The Bind Command

Bind is the most important command in any config, without it you basically can't do anything.
Before we start writing the config it's important that you understand bind and alias.

Binding Keys

Bind is used to tell Q2 what you want a key to do, it basically allows you to set up your keyboard configuration from within a config file, but since you have much more freedom in the config file you can set keys to do things that cannot be selected in the menus such as broadcasting custom messages.

bind pause "screenshot"              //Take Screenshot

The above example would tell Q2 that when you press the pause key (above page up) to take a screenshot.
Note the way the command is laid out, this is how most commands should be laid out: Firstly, there's the command itself

bind

Then, the key that is to be bound

pause

Then there is a section in speech marks (these are not essential for simple commands such as this but it is good to get into the habit of using them in all commands because they become vital later when you create more complex scripts with the alias command), this tells Q2 what command you want it to do when the key is pressed.

"screenshot"

The part at the end after the // is a comment, it is not required and is ignored by Q2 (anything in a config preceded by // is ignored). It is called a comment and is put there to allow you to easily find what everything does in your config. Commenting your work is another good habit to get into because it means that if you ever need to change anything you can easily find it without having to look too closely at cryptic commands, an organized config makes finding things easier too - if you follow the guides on making your config you'll see how to organize it.

Holding Keys: +/-

A lot of commands work like above where you press the button and the command is executed, you press it again and it's executed again, but for some commands this is inappropriate.
If you want to walk forward you can't just press the key for each step, you want to be able to hold down the key and continue walking forward untill it is released, then you want to stop. This is achieved using a '+' before the 'forward' command:

bind uparrow "+forward"              //Move Forward

This tells Q2 that you want the 'forward' command to remain active as long as you hold down uparrow (the up pointing arrow on the right of the keypad below end), when you release uparrow the game will execute '-forward' telling your character to stop moving (Q2 automatically binds '-' commands so you don't need to, handy really since there is no way to do it!).

Common uses for +/- binds are movement keys and the trigger, although they can be used in some more complex scripts.

Multiple Commands: ;

It is possible to group commands together in one binding allowing you to execute more than one command with a single keypress, when doing this the ; symbol is used as a seperator for commands.

bind f12 "radioteam reportin;wave 1;say_team ...I'm alive with %H health..."

This will tell Q2 that when you press F12 it has to play the file reportin.wav to your team, salute, and send the message to your team saying you're alive and informing them of your health status. All three things will happen at once with no delay between them.

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