Can I "hotkey" my extra mouse buttons

[DragonKnight]

So the wife and I recently had a baby. In the early evenings, she is fussy, and likes to lay on my lap with a pacifier in her mouth. Trouble is, I need one hand on the pacifier, otherwise it falls out and rolls far away... What I keep finding is that I really need the control and alt keys for troop management. My mouse has the usual three buttons, and then one extra on each side... If I could bind control to one, and alt to the other, things would be much easier... Can it be done?

DK

 

[lymond]

have you tried duct tape?

 

[DragonKnight]

When I first saw that I was like... how is duct tape going to press my alt key...
But I have thought about a piece of elastic or something to hold the pacifier in... but the Doc vetoed any such thing...

 

[s.bernbaum]

Didn't your mouse come with software to set the function of the extra keys? Most mice with extra keys come with such.

 

[DragonKnight]

who installs the software that comes with their mice...
It might... But I don't want the buttons bounds to those keys always... only for civ...
Most games have a controls section where you can select an action, and then press the key or button you want to make it happen. That is how I have assigned things to those buttons on other games... And I know you can setup hotkeys somehow... so I figured the hotkey method for civ might have a way to bind mouse buttons too... right click is probably free to now that I think about it.

 

[lymond]

I'm not sure how you can change mouse or even hotkey configuration in Civ4 - never really tried, but I don't recall seeing the option either like you can in other games. It may be some XML type change but I don't know how you would define the mouse buttons in that case.

I recommend checking over on the Mod forum.

I'm sure the Doc would not allow the duct tape either

 

[Farm Boy]

I would be more than somewhat surprised if this was a stock option considering the UI that the game comes with.

 

[Psyringe]

Which mouse and driver do you use? With my mouse and driver (Logitech MX 1100, SetPoint) I can map mouse buttons to keys, and create specific mappings which are active only if a specific program is in the foreground. For Civ4, I have Shift, Ctrl and Alt mapped to three mouse buttons for obvious reasons. (I also use Wheel-Right and Wheel-Left to cycle units, and have Enter and the Civilopedia mapped to two more buttons, but that's probably more than 99.9% of people might need ).

Alternatively, if your driver doesn't support program-specific mappings, Autohotkey can be used to achieve the same effect, might need a bit of work and doc-reading to set it up though.

Also, ZWDA could become a very interesting alternative in the future, but it's not finished yet and would currently require a lot of work to set up if it doesn't support your mouse already.

 

[DragonKnight]

I have a logitech mx310. It does support the binding, but not program specific binding.
I will have to look into autohotkey...

 

[cripp7]

My Logitech G11 has the programmable keyset which I use for key+mouse commands. Checkout autohotkey, but also look at the G11/13 on eBay