Keyboard and mouse

Keyboard and mouse

Play Ratchet & Clank on OpenRAC's native port with a keyboard and mouse: WASD to move, the mouse to aim the camera, left click to fire. Works with the PAL (v2.00) and NTSC-U discs. A gamepad keeps working alongside it, so you can switch between them whenever you like.

Without this mod, OpenRAC has a fixed keyboard layout of its own (WASD and IJKL as the two sticks) and the mouse does nothing. With it on, that layout is replaced by the bindings below, and you can change every one of them.

Install

1. Open the OpenRAC launcher and go to Mods.
2. Choose Add from a link and paste https://github.com/OpenRAC/rac1-mods.
3. Find Keyboard and mouse in the list and choose Install. It is switched on straight away.
4. Play.

You need an OpenRAC with mod interface 1.3 or newer. With an older one, the mod's row says that it needs a newer OpenRAC, and the game starts without it.

To install by hand, download keyboard-mouse-<version>.zip from the releases, then choose Add a mod in the launcher's Mods tab and pick that file.

Default controls

Action	Keys	PS2 button
Move	W A S D	left stick
Walk (hold)	Left Alt	left stick, half way
Camera	the mouse	none (the mod turns the camera itself)
Jump	Space	Cross
Fire	Left click	Circle
Quick Select (hold)	Right click	Triangle
Wrench	F, middle click	Square
Crouch	Left Ctrl, C	R1
Strafe	Left Shift	L2
First-person view (hold)	V, the mouse's back side button	L1
Map	Tab, M	Select
Camera behind Ratchet	Q	none (the mod does it)
Pause	Escape, P	Start
Quick Select slots 1 to 8	1 to 8	none (equips the item at once)
Next / previous weapon	wheel down / wheel up	none

In menus, scenes and movies the same keys do what you'd expect there:

Where	Keys	What happens
Title screen	Space, Enter, Escape or left click	Start
Menus (main menu, pause menu and its pages, the ship's map, vendor, save and load)	arrows or WASD; wheel up and down	move (a held arrow repeats)
	Enter, Space or left click	confirm (Cross)
	Escape, Backspace or right click	back (Triangle); at the top of the pause menu this closes it
	Tab or M	close the pause menu (Select)
	Left Ctrl or C, V	R1 and L1: the next or previous slot or planet where a page uses them
	E	Circle, where a page reads it: the Quit page's quit, a setting stepped back
The map (ship's or pause menu's)	Enter or left click	travel to the planet shown (Circle)
	Space	the map's next page (Cross)
"Quit?" questions	Enter, Space or left click	Cross (what the game shows as Cross)
	Escape	go on playing
	Backspace or right click	Triangle (what the game shows as Triangle)
Cutscenes, movies, the slideshow	Space, Enter, Escape, Backspace or a click	skip (Start)
The ship's landing, take-off and flight	the same	skip (Start and Cross)

A key you are still holding when the game switches between play, a menu or a scene is ignored until you let it go. So the Escape that opened the pause menu doesn't also close it, and the Space that skipped a scene doesn't also jump. Skipping a cutscene needs OpenRAC's Skip cutscenes option (on by default), exactly as Start on a pad does.

• Quick Select. Hold right click to open the ring. Move the mouse towards the slot you want, then let go to take that item. Slot 1 is at the top, and the slots go clockwise from there. Small movements don't count, so the ring stays where it is until the mouse has moved a little way (the dead zone setting below). Moving the other way changes slot at once.
• Number keys. Keys 1 to 8 equip whatever is in that slot of the Quick Select, without opening the ring. The wheel steps through the slots that hold something. In a vehicle, these keys do nothing.
• Strafe. Left Shift holds L2. With the lock-strafe mod in its Hold L2 or R2 mode, holding Left Shift strafes.
• The mouse camera. The mouse turns the camera itself, as in a PC game: the view turns as far as the mouse moves, in the same frame, with none of the slow easing and speed-up the console's right stick has.
  • Mouse right turns the view right and mouse up looks up, always. The game's own camera options (Normal or Inverted) are for the controller and don't change the mouse. If you want mouse up to look down, turn on Invert the mouse's up and down in the mod's settings.
  • This works for the camera behind Ratchet and for the first-person view (hold V). Behind Ratchet, the tilt stays where you leave it, unless you set Camera tilt to Levels out.
  • The game still moves the camera where it always does: it follows Ratchet, and a few places lock it or swing it round. In those places it stops the mouse just as it stops the right stick.
  • Moving a controller's right stick hands the camera back to the controller, which then works exactly as on the console.
  • A few scenes have a camera of their own. There the mouse still acts as the right stick.
• Camera behind Ratchet. Q swings the camera round behind him and levels it. Moving the mouse stops the swing.
• The cursor. It is hidden and kept inside the window while you play. You get it back in menus, on the title screen, during scenes, when you switch to another window, and when OpenRAC's own overlay (F3) is open.
• The mouse in menus. With the cursor free, it points at the game's own menus:
  • Hover selects. This works on the main menu and on the pause menu and its pages (Options, Help, Goodies…): the item under the cursor gets the focus, and in a list the selection moves to the row under it. In the item grids (Weapons, Gadgets, the Quick Select editor) it moves to the cell under it. Only the items the arrows could move to take the focus: a label or the Quick Select's item preview never does.
  • Elsewhere, moving the mouse steps the selection the way it moves, as the d-pad would. This covers the vendor, the "Quit?" questions and the ship's map.
  • Clicks and the wheel. Left click confirms; clicking an item that isn't selected yet selects it first, then confirms. Right click goes back, and the wheel scrolls lists.
  • The Mouse in menus setting turns hover and stepping off, leaving only the clicks and the wheel.
• There is only one Quick Select in the first game. It holds eight slots. In a vehicle, right click opens the vehicle's own ring.

Changing the controls

In the launcher, go to Mods and choose Settings on the Keyboard and mouse row.

• Rebind an action. Every action shows its keys as buttons. Click one, then press the key, click the mouse button or turn the wheel you want for it.

  • Each action can have two binds. Click Add to give it a second one.
  • The × next to a bind removes it.
  • To cancel while the launcher is waiting for a key, click anywhere else.

• Clashes. If two actions share a key, both are marked Also bound to …. The game would do both at once, so give one of them another key. A key used both by a menu action and by an in-play action is not a clash, because the menu actions only count in menus.

• Presets. The Controls row sets every binding at once:

  • Default: the layout above.
  • Left-handed: move with I J K L; Right Alt walks; H is the wrench; Right Ctrl or N crouches; Right Shift strafes; U is first-person view; O swings the camera behind Ratchet.
  • Arrow keys: move with the arrow keys; Right Alt walks; Right Ctrl crouches; Right Shift strafes.

  You can change single bindings after choosing a preset.

These settings also adjust how the mouse and keys feel:

Setting	Default	What it does
Mouse sensitivity	1.0	How far the camera turns for a given mouse movement. At 1, moving the mouse 100 pixels turns it about 9 degrees
Mouse acceleration	0	Above 0, a fast flick turns further than a slow drag. At 0 the turn is always in proportion to the movement
Invert the mouse's up and down	off	Mouse up tilts the camera down. The game's own invert options never change the mouse
Camera tilt	Stays	Stays: the camera behind Ratchet keeps the tilt you give it. Levels out: it comes back level when the mouse rests, as it does with a controller
Capture the cursor in play	on	Off leaves the cursor visible; the mouse then doesn't turn the camera
Mouse in menus	on	The cursor points at menu items (hover or steps); off keeps only clicks and the wheel
Walk speed	0.5	How fast the walk key moves Ratchet, from 0.2 to 0.9
Stick ramp (ms)	60	How long the movement keys take to reach full speed: a tap nudges, holding runs
Quick Select dead zone	30	How far, in pixels, the mouse has to move before the ring picks a slot

Changes take effect the next time the game starts. Your settings are saved with your other launcher data on your computer, not in the folder where OpenRAC is installed, so updating OpenRAC or the mod keeps them.

Good to know

• Before version 1.2.0 the mouse acted as the right stick: the camera eased in and out as it does with a pad, and followed the game's invert options. Now the mouse turns it directly.
• If OpenRAC's own keys (F2, F3, F9 to F11) are bound to an action, they still do OpenRAC's thing as well.
• When a bug report asks for it, the game's log shows the line [mod keyboard-mouse] keyboard and mouse on the pal disc, plus a warning for any clash between bindings.

Building

See the repository's README. The tests check:

• reading the binds and finding clashes;
• how the keys move the stick and how the mouse turns the camera: the turn and tilt for a movement, which way they go whatever the game's invert options, and the tilt held through the game's own target;
• the follow camera and the first-person view turned through the game's memory, the controller's stick and the game's camera locks left alone;
• how the mouse's direction picks a Quick Select slot;
• which state the game is in (title, menus, vendor, dialogs, cutscenes, movies, the ship) and what each key presses there;
• that every press reaches the game as a press: taps, held arrows repeating, wheel notches, keys held across a change of state;
• which menu item and list row lie under the mouse;
• the report the game reads.

The library is also loaded the way the game loads it: ctest -R keyboard_mouse.

Licence

GPL-3.0-or-later, as the rest of this repository.