Advanced Binds - Quick Enhancement Manage Shortcut (Hold to slot enhs, release to return to game)

[Avernal]

If you're like me and you played this game for donkey's years, have about a million alts, and you've got your inf farmer set-up to fund them all - sooner or later you're going to want to quickly slot your tray full of Set IO's as you reach the level required to do so, mid-gameplay, without fumbling around clicking the manage link on your powers tray or having to rapidly smash the 'Exit' button as an ambush spawn starts attacking you mid-way through.

As part of my default keybindings I load in to new alts, I've got this set up to my E button (because I'm also lazy and don't want to move my hand of the W/A/S/D block), so I can hold in E to quickly drag my fancy set enhs to their slots as I level then let go of the button to return to gameplay quick and easily. You can easily replace E in the bind file with whatever key you want to use instead. Another little time-saving trick that makes things feel a lot more seamless.
 

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First up - the basics, and some things you'll benefit from knowing, in plain English:
 

• Binds have a hard limit of around 255 characters, so for more complex ones you need to split them in to chunks (files) that fit those restrictions. That's why binds like this use multiple text files.
   
• The 'bindloadfile' command will default to the 'root' game directory if you use relative paths ("bindloadfile file1.txt" would look for file1.txt in the root directory), this means you're cutting out however many characters you would waste on typing out the full HDD path, so you don't need to use "C:/Binds/whatever.txt" as a sloppy workaround for that - "binds/whatever.txt" is MUCH shorter than even that and lets you keep your binds subfolder in the game's directory. Win-win. Now this will differ from launcher to launcher - but essentially Tequila will look in the 'Tequila' directory if you don't use a full path, whereas Homecoming's launcher would look in "settings/live" (for the live servers). You may need to fiddle with this if you're using other launchers to find out where the game is looking by default, generally it'll be in the same location as the City of Heroes executable file, Homecoming have just sorted their versions to their own subfolders.
   
• Removing the underscores from slash commands makes them shorter and the game still understands them - you don't need "bind_load_file", because "bindloadfile" works too and is two characters shorter. I like "bindloadfilesilent" because whilst it's a little longer, it means my chat window isn't getting spammed with bind files loading in, and I can still split most of my long bind loops in to 2 or 4 files to avoid the hard limit of text characters.
   
• If you add "+ $$- $$" (note the spaces) to the beginning of your multiple file bind, it will actually execute two steps - once when you press the key down, and again when you release it. In a bind that uses multiple files - this means one keypress will run *two* bind files on a single push and release, speeding things up (this is the shortest possible number of characters and is thanks to JAMMan0000's suggestion on my 'Lazy Kin' bind topic). This is how we're going to make this Manage bind work - both files will have 'E' set up with this bit of text at the start, that way the game will run the first command/file as you're holding the key down, and the second command/file when you let go.

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Now that's out of the way, the binds...

I use two files for this and call them 'manage1.txt' and 'manage2.txt', both are saved in a 'Binds' sub-folder of my 'CoH/Settings/Live' (Homecoming launcher's 'default' folder for the ./ shortcut in paths).

To load them in to the game initially you would use: /bindloadfile "binds/manage1.txt" - I've actually edited my 'Default.txt' and 'Keybinds.txt' files in the same folder so that the E key uses the bind from 'manage1.txt' below, that way when I run /bindload on my new alts, this Manage shortcut is always present on them from level 1.

File 1 'manage1.txt' - located in a '/binds' sub-folder of my Homecoming installation ('/settings/live/')
This file runs the 'manage' command while you hold E, plus then loads 'manage2.txt' so that when you release the button the "+down$$-down$$' bit triggers and instantly runs the second file's commands.
 

E "+ $$- $$manage$$bindloadfilesilent binds/manage2.txt"

File 2 'manage2.txt' - located in a '/binds' sub-folder of my Homecoming installation ('/settings/live/')
This file closes the manage window and returns to the game view, loads in 'manage1.txt' and also pops my extra power tray window back open because the 'gamereturn' command closes *all* UI windows apart from the static ones.
 

E "+ $$- $$gamereturn$$show tray1$$bindloadfilesilent binds/manage1.txt"

 

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If you don't use the extra power trays like I do, just delete the 'show tray1' part plus one pair of the double dollar signs either before or after it.

If you have another window you do like to keep open on your screen as part of your default UI - put it's name in instead, you can even add in several separated by $$ marks, just be sure to keep the total number of text characters between the two quotation marks to 255 characters or less to ensure the bind doesn't get trimmed ingame.

Edited May 28, 2021 by Avernal
Added JAMMan0000's shorter toggle code