How do I shot bind?

Hi everyone, long-time player here with a bit of a problem. See, in all my time of playing I've never bothered with keybinds. Over time I've thought of a few funny things my characters could do using them, but they didn't justify wrapping my right-side-dominant brain around the smooth, cold, and logical language of Programmese to make them. Except now I have a joke character that really, really needs keybinds so he's spouting off with almost every click in order to be complete. Thus my dilemma.

I tried looking through the keybinding guides in the guide forum, but they just left me more confused. Sure they offered templates for toggling binds (which is what I want to use), but I'm not sure of the /commands needed to input them or if they need to be saved in a folder or something. Thus, more confusion than a room full of mind doms.

If anyone's willing to help walk an easily confused computer-illiterate schlub like myself through the process of making these keybinds (preferably using very small words), I would be in their debt.

This should probably explain about saving the binds. The rest of the page explains just about everything else about keybinds.

Okay, initial attempt at bind-making failed spectacularly. I input /bind_load_file R "local I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit ya... Oh, wait, yeah I did$$pow_exec_name Bash$$bind_load_file C:\keybinds\bash2.txt" and got:

Usage: bind_load_file takes 1 args, you gave 2.
Reads a list of keybinds from a file.
bind_load_file <string>

Obviously I am doing it wrong. Any advice?

"/bind_load_file" is only used when you are loading the binds from a file.

For setting a single key using the chat, just use "/bind"

Okay, further testing yeilded partial success. The bind worked, but now it's stuck on the last /bind in the cycle because it's "Unable to read in keybind file: C: \keybinds\bash1.txt". If I had to guess it looks like it didn't recognize the first one I put in ("I didn't mean to hit ya...") as bash1.txt. Any non-guess suggestions?

And by the way, it gives me the warm fuzzies to see that I can post a question and people are so quick and willing to sit down with a thicky like myself and help. Thanks so much =D

Basically what you're going to need to do is write up your two (or more) bind files. You'll need to make a file in notepad called bash1.txt with the appropriate switch to bash2.txt. The text in the file should look something like this:

R "local I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit ya... Oh, wait, yeah I did$$powexecname Bash$$bindloadfile C:\keybinds\bash2.txt"

You'll also need a file called bash2.txt that points to bash1.txt.

R "local <insert witty saying here>$$powexecname Bash$$bindloadfile C:\keybinds\bash1.txt"

I hope this makes sense, I've never made a rotating bind myself so it's harder for me to explain it.

The first (and only time) you'll need to use /bindloadfile is the FIRST time you log on the character and load the first bind file (/bindloadfile c:\keybinds\bash1.txt). After that, all bindloading will happen automatically in this instance, and you won't need to type /bindloadfile again.

Okay, created 4 individual .txt files for each of the lines I want to use. So from here use /bindloadfile for bash1.txt then use /bind for bash2-bash4?

(Dumb question: does the file name for the text file have to be "bash#.txt" or will "bash#" suffice?)

I recommend using bindloadfilesilent rather then bindloadfile, that way you wont have as much cluter in your system chat.

Okay, first off make sure there are no spaces in your path. "C: \keybinds\bash1.txt" won't do it. It has to be "C:\keybinds\bash1.txt". (No space between the : and \)

Second, if you really, really want to use the CoH directory to store the keybinds, the path you want is "C:\Program Files\City Of Heroes\keybinds\bash1.txt". That path is really long, though, so I typically use "C:\coh" myself. It's short and easy to find just by opening the C drive. (Note, though, that if you load and save keybinds in game, they are put in the CoH folder. So you'd have to move them to your own folder if you want to save a copy of your binds for restoration later or something)

Third, you use bind_load_file to load the file you wrote AND in the file itself to load the next file. You won't use /bind at all in the file.

Fourth, I would use bind_load_file at first to make sure everything works okay. If you make a mistake, it should give you an error message to help track it down. Once everything works, go into your file and change it to bind_load_file_silent.

Okay, did everything you guys said and entered all four binds into the chat... but when I hit the key, my character's stuck on bash4 and the chat answers "Unable to read in keybind file: C:\CoHKB\bash1.txt" Still doing something wrong here.

oh Oh OH!....

I just put that command string into Word and did a word/character count....

There are 118 characters, including spaces, in the string. It might be too many. Someone correct me if I have the character limit off, but I think it's 100.

EDIT: Scratch that... just checked the limit against some of my other binds... looks to be a bit higher. I can't find the reference to what the actual limit is though... 250?

Also, the name thing... yah, I've done the double suffix before.