome::7

Numpad8::8
NumpadUp::8

Numpad9::9
NumpadPgUp::9

NumLock::0
NumpadDiv::-
NumpadMult::+

return
Post edited May 05, 2013 by Agrilla
Here is a workaround without external software.
avatar
DeMignon: Here is a workaround without external software.
This, THIS, THIIIIIS!!!!
Although I'm actually right-handed, I like to shove my keyboard to the left and use the arrow keys for movement as well (yeah I'm weird like that). So my setup is pretty much the same, except I mapped the map to the middle mouse button:

MButton::Tab

I also mapped it to another key, which is one reason I used this tool instead of hacking the game files - you can map a single key to multiple controls easily.

The other reasons I prefer autohotkeys as opposed to messing with the game files is that no changes are required when the game is updated - which is often.

Note that it IS possible to create a mod for Don't Starve so that you don't have to copy/rename files every time it's updated (as the mod files will overwrite any files with the same path). It's slightly more work, and if Klei change the path names or where they put the code, it can still mess things up.

Anyway I agree with other posters when they say WTF Klei!?! At the very least, they could have had an ini file that does this, or better still, just have a menu for keyboard remapping as others have said! With all of the stuff they update on a regular basis, you'd think that something like this would be so obvious and easy to do that it would be done by now...
Post edited June 11, 2013 by squid830
"Note that it IS possible to create a mod for Don't Starve so that you don't have to copy/rename files every time it's updated (as the mod files will overwrite any files with the same path)."

... but it looks like you can't overwrite the games constants with a mod. They're probably loaded before the mod-files take effect. I haven't tested this thoroughly, because the workaround works and it didn't seem worth the time. Still, I'd like to see somebody checking a mod solution.
avatar
DeMignon: "Note that it IS possible to create a mod for Don't Starve so that you don't have to copy/rename files every time it's updated (as the mod files will overwrite any files with the same path)."

... but it looks like you can't overwrite the games constants with a mod. They're probably loaded before the mod-files take effect. I haven't tested this thoroughly, because the workaround works and it didn't seem worth the time. Still, I'd like to see somebody checking a mod solution.
Yes I think you might be right. Sorry, I didn't read the post properly, for some reason I assumed you changed the lua script that changes the key bindings, as opposed to the constants that define the keys.

The script in <Gamedir>\data\scripts\components\playercontroller.lua contains the actual bindings, but it's a tad more complicated to change. Well actually it's probably just as easy, it just looks more complicated. As an example, this command is for the left rotation (default left arrow):

table.insert(self.inputhandlers, TheInput:AddKeyDownHandler(KEY_LEFT, function() self:RotLeft() end))

So if you changed it to:

table.insert(self.inputhandlers, TheInput:AddKeyDownHandler(KEY_A, function() self:RotLeft() end))

Then it would change to the A key. The plus side is that you don't have to mess around with numbers and assign them to letters that they're actually not (which could get confusing). Also, I'm pretty sure this would work in a mod. I've overwritten other files in both components and prefabs (in a mod) and it's worked before.

Naturally you'd have to change the keys for all the ones you wanted to change, which makes modding this file no more work than modding the other one (possibly easier due to being able to use key names). Of course actually adding it to a proper mod requires a few extra files, but they're pretty simple if you're just overriding - examples are in <Gamedir>/mods. There are loads of things in that file, but they don't need to be touched for keymapping purposes.

I was under the impression that this would work for constants too, but it might be a special case and I've never tried that - besides this way I think is a bit cleaner and easier (even if you just backup/overwrite the file instead of creating a mod), IMO.

Personally autohotkeys works for me though, so I'll probably keep using it. Besides, having this in a mod still doesn't eliminate the danger of things screwing up if they change the file - note there's some cave-related movement stuff in there, so if you modded this prior to caves and then didn't merge their changes, cave movement would be a bit... different... to what it's supposed to be... :)
Post edited June 12, 2013 by squid830