Dear MC, I'd really like to keep control of my own keyboard!

[City Planner 121]

First off I apologize if this seems silly to anybody else but it's just one more thing that's been bugging me about CXL.

I want to have control of my keyboard, full control, that means that I can press any button on my keyboard and you have not disabled it.

What am I speaking about?  I'm talking about the volume and mute buttons on my keyboard, I use these in every other game that I play to turn up or down or mute the volume in the game.  Comes in very handy since I have insomnia and my better half doesn't.  So I can turn down the sound in any game that i play during my 3 AM play sessions.  Any game that is except for (you guessed it), Cities XL.

For some reason, when I am in the game and i press the keys to turn up or down or mute the volume, they don't function.   Come on, at the very least I should be able to mute the game when the phone rings.

Why have you disabled my keyboard keys while I'm playing the game?  Can you give me a good reason for this?

I am using a Microsoft Natural ergonomic 4000 keyboard with MS's drivers, in every other game that I play, press the volume up button and the volume goes up, press the mute button and the game is silenced, but not in Cities XL.  Why?

[CWLGAMER01 39]

Hi City Planner:

Let me explain a little more..... I dont think it is that MC has "disabled" your keyboard but more likely they do not have a "key binding" for that particular thing...... I have not looked but perhaps you can go to the options menu and see if you can set the bindings yourself..... not certain if you can. But really its more about the way the program handle this function and not so much that they have purposly set - it up to do that.

Thanks for posting!

[City Planner 121]

When you say they don't have a keybinding for the volume and mute button, I assume you mean like a hotkey that I can set? I've never seen the volume and mute buttons on my keyboard have a key binding in any other game that I play, so it seems odd that I'd need to set them in CXL. I've looked through the settings that I can find but fail to see any setting for it that I can set so that the volume up or down or mute buttons would actually function in CXL as it normally works in all the masses of other games tht I've played in recent years.

My guess is that it's simply not included in CXL to use those keys for their sole purpose in life, or that they disable keys that they don't expect us to use. I fully understand that the game is incapable of using certain keys in the bindings like the Mail, WebHome, Searchy, Favorites etc, since I've tried remapping them to other functions in the game only to be told something along the line of that those keys dont exist and or can't be mapped.

It's really just general practice to be able to use those three keys in games and leave them alone so that function as they do within windows, when I say it's general practice, what I mean is that no other game in modern years have I ever come across that I can't use the standard function of those three keys, so to me that means their functions are left as they are in windows and not stopped or have to be bound to function.

I know it's such a little thing but it's rightly annoying when one gets used to using those keys a lot to turn up or down the sounds from the computer and or a game.

Thanks for the reply.

[Soviet779 1]

Originally posted by: CWLGAMER01

Hi City Planner:

Let me explain a little more..... I dont think it is that MC has "disabled" your keyboard but more likely they do not have a "key binding" for that particular thing...... I have not looked but perhaps you can go to the options menu and see if you can set the bindings yourself..... not certain if you can. But really its more about the way the program handle this function and not so much that they have purposly set - it up to do that.

Thanks for posting!quote>

Media keys arent bound in game, this is either a problem with an incompatability between cities XL and the OP's version of windows (he didnt mention what it was) or its with windows itsself. Sounds like the problem resides with cities XL though since it works in all other games.

Sorry i cant be more help OP, maybe just use the dial/buttons on your speakers until a fix is out? Maybe mess with the compatability modes and cities XL to see if they change anything.

[mentarman 14]

Did you send a report to MC of the problem? Maybe it is a bug or just something they overlooked. I highly doubt it is something they have actively taken away from you, just something that hasn't been enabled correctly for this game or there is some conflict/bug/compatibility issue.