Suggestion: To match actual vim behavior, v should be required for movements, otherwise jump

[pklapperich]

A question in #39 got me thinking about the game mechanics overall. In vim when you type b or B, the cursor JUMPs an entire word. But in the game, all text is selected as you move. It seems like the more correct thing to do would be that vb or vB would select as you move, but B or b would jump without selecting.

Now... 5l is defined in vim's documentation was "repeat l 5 times" so I think it would make sense to leave that as implemented and select 5 characters to the right while moving.

This would be a major change in the gameplay and obviously needs more discussion. Some questions:

• Should the word keys WwEeBb let you jump over walls?
• Should v enable select mode as in vim and require you turn it off, or should it be a modifier only for the next key?
• Should v$ and v^ be allowed?
  • If so, how should walls be handled?

My own opinions:

• yes, WwEeBb should let you jump walls, but vW, vw, etc should not.
• v should just be a modifier for the next key. It's a game, and keeping track of whether you're in select mode or not might get to be a bit much for the player.
• v$ an v^ should fail (no move, no jump) if there's a wall between the cursor and the end or beginning of the line (respectively). The player shouldn't be able to just use v$ to clear a whole like that has multiple walls.

[TamaMcGlinn]

my opinion is that you should leave things as they are. Fun is more important than consistency, and is quite hard to achieve.

[TamaMcGlinn]

To expand on that; for me pacvim's purpose is to be a fun way of getting used to the basic navigation commands, so that afterwards, you move around in your vim window more easily, whether you are in visual mode, or most of the time, in normal mode.

Besides, letters turning green doesn't map 100% to visual mode, as going back again doesn't turn the letters white again. There's no way as far as I know in vim to select all of the letters in a pacvim level without also selecting the ~ mines or the red monsters.