Play hints

On the left of the screen, a short list reminds the player of the keys that matter right now: on foot, at the wheel, carrying a crate, with the drill out. Each line disappears once the player has used its key 3 times while it was shown, and comes back after a week without using it. Settings ▸ General has a switch for the whole panel and a button to show the learnt hints again.

It is not the controls page (F1 lists everything): six lines at most, the ones of the moment.

Adding hints to your feature

One call, from wherever your feature knows its context:

PlayHints.provide(self, &"mining_tool", [
    PlayHints.row(&"aim"),                    # label = the controls page's own (%%ACT_AIM)
    PlayHints.row(&"perforate"),
    PlayHints.row(&"action", "%%HUD_DROP"),   # or any key of localisation.csv
], func() -> bool: return is_equipped(), 20)

• self owns the lines: they disappear on their own when it is freed. Nothing to clean up.

• The context (&"mining_tool") names them: offering the same owner + context again replaces them, and PlayHints.withdraw(self, &"mining_tool") takes them back.

• when is asked a few times a second; the lines show while it answers true. Leave it out to show them for as long as the owner lives (then withdraw them yourself).

• The priority (here 20) orders the list, highest first. An action offered by several contexts is listed once, by the highest. The player's own contexts use: on foot 0, floating 5, at the wheel or as a passenger 10, carrying or the drill 20; HintSource defaults to 30.

• A row may group actions that are one thing to the player — the four move keys: PlayHints.row([&"move_forward", &"move_left", &"move_back", &"move_right"], "%%HELP_MOVE").

• A row has a level (third argument, default 0): a context shows its level-1 lines only once every level-0 line of that context is learnt, and so on up. The basics first, then what comes next: at the wheel, the speed limiter and its setting, the special horn and flipping the vehicle come after driving, the ignition, the brake, the lights, the horn and getting out.

  PlayHints.row(&"vehicle_speed_limiter", "", 1),
  PlayHints.row([&"vehicle_limiter_up", &"vehicle_limiter_down"], "%%HELP_LIMITER_SET", 1),

The panel does the rest:

• it shows the keys bound now on the device in hand (keyboard or gamepad), through InputLabel / ControlsHelpRows.name_of — a rebound key shows rebound. A row that groups alternatives (the wheel's zoom steps and the pad's triggers) names only that device's keys while it has any, and the words they share are said once: Alt + Molette haut/bas;
• an action with no binding on that device is not listed, and holds no next level back;
• it hides under menus, the star map, the controls help and the chat, and with the rest of the HUD for the pause menu and the F7 photo.

The star map's own panel

The star map is a layer of its own, over the player's panel, so it carries its own hints panel (left, under its two buttons), kept to the star_map context (PlayHintsPanel.contexts): select (twice: go there), zoom, turn the view, reset, close. It replaced the fixed help line at the foot of the chart. Another full-screen view can do the same: a PlayHintsPanel in its layer, its contexts set, and a PlayHints.provide(...) whose when is the view being open.

Without code: HintSource

Drop a HintSource node anywhere in a scene — under a console, a machine, a vehicle — and fill its rows in the Inspector (each: the action(s) and a label key, empty = the controls page's). Its lines show while it is in the tree and active, and, with near_m set, only while the camera is within that distance of its parent. Switch active from code or an AnimationPlayer.

Labels and translation

A label is a translation key written out in full ("%%HUD_DROP", never built by concatenation): test_localisation_keys looks for every key in the code and fails on one missing from tools/localization/localisation.csv. Leave the label empty to reuse the controls page's label of the action (MenuConfig.ACTION_GROUPS) — most hints need no new text at all.

Where things are

Piece	File
The registry (provide, withdraw, row)	scenes/globals/play_hints.gd
What the player has learnt (user://hints.cfg)	scenes/globals/play_hints_memory.gd
The panel on the left	ui/play_hints/play_hints_panel.gd
The star map's panel and lines	StarMap._offer_play_hints() in scenes/ui/star_map/star_map.gd
The no-code node and its rows	scenes/globals/hint_source.gd, scenes/globals/hint_row.gd
The player's own contexts	PlayerClient._offer_play_hints() in scenes/player/player_client.gd
The settings switch and reset	SettingsManager.is_play_hints_enabled(), Settings ▸ General