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Remastered Hotkey Renaming And General GUI Use

Forum Index > Brood War Strategy
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Chef
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
10810 Posts
April 24 2021 14:27 GMT
#1
I haven't played since 1.18 was released. Recently I got a new windows computer that can run remastered.

It feels like now is the time to do a total reset of hotkeys and habits while my old muscle memory for the original layout is weak.

What's the current thinking on this, for those who have made a major adjustment? I know lots of people kept them the same or just changed one or two inconvenient keys to preserve their decades of muscle memory.

I'm a Vim text editor user, so I have some ideas about things that I think are important.

1. It would be better to use a stronger finger for repetitive actions (eg: I tried 4w5w6w7w8w9w4e5e6e7e8e9e for macro keys but it's a bit too hard on the pinky). Maybe 1r2r3r4r would be better for certain things.

2. With Terran I have been thinking putting svc on p works well, like protoss does. This is mainly because if you put scan on p as well, you can kind of keep the same hotkeys for cc / scanner the whole game, and 0p9p8p is pretty easy on the hands even though you have to move your arm.

3. Generally there's no reason not to use the same grouping of hotkeys for everything, in other words marine and vulture can be the same build hotkey, tank and medic the same one...

4. It feels like there might be some value in having building units and attack moving units hotkey just kind of be offset from one another. But also if there's one muscle memory that didn't go away and feels awkward to give up it's 1a2a3a4a5a6a. But it's hard on the pinky. A more off the wall idea (compared to how I normally think) has actually been to maybe just use mouse to click the unit I want to build, and then settle my fingers over 4567 and just click between each number, which seems a lot easier. Obviously we want to macro a little while micromanaging a battle, so move the mouse back and forth could be detrimental, but I'm not sure it's that bad especially if you're not in a battle.

I'm kinda disappointed by how limited the remapping software built into remastered is, and it clearly feels like cheating to use something not in the game. Would be nice if we could remap location keys, reuse some keys or assign certain actions to multiple keys, remap number keys to letters, remap ctrl and shift to somewhere more convenient etc.

Anyway, posting this into the ether of a dead forum, but if any of you zombies have some thoughts on it I'd love to hear them. I never really thought about how I use the interface when I was a kid, I just sorta took how I played UMS maps and brought it into 1v1 and didn't think about it. But it's kind of a funny superpower of good players in the game and part of what can make people's styles so divergent since even how you choose to hotkey can affect how efficient you are at different things, and then you get used to it and it becomes your style lol. I notice when watching pros also that they hardly ever scroll their screen with the mouse at the edge of the screen, which feels like a huge time saving... But I can't figure out how they do it, even top foreigners use mouse scroll a lot. Feels like you can do everything a lot more cleanly if you don't, but often if you double tap a number to get to a group of units, if they're at all separated you end up in the middle of nowhere. Something like more reliance on the minimap and more tapping spacebar at the right moment to go to the last ping, or being diligent about location keys.

I've rambled enough...
LEGEND!! LEGEND!!
shaggles
Profile Joined October 2011
Poland108 Posts
April 24 2021 15:39 GMT
#2
On April 24 2021 23:27 Chef wrote:
2. With Terran I have been thinking putting svc on p works well, like protoss does. This is mainly because if you put scan on p as well, you can kind of keep the same hotkeys for cc / scanner the whole game, and 0p9p8p is pretty easy on the hands even though you have to move your arm.


This is actually idea I keep practicing now. For first couple of minutes into the game "S" is optimal, but as soon as I start to have enough units to control, I (sort of) cease producing workers, since it requires a stretch and maybe to much precision, while doing it the Protoss way lets you divide keyboard so as (roughly) left side is for army and right is for workers. I am low level though.

On April 24 2021 23:27 Chef wrote:
3. Generally there's no reason not to use the same grouping of hotkeys for everything, in other words marine and vulture can be the same build hotkey, tank and medic the same one...


I try to keep minimum of mnemonic logic in it as not to produce purely artificial habits. If needed, Marine and Vulture share common letter "R", but haven't tried it. I did not mention "E", since this is "general" USE key in games so it does Siege and Mines for me

On April 24 2021 23:27 Chef wrote:
Would be nice if we could remap location keys, reuse some keys or assign certain actions to multiple keys, remap number keys to letters, remap ctrl and shift to somewhere more convenient etc.


.. or assign a key to multiple action you might point out in the case of Zerg that maybe would benefit from sequence "select all free larvae for given hatch and morph to certain unit", but this might might be breaking the balance a bit.

Still, random thoughts of a noob.
I play the Chess of Computer Age
quaristice
Profile Joined February 2021
112 Posts
April 24 2021 19:19 GMT
#3
when remastered came out i switched to using a layout that corresponds to the location of the icons on the UI

so

QWE
ASD
ZXC

the hardest thing to get use to was attacking with "E"

I think I would consider switching to
WER
SDF
XCV

because it makes more numbers easier to reach.

also i would consider putting cloak / uncloak, siege / unsiege, burrow / unburrow on separate keys
Trozz
Profile Blog Joined November 2008
Canada3454 Posts
April 27 2021 19:37 GMT
#4
Could be like Boxer:
Remove any key not pressed.
Quite the hardware hack.
A build is not a guess, an estimation or a hunch, a feeling, or a foolish intuition. A build is a dependable, unwavering, unarguably accurate, portrayer of your ambition.
BonitiilloO
Profile Joined June 2013
Dominican Republic614 Posts
April 29 2021 22:30 GMT
#5
i put all the hotkeys as they are in SC2 to BW.
How may help u?
HaFnium
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United Kingdom1074 Posts
May 03 2021 22:42 GMT
#6
I changed move command to Q (do people even use the hotkey for move)?
I accidentally Alt QQ a few times..
BW forever!
Return
Profile Joined June 2005
Ivory Coast856 Posts
May 06 2021 12:13 GMT
#7
On May 04 2021 07:42 HaFnium wrote:
I changed move command to Q (do people even use the hotkey for move)?
I accidentally Alt QQ a few times..


zerg use it a lot and I think terrans use it a bit too. I dont know for protoss but I'd guess it makes sense for probes and scouts
Diiiscoo-oh, thats where the happy people go!
kogeT
Profile Joined September 2013
Poland2037 Posts
May 06 2021 12:16 GMT
#8
On April 25 2021 04:19 quaristice wrote:
when remastered came out i switched to using a layout that corresponds to the location of the icons on the UI

so

QWE
ASD
ZXC

the hardest thing to get use to was attacking with "E"

I think I would consider switching to
WER
SDF
XCV

because it makes more numbers easier to reach.

also i would consider putting cloak / uncloak, siege / unsiege, burrow / unburrow on separate keys


Problem with that is in BW you cannot rehotkey 1234567890 and location hotkeys. So if you know the hotkey setup for each race (e.g terran hotkeys barracks on 45678 or scans on 90) then it make sense to use other keys than qweasdzxc.
https://www.twitch.tv/kogetbw
quaristice
Profile Joined February 2021
112 Posts
May 06 2021 23:12 GMT
#9
On May 06 2021 21:16 kogeT wrote:
Problem with that is in BW you cannot rehotkey 1234567890 and location hotkeys. So if you know the hotkey setup for each race (e.g terran hotkeys barracks on 45678 or scans on 90) then it make sense to use other keys than qweasdzxc.

yea i can agree with that, i do have to hit 0q for scan, which is not ideal, however,

it does make sense to keep the majority of the keys on the left side because of easy access of f2-f4, and also minimize hand movement across the keyboard overall, and only change the ones for buildings you would often hotkey on the higher numbers

for me, part of the issue is that when i have come back to the game i switched from terran to random and i did not actually know the hotkeys for protoss and zerg before. this qwe/asd/zxc layout has accelerated my learning, but maybe at the cost of future learning as you are pointing out
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