Standard of Iron exposes accessibility and input options from Settings in both the main menu and pause menu. Every option has a default that reproduces the shipped presentation and controls, so accessibility features can be enabled deliberately without changing the experience for a fresh installation.
Settings persist through App::Core::UserSettings in the same INI file as the rest of the application, under ui/ and input/bindings. They apply consistently across campaign, skirmish, and editor tools.
This page explains the architecture behind those preferences and the guarantees each option is designed to provide.
| Concern | Owner |
| Persisted values, validation, defaults | app/core/user_settings.h |
| Preference objects exposed to QML | ui/preferences.{h,cpp} (UiPreferences) |
| Key and mouse bindings | ui/input_bindings.{h,cpp} (InputBindings) |
| Team palettes and ring patterns | game/accessibility/team_identity.{h,cpp} |
| Camera motion scale | game/accessibility/motion_settings.{h,cpp} |
| QML-side read model | ui/qml/design/A11y.qml |
| Rebinding UI | ui/qml/ControlsBindingList.qml |
game/accessibility/ is a dependency-free leaf library built as accessibility_runtime. Simulation and rendering code read accessibility state from that library, while UI preferences write to it.
This boundary allows a renderer to respond immediately to a preference change without depending on settings-file code or QML. It also keeps the accessibility rules available to non-UI systems without creating a dependency cycle.
Every gameplay command in the input catalog can be rebound to a keyboard key or mouse button, with or without modifiers.
In Settings → Controls:
Backspace to unbind it; orEsc to cancel capture.Bare modifiers such as Shift and Alt are valid bindings and are captured on key release. Other keys are captured on key press.
Bindings are stored as portable text such as Ctrl+Shift+S, Mouse Right, or Up. This keeps the settings file readable and avoids tying persisted preferences to Qt's internal key-code representation.
Only overrides are written. Commands that the player never changes continue to follow their catalog defaults, which means a future default change can reach players who have not explicitly customized that command.
Every command belongs to a context: rts, commander, or global.
Two commands conflict only when their contexts overlap. This lets the commander use Space for Dodge while the army view uses Space for Pause. A global command overlaps every context.
When a new binding would collide with an existing command, the rebinding screen identifies the conflict before changing anything. If the player confirms the reassignment, the previous holder is unbound rather than leaving two commands competing for the same chord. Any conflict that remains is shown on the affected row.
Each command supports up to two active chords, a primary and an alternate. This is how camera panning can support both arrow keys and WASD without treating either as a secondary compatibility path.
Conflict checking covers both slots, including attempts to assign the same chord to both slots of one command. Default restores the original pair together.
One overlap is intentional. rts.commander_rally is a contextual command: it claims R only while a rally point can actually be placed. Outside that state, another command bound to R may receive the key normally.
Contextual commands are excluded from ordinary conflict reporting because their layered behavior is deliberate. Nothing else ships on R by default—the camera pitch commands use Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down—but players remain free to create their own layered binding.
Exact modifier matches take priority. Ctrl+S can therefore be bound independently from S.
If no exact match exists, an unmodified binding may still match while modifiers are held. This preserves common modifier-as-qualifier behavior—for example, holding Shift to speed up a camera pan without preventing the underlying pan command from being recognized.
Commander locomotion commands such as forward, back, strafe, turn, and sprint are held states. Rebinding changes which physical key activates the command, while the controller continues to receive the command's canonical key code through InputBindings::canonical_key_for.
InputBindings::catalog() is the single source of truth for bindable gameplay commands. The settings UI groups them into:
UiPreferences.uiScale ranges from 75% to 200%.
Both UI metric systems respond to it: the design-system tokens in Design.Metrics and Design.Typography, together with the older Theme spacing values. The settings panel itself is sized in scaled pixels and is limited to 90% of the window, ensuring that the control used to change scale remains reachable at every supported value.
All product font sizes come from Design.Typography, so the scale applies consistently to campaign screens, menus, and the in-match HUD.
scripts/check-typography.py rejects hard-coded font sizes that bypass the token system. tests/ui/qml/tst_gameplay_typography.qml measures the production gameplay panel at 75%, 100%, and 200% to verify that the setting reaches the actual in-match UI.
The smallest typography token is clamped by Design.Typography.minimumSize at 12 px. Costs, counters, and objective text therefore remain legible at the minimum interface scale rather than shrinking without limit. Design.Metrics.minTouchTarget provides the corresponding floor for pointer targets.
Team identity is carried through two independent visual channels: palette and ring pattern.
Selecting a colour-vision mode replaces the team palette with one designed to remain separable under that deficiency.
Protanopia and deuteranopia share a palette that avoids green and emphasizes a blue-to-orange axis. Tritanopia uses a palette designed around a different separation. Both distribute relative luminance across the four main team slots so teams remain ordered even when hue information is reduced.
tests/ui/team_identity_test.cpp enforces a minimum luminance gap of 0.12 between every pair.
The standard mode retains the game's default palette.
Only colours assigned automatically follow accessibility palette changes. If a map or lobby explicitly assigns a colour, that colour is treated as part of the authored player identity and is left unchanged.
Because the palette is resolved on read, changing colour-vision mode recolours an active match immediately rather than only affecting the next one.
Every team slot also receives a distinct selection-ring pattern: solid, dashed, double ring, notched, dotted, or chevron.
Teams beyond the fourth may reuse a colour but do not reuse the same shape. Patterns are enabled automatically whenever a colour-vision mode is active and can also be enabled independently through Team ring patterns.
The result is that team identity never depends on colour alone.
IronActivityIcon communicates both the activity a unit is performing and the state of that order in the selection panel and over the unit.
The four order states—active, queued, unavailable, and interrupted—use three redundant channels:
Accessible.name and Accessible.description containing the activity, state, group headcount when relevant, and a short explanation of the state. The same wording is used for mouse tooltips.Gathering icons also combine their material tone with explicit labels such as “Cutting timber”, “Quarrying stone”, and “Mining iron”. Resource identity is therefore not encoded by colour alone.
Two additional preferences improve UI readability and keyboard navigation:
Reduce motion disables transitions and idle animations across the UI.
Camera motion, from 0% to 100%, scales movement the camera introduces automatically while following the commander, including head bob, breathing, and strafe lean.
It never scales movement explicitly requested by the player, so changing the preference does not reduce camera control authority.
Screen effects, from 0% to 100%, scales full-screen overlays such as the damage vignette, low-health pulse, and guard glow. At 0%, those effects are removed rather than merely dimmed.
Damage numbers toggles floating combat feedback for damage taken or dealt and health restored by healers, commander auras, or repair crews.
When hidden, the presentation layer continues draining the engine's event queue. Turning the display off therefore does not allow events to accumulate in the background.
Edge scrolling controls whether moving the pointer to a screen edge pans the camera. Hover tracking remains active when the option is off; disabling edge scrolling changes camera behavior, not pointer targeting.
Edge scroll speed, from 25% to 200%, scales both pan speed and the width of the edge trigger band. A lower setting therefore makes the camera move more slowly and reduces accidental panning from a pointer resting near the edge.
| File | Covers |
tests/ui/input_bindings_test.cpp |
catalog coverage, chord round-tripping, conflict detection, context scoping, persistence |
tests/ui/team_identity_test.cpp |
palette distinctness, luminance separation, pattern assignment |
tests/ui/preferences_test.cpp |
defaults, clamping, corrupt-value fallback, propagation to accessibility runtime |
tests/render/selection_ring_pattern_test.cpp |
one drawable, upward-facing, visibly distinct mesh per pattern |
The accessibility architecture is designed around redundancy and shared sources of truth: controls remain customizable without ambiguous conflicts, important visual states use more than colour, motion can be reduced without weakening control, and UI scaling applies to the same tokens the production interface already uses.