Drag belts without holding the mouse button down#575

As a parent who plays Shapez with my child, I would like a way to place belts, and especially elevators, that does not require holding a mouse button down the entire time.

Currently, placing an elevator requires three things: holding the mouse button, precisely controlling the mouse position, and pressing a floor change hotkey. In my child’s case (6 years old) this is substantially more difficult than any other belt placement operation.

The main idea suggested here is:

1. The player selects the belt tool
2. The player presses ctrl+left click‡
3. The belt tool behaves exactly as if the player was holding the left mouse button. This means they can move the mouse and use C to create corner anchors and use Q/E to place elevators.
4. The player exits this mode with left click or right click.
   4.a. Left click places the planned belt the same way as releasing the left mouse button normally does
   4.b. Right click cancels the planned belt the same way as right clicking normally does

‡ The modifier could be anything really. It seems like shift and alt are not used in the belt tool currently. @samcask on discord suggested adding a setting which would then enable this mode without any modifier.

Although this suggestion was inspired by the UI difficulty of elevators, having this belt drag mode would make all sorts of belt planning easier and more comfortable. I believe this would have a strong “curb-cut” effect and improve the experience for all players.

it would be more intuitive if you only had to click for Start, End and direction changes when placing Belts.

A few improvments to UI could also help accesability, I’m having such a hard time seeing which corner individual quadrants are in. Glad I get to help make the game more accesible :)

As someone who has ClickLock enabled for Windows, I really like this idea. ClickLock is nice but it requires holding the button down for it to engage, and if I press escape to cancel the belt, the mouse button is still pressed and does unexpected things the next time I choose the belt tool (via the keyboard). Having the game just going into belt mode when you click would be nice (though it does raise the question, how does one place a single belt).

I guess we need a toggle for “Mouse-only belt placement”

Or, there could be a settings option that makes it one click to start the belt, one click to finish. Two clicks in a row would still be able to place down a single belt.