After listening to state of the game talk about custom hotkeys I decided to do my own. This is what I came up with for now but stuff can still change. I play zerg mainly but did define hotkeys for all races (with simularities etc).

Control Groups
I couldn't get used to NOT having units on 1-3, so my control group keys are 1-6, Q, T, G, and B.

I put my macro mechanic on Q. This means all queens when playing zerg, and all town halls when playing toss or terran.

I put my hatcheries on G and don't use the two other letters when playing zerg. I put Rax/Gateway on G, Stars on T and Fac/Robo on B when playing other races.

I use 1-6 for units as I see fit during the game.

Location Hotkeys
I use F1-F4 for random view locations around the map (Idle worker is on F5 for me).

I also have Tab, Y, H and N as the other four view locations. I put them where I want to be looking when I do the actions on Q/G/T/B. Most likely I'll be putting the camera at the rally point for the units I'd be making and keeping Tab always at my home base. This makes going home to build / check on workers / check on injects easy. I use space as my base camera and I'm trying to get in the habit of constantly spamming space.

Note I know that spamming base camera pulls away from the tapping feature of being able to use the main screen and bottom to do different things, but at this point I find the base camera the best way to keep an eye on injects. I'm not good enough for queen energy to help, and I hate single keying hatchers.

Workers
I use W for build basic structure and E for advance. I think put town halls on W, gas on E, supply on R (roach is R for zerg) and other buildings as I see fit.

Abilities and Control
I use W, E and F for most unit abilities. R I use for transitions (burrow/unburrow, siege mode, cloak etc). I use A as attack (can't get that out of my head, tried other keys, just doesn't work) and X as stop so it doesn't mess with S as select larve lol.

Unit Production
As stated above S I keep for select larva with zerg. D for drone. Z for ling. E is hydra, R for roach. F for infestor. X/C for muta/cor. W for ultra. For terran and toss I have units next to the button. So I use the bottom row for fac/robo. The other change to this is the startport for terran. I have W/E always for techlab/reactor so I use A,S,D,F and R for the units.

Conclusion
So far I'm loving this setup. Units feel the same as always but being able to use basecam, other hotkeys for macro and view locations easily has been really great. I love using W,E,R as kind of.... grid keys for a lot of upgrades and abilities since I use them once per game and always know what they are now. I'll probably change this with more practice but it's been a lot of fun creating it. Hopefully gives some other people some ideas.

In the future I'm hoping to buy more custom keys for my keyboard to define which keys are control groups and which are view locations. Should look pretty cool when I'm fully done!

noobcakes

United States526 Posts

April 28 2011 00:50 GMT

Thats crazy. I couldn't even think about using a different setup than most people use. Nice creativity.

Kelsin

United States253 Posts

April 28 2011 23:36 GMT

On April 28 2011 09:50 noobcakes wrote:
Thats crazy. I couldn't even think about using a different setup than most people use. Nice creativity.

I definitely agreed until it was brought up in multiple things. First IPL talked about about how Vibe does it which got me thinking. Then I heard Tyler talk about how he loves having groups on the alpha keys sometimes. THEN hearing Idra say "I like that idea" completely sold it and I tried it

Logo

United States7542 Posts

April 29 2011 15:05 GMT

Cool stuff Kelsin! I think I liked where you finally settled on your keys, but what do you do about patrol and hold position?

I'm not sure if I'm up for this radical of a change, but when I get back to playing T has become my hatchery hotkey group. I like the motion of tsd and it puts my finger near 5-9 so I can inject (I'm not a fan of backspace inject and give it up every time I try to learn it). I keep my thumb on v/b which is why I don't use G for a hotkey group because it's cramped to have my index finger there all there the time (plus it doesn't work well with hitting 5 for injects). For those wondering I just hit space with the knuckle of my thumb.

also t/b can be used for your overlord/overseers for scouting as I know you have problems with scouting and hotkeying the overlords would be a nice reminder.

I'm also curious do you play on WASD or over SDF? Your setup seems like your index finger would go relatively unused as zerg if you center on SDF, but your ring finger would be largely unused if you center around ASD. I suppose 5/6/t/g/f/h (if h is your hold position) is actually a decent amount of use.

Give it a few years and everyone will be using custom hotkeys. The default ones are good, but they're really not as optimized as they could be. If pro-gamers put so much effort to get small advantages, the advantage of having really optimized hotkeys is just way too much to pass up. The only reasons not to change are because you don't know how to make a better hotkey setup or you don't have a good stretch of time to relearn hotkeys.

Kelsin

United States253 Posts

May 02 2011 12:27 GMT

On April 30 2011 00:05 Logo wrote:
Cool stuff Kelsin! I think I liked where you finally settled on your keys, but what do you do about patrol and hold position?

Of course now I'm at work but I'm pretty sure hold is C and patrol is Z, not very good

On April 30 2011 00:05 Logo wrote:
I'm not sure if I'm up for this radical of a change, but when I get back to playing T has become my hatchery hotkey group. I like the motion of tsd and it puts my finger near 5-9 so I can inject (I'm not a fan of backspace inject and give it up every time I try to learn it). I keep my thumb on v/b which is why I don't use G for a hotkey group because it's cramped to have my index finger there all there the time (plus it doesn't work well with hitting 5 for injects). For those wondering I just hit space with the knuckle of my thumb.

also t/b can be used for your overlord/overseers for scouting as I know you have problems with scouting and hotkeying the overlords would be a nice reminder.

That is a great idea, I'll start putting ovies on those keys.

On April 30 2011 00:05 Logo wrote:
I'm also curious do you play on WASD or over SDF? Your setup seems like your index finger would go relatively unused as zerg if you center on SDF, but your ring finger would be largely unused if you center around ASD. I suppose 5/6/t/g/f/h (if h is your hold position) is actually a decent amount of use.

Right now my index is on G, so beginning game I'm using index->ring->middle to hit GSD. For queens I most often move my hand a tiny bit and hit QE with my ring and index. I hit tab with my pinky a lot to view to my main base and spam space with my thumb in order to see how my bases are going. One of my biggest issues (or not biggest... but happened a lot) is that I'd start a spire but not use it for 4 minutes (way after it finished). Spamming base cam is helping me see when blue bars are finishing so I use things quicker. It's helping a lot.

When I macro I move my hand to hit GH with my middle->index which focuses on my rally point and then hit GS->whatever using index->ring->whatever.

On April 30 2011 00:05 Logo wrote:
Give it a few years and everyone will be using custom hotkeys. The default ones are good, but they're really not as optimized as they could be. If pro-gamers put so much effort to get small advantages, the advantage of having really optimized hotkeys is just way too much to pass up. The only reasons not to change are because you don't know how to make a better hotkey setup or you don't have a good stretch of time to relearn hotkeys.

Agreed! At my level I figured it was worth it

Especially having not played in about a month, it's easy to change now!

koOma

Norway462 Posts

June 04 2011 07:27 GMT

which podcast specifically is this?