Setting Up Controls
In addition to keyboard & mouse, Daggerfall Unity supports most game controllers without the need for any external tools. Following are steps to help you configure your preferred control scheme.
On launcher screen check the Enable Controller option. This is enabled by default, and can be disabled if you don't plan to a controller or you want to disable controller input.
If you plan to play with a controller, you should enable click attacks. On launcher set the Weapon Swing Mode to Click or Hold as shown below.
To quickly summarise each mode:
- Vanilla - this is the standard Daggerfall gesture attack mode where you must hold down the right-mouse button (attack key) and drag the mouse in one direction to initiate an attack.
- Click - every click of the attack key will trigger a random attack.
- Hold - hold down the attack key to repeatedly trigger a random attack.
Start a game and press the Escape key to open pause menu. Then click Controls button.
This will open the standard Controls UI where you can bind keyboard, mouse, and controller actions. Note the Primary button outlined at top-right. This button can be used to switch between Primary and Secondary control bindings.
The recommended setup is to configure keyboard & mouse on Primary and game controllers on Secondary
To bind a key/button to an action, check you have the correct Primary or Secondary selected at top-right, then click box next any to action name. The current action will be cleared and start waiting for a new binding. Now press the key/button you want to bind to that action. If all goes well, this will become the new binding for that action.
Note that Daggerfall Unity supports combo bindings. This means for example you can bind an action to a key combo like Ctrl+A or a controller combo like LeftTrigger+X. This is very useful as Daggerfall has a great many actions to configure.
Repeat process for all controls you want to change. If your binding is displayed in red this means you have a binding conflict that must be resolved before your control scheme can be accepted.
Once you've setup your basic bindings, there's a few more stashed away on the Advanced Controls UI. Click the Advanced button on the Controls UI to open the following screen.
Here you can setup additional bindings unique to Daggerfall Unity, such as autorun, quick save and load, and screenshots. Note this also will follow the Primary or Secondary setting on main Controls UI.
Tip: It's recommended not to rebind/clear Escape binding on Primary, as this can make it difficult to return back to settings.
Following are the suggested bindings for a game controller. As mentioned above, these are best configured as Secondary bindings.
- Cast Spell: B
- Recast Spell: LT + A
- Use Magic Item: LT + B
- Ready Weapon: X
- Swing Weapon: RT
- Switch Hand: R2
- Status: D-Down
- Character Sheet: D-Up
- Inventory: LT + Y
- Jump: Y
- Crouch: L3
- Autorun (Advanced Controls Window): L2
- Run: LT + L2
- Rest: Select
- Transport: R3
- Steal Mode: LT + D-Down
- Grab Mode: LT + D-Up
- Info Mode: LT + D-Left
- Talk Mode: LT + D-Right
- Activate: A
- Sneak: LT + L3
- Logbook: LT + R2
- Notebook: LT + X
- Automap: D-Left
- Travel map: D-Right
- Pause (Advanced Controls Window): Start
- QuickSave (Advanced Controls Window): LT + Start
- QuickLoad (Advanced Controls Window): LT + Select
Sometimes things don't go to plan. Here are some solutions to common problems when setting up bindings in Daggerfall Unity.
If a binding is displayed in red like below, this means the binding has a conflict. Note that two actions are both bound to F in below screen.
Conflicts can happen across Primary and Secondary controls, and in Advanced Controls, so you might need to check all these locations if conflict is not obvious.
To resolve conflicts, rebind one of the conflicting keys to something different that is not already bound.
Sometimes you just want to clear a binding, for example you want to clear a Secondary binding so it no longer conflicts with a Primary binding.
To clear the binding for an action, right-click the current binding and confirm when prompted.
Sometimes it's easier just to reset things back to defaults and start again. To do this click the Default button and confirm when prompted.
If you get completely stuck and your keys aren't working at all, or you've accidentally cleared the bindings for Escape to reach menus, you can delete the KeyBinds.txt file in your persistent data path.
The persistent data path is where your saves, logs, and settings are stored independently of your Daggerfall Unity install. The location of this folder varies by platform. The following link should help you locate it.
https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?p=27552#p27552
Once you've found KeyBinds.txt, delete it and restart Daggerfall Unity. A clean new KeyBinds.txt file will be created on next start. You can also keep a backup of the file if you want.
If you have trouble with gesture attacks (click and drag mouse) you might need to decrease mouse movement threshold for weapon gestures. On the launcher click Advanced > Gameplay to access the following screen. Then click the number to right of WeaponAttackThreshold and type in a lower value. The minimum is 0.001, and the default is 0.005.
Note that too low of threshold value will make it more likely that the wrong gesture will be triggered. For example, if you are dragging mouse forwards to trigger a thrust attack, any slight diagonal movement might trigger a slash attack instead. Adjust the WeaponAttackThreshold in small increments up and down until you find the right balance.
If you're still stuck, try reaching out to the wider community on the Lysandus' Tomb Discord or Daggerfall Workshop Forums.