hit esc
hit controls
hit mouse
hit defaults

all aliases and binds are gone.

That's because the way defaults works is to overwrite wgaf.cfg with the hardcopy in the game binary. If you put your binds and aliases in a separate file, you wouldn't have this problem.

This is exceedingly annoying. IMO it would be much nicer if the defaults button only reset the settings on the current screen - so if I'm on the Joystick screen, the defaults button would only reset the joystick settings to the default, not everything under the sun.

At this point, I've actually written a shell script that after I quit VO checks whether config.ini or wgaf.cfg have changed, and if they have it automatically makes a backup. I did this after having the defaults button burn all my controls a few times, and since I did it the script has saved my controls a number of times (including just now, which is why I'm bumping this thread).

Yeah, i've done this a few times myself, back when the joystick calibaration bug had me clicking scan every 15 mins, dont ask how or why, but once or twice i clicked defaults instead of OK, and lost my binds - at this early stage i didnt know killing the vendetta process would have saved my binds (it only overwrites the file on a normal client shutdown) so wrote a simaler thing to Beolach, and now have my wgaf and input config files backed up if changes are made to them. Which while neat, only fixes it for me.