Totally agree with this one, it's a feature that got requested a lot of times and got anwsered on A2 with the "1-20 user actions" keys, that are pretty limited.

One thing Sniperwolf572 forgot to mention it's that, right now, to detect the key presses its really troublesome, since you need to attach your own keyhandlers to the main display. That method makes detecting special actions like joystick and mouse buttons really tricky, you need to do it by using hacky methods.

Been able to define new inputActions would be good, but will still need to check the keypress with by constant pooling(using inputAction), that would be either totally unrealiable(if donne with a simple loop) or could impact performance (more intensive loop like using perFrameHandler)

The custom keys should be able to be defined by config, as they are now, but you should be able to attach them to function that its called when the key it's presed and other when its released(and when i say key i mean the one that the user selected for that action, that could be a joystick button, axis or a mouse button), just like a keyup and keydown events.

I won't call that part optional since it would be a real improvement on how you define actions and how you can can handle the user input in your addons

Edit: Ops, srry for the edit spam :P

That's what I meant in the last bit, "An optional addition would be to add an event handler which could listen for a change in an input action."

I currently do this like so, but it's potentially performance intensive if abused:

while {true} do {

Listen for the input actions. Done this way so the switch is responsive, allows for any keybind that
can be mapped and avoids custom code for detecting the mouse keys and key combos in the keydown event handlers
waitUntil {

		_isAction = inputaction "User17";
		(_isAction > 0);

};

// Do stuff here

// Throttle if holding
sleep 0.3;
};

As you say, this can be done better with a dedicated handler that listens to input actions instead of keys. You can also use addAction combined with the shortcut parameter for a poor mans inputAction event handler, but it's not usable in all cases.

If you read my last sentence, what i said its that i don't see that as "optional", its a really important part, as important as been able to add new inputactions.
Btw that loop using waitUntil its unreliable when client its under heavy load ^^(you will lose the keypress if isn't hold enought time), perframehandler its a bit more reliable(but still can fail if there is a dramatic client fps drop), but even more performance intensive. I already made a lot of testing trying to find out the best way to handle user input.

If you read my last sentence, what i said its that i don't see that as "optional", its a really important part, as important as been able to add new inputactions.

Ah yes, my bad. I agree, it is important. Amended the "optional" sentence to better fit what I actually meant. :)

Totally agree with this. For a sensible way of handling mod keybinds, have a look at X-Plane. On this first screen, I click Add New Key Assignment, which adds a blank entry at the bottom

http://s7.postimg.org/je9y48e5n/X_Plane_Keys_1.png

then clicking in the box highlighted at the top opens this screen, which lists all the plugins with assignable commands, where I can select one and then assign a key to it on the previous screen.

http://s7.postimg.org/k2isn6cvf/X_Plane_Keys_2.png

As long as each mod uses a unique name, like sandybarbour in this example, then there's no conflicts.

In ArmA, if you want to keep the controls screen as it is now, keep the Custom keys section but have it empty if nothing has been added, with an Add New Assignment button at the bottom, which opens a screen that shows all those mods which have defined commands, like X-Plane does. I'd ditch the current 20 user keybinds ASAP, to make sure modders move away from that old, unworkable, system.

I now understand that ArmA already has a way to add Custom categories to the Controls settings (like this http://i.imgur.com/3d6sYSi.png), just not Custom actions. So all that needs to be done is to provide for this, then define a place in addons where the creator specifies a Category name and the actions provided and then ArmA3 should automatically add the Category and actions, for the user to assign as he sees fit. It would be nice if the addon creator could specify default keys as well, which the user can then change if the GUI shows there are conflicts with existing keybinds.

Still not implemented which is a great shame.

Next dev-branch update https://community.bistudio.com/wiki?title=Arma_3:_Modded_Keybinding

can be closed?