Keyboard Layouts and Instruction

I was working with Yanfly's "Button Common Events" for an in-game action, and everything is fine with it. This is not technical, or is it a plugin issue. It is a design question, and it would apply equally to MV, VXA, 2K, or any variation of a game-engine in which there is a defined key. It is only technical in the mechanical side.

In the process of doing this event, I've assigned the letter "B" ( In javascript key 66 ) to an action that is used on various maps. The concept is not too unlike many games that come before it in which the character has a special move/attack/map-action. But @Kes brought up an important question, one that is a bit baffling. For non-English/non-Latin-based keyboards, how do you say "click this button?" Do other keyboards have the same mechanical layout with different characters on them? Just how granular do instructions need to be?

Thanks, in advance, for any input!

You must be aware of some old games (and maybe nowdays too) uses "press start button". There is no explicit start button in any keyboard layout (unless I'm unaware). So the key point is to educate your player with the keyword of it. Press jump, press cancel, etc. Granted, I haven't had experience setting up those instruction myself in tutorial, partially bcz I hate making tutorial.

We really need somebody use a NON American keyboard to answer that one. :/

That would be true. I do have the yanfly plugin for modifying buttons for the players, but I want to have correct instructions for what I do have.

A lot of games, even professional games, will just stick with saying "Click B to use a skill" if B is the default button that is assigned to a skill, even if it can be changed manually by the player beforehand (or is in a different region). This is not too bad as the player will usually try clicking a bunch of buttons once they see that B doesn't work, and figure out which button was actually assigned.

If you really want to shoot for a high Quality of Life for your players (and you should as long as you have the time and resources to do it), you can use code to check which key/button is actually assigned to the "skill" function on the player's side, and what regional settings are present on their computer, and based on which button is assigned, instruct the player to click that button. You will also have to consider things like [SHIFT] taking up more space in graphic or text form than , meaning that you have to be careful with stuff like displaying this instruction as part of a longer message inside a message box.

In our country we use Czech qwertz layout, so I've come to know this firsthand.

Localization is not much of an issue to be honest. I just don't know whether the game uses English localization regardless of my system settings or whether they use my system localization. In the former I don't mind at all, since I already have English key localization in my memory. If the game uses system localization however, then you're essentially screwed if there is no option to redefine keys. My Czech keyboard is not that much of a problem, but for example France uses azerty and that would be a real issue xD