CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA — pull request #10176 by zaroth (2014-11-24 20:07:21+00:00)
Title: Added an option in the martial arts menu to prevent accidental wielding ...

...of items when fighting unarmed. (keep hands free)

Some discussion from IRC below:

Excerpt 1: (this feature uses design explained below)

keeping hands free and preventing autowielding from ground could be an explicit option, default False
Even then we'll confuse people, but at least they'll likely notice turning it on.
Options are sucky.
They require that you go all the way into ?2, navigating that mass of options until you find the one you're looking for, and then confirming "yes, save the new settings".
I can't believe you'd imagine that's an acceptable interface to something common.
I don't think it's that bad, I don't see ever myself turning it off
How about tying it to the martial arts button?
oh, this could work - like "Keep my hands free" style
You hit _ to select a technique, and you might get the top menu option showing "keep my hands free".
It doesn't actually override the MA style, and when it's turned on, the option gets a different caption.
Maybe "Keep hands free: %s" with the %s showing either "yes" or "no" depending on whether it's on.
well, your solution certainly keeps things tidy and in place where people are likely to stumble upon it and use it
Give it a default selector key like 'K'. **(it's actually 'h')**
And keep it above the list of martial arts, with the default cursor position still being on the first martial art.
If you can put a separator line in, that'd also be great. **(I don't know how to put the separator easily and whether it's needed at all)**
Whoa, hey, I think we have a design here. :)
Theoretically, we could even have the preferentially-unarmed martial arts just toggle the setting automatically when selected.
So you go to pick dragon style, and it automatically turns on. You can still turn it off, if you want, of course.
I think explicit is better than implicit in this case since as you said people may be used to old interface

Excerpt 2:
reizuki: the plan for the issue you're looking at is to have auto-wield suppressed if the weapon isn't compatible with the unarmed style you have enabled
I like the switch solution more though, since there may be some unarmed fighters which haven't yet learned a style but still would want this feature
Yeah, I kinda fall on the "I wanna be able to control it" side of the spectrum there.
With an auto-switch being a possible expansion.