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The true logical answer to all this is that people should tailor their own hotkey setup to -their own hand- and -their own movements/positioning-.
The "Be all and End all Hotkey Guide" Should not be a hotkey setup like this, it should be a guide on how to tailor your own hotkey setup to your own hand. Im sorry to shoot down your year and a half of research, but that research applies to you only, or a handful of people that have the same hand size and positioning as you, at most.
I used the scaffolding of darkgrid and added a 3x3 grid that incorporates Q W E, A S D, and Z X C. The grid takes care of buildings/unit control while the surrounding keys take care of everything else. For instance, i use ` and 1 as screen hotkeys, 2 and 3 as CC+Tech and Production. 4/5 is scout/harass, R and T are Medivac/Viking (If T isnt in use then whichever im using goes on R for efficiency), F and G are Main Force and Ghost/Tank, Spacebar is Ghost/Tank. Caps lock i had as Full Army but i think ill change it to Base Camera and put main army elsewhere. My other screen hotkeys are on F1 - F4 as i completely agree with the above poster that mentioned holding down alt is counter efficient when trying to snap to camera locations - A bit of reach is acceptable to counter hand deformation that happens when holding alt.
I also made several changes i feel are very important to help with error cancellation. I downloaded SharpKeys and changed the Left Alt and Left Windows Key to both output as Left Ctrl. This gives you a control group assignment button that is 3x as long.
Mouse button 1 and 2 are used as Control and Shift, so you can create/add to control groups and camera locations quickly. This also addresses the issue of Mouse Accuracy and future tournament changes as you can choose to use this method to increase your efficiency but not when accuracy will be vital and cannot be effected at all.
The key to all of this is that this setup fits -MY- hand well, the strings of keys i press alot (for instance, 2 > E for SCV's and 3 > Q for Marines) are all really easy to hit in succession and the perfect balance of Reach vs Hand Deformation (holding Alt/Ctrl while pressing other buttons) has been reached.
To anybody thinking of blindly switching to this hotkey setup and following it word for word, i urge you to please mess around with it and see if you feel like anything needs to be changed around to suit your own hand, this is very important. You can start by laying your hand out on the keyboard how you normally would when you play and then starting to take note of how your hand moves when you carry out certain actions, use this to ascertain what changes need to be made and where.
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Pro Tip: Change Immortal hotkey from I to E
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Hey JaKaTaK! Enjoying the thread, looks like a sweet setup. Looking forward to that write up comparing it to Darkgrid. Looks like you put a lot of work into it.
There's a few thing that jump out to me as less efficient than Darkgrid at first glance at this late hour:
1) Typically 3 consistently injected hatcheries is all that's needed to inject, and many games go up to 3 injected hatcheries. Due to the placement of the control groups, you cannot use a 3-finger role to perform the layered camera inject, forcing the zerg player to either take the extra 120 milliseconds to reposition a finger and creating a disjointed motion, or awkwardly scrunch their hand to reach QWS. Darkgrid places the first 3 on QWD, a more easy sequence to roll through the events.
2) Quick-reaction units are not placed under the resting fingers. For instant, the most time-sensitive reactions such as tanks for baneling focus fire and sentries to block a surprise rush are placed under the thumb (space), requiring no finger adjustment time.
3) Things like sentries having their own control group. Sentries require no micro that cannot be performed through using them in the main army, due to their spell casting being the unit page you get if the army control group is created without Templar in it. This complicates the unit assignment process by adding an extra step every time sentries are warped in, takes away a control group from somewhere else.
4) I don't know if this is actually an issue, but in Darkgrid every spell's position is optimized based on their control group, so that the fingers used to select a unit are not used in it's casting. For instance, stalkers on B is quite a reach for a unit that must be frequently independently microed, and I don't know where that puts the fingers used to select Blink. When reaching for B, only my pinkie is unaffected by the reach. If blink is not on the pinkie, the shift in finger positions is less effecient and can make for awkward back-reaching with the ring finger. If it is on the pinkie, you're placing the burden of blink on the finger that must also press shift for the shift-blink micro, which you know is bad news.
Also, if the default position of the fingers for this layout is QWER, then one must twist their wrist to reach B every time, making the layout less ergonomic.
I'm too tired to look deeper, and sorry if I brought up something that isn't actually a problem. Look forward to your post.
(P.S. the mouse buttons in Darkgrid only select production structures, which means your next action is on the keyboard. The user must perform a keyboard action before using the mouse for anything ]aside from rally points which don't need high precision], so the small loss of accuracy has time to be restored long before one micros their units, all with the bonus of increased speed by spreading the burden of selection and production across both hands. I'm not saying you should switch yours to use mouse, I'm glad someone is developing a key-board only so I can focus on the mouse enhanced stuff. What I am saying is that all the know liabilities of using mouse buttons have been accounted for and made a non-issue.)
I really like having more control groups under the resting fingers, I may work that in with the HOTS update.
Nice work man. 
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If this is designed to guide/attract new players I think it's a little over complicated and will easily lose/deter new players.
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Hm, I've been playing around a bit with the default hotkeys you have for building units and structures.
I feel like there could be a little more consistency in how they're assigned:
- Consistency in spell hotkeys, S for primary skill, W for secondary, Q for "special". I realise that some of the current hotkeys are "optimised" in relation to the units' ideal hotkey location, but I feel like this could get confusing (possibly cause I play random but something to keep in mind).
+ Show Spoiler +Sentry- Hallucinated Phoenix Q (very useful as you can quickly go QQ, rest of the units aren't important  ) High Templar- Feedback W - Morph Archon Q Ghost- EMP S - Snipe W Raven- PDD S - Turret W - HSM Q Infestor- Fungal S - Infested Terran W
- Consistency in unit production. Q and W seem to be used for caster and harass units respectively while X is a tier 3/high tech unit and A the most common/basic fighting unit:
+ Show Spoiler +Robo
- Observer Q
- Warp Prism W
- Immortal A
- Colossi X (S is reasonable though since it's pretty common in all matchups)
Factory
- Thor X
Hatch
- Queen Q (Burrow research moved to Y so it's the same as the command)
Larva (probably need to play around with this a bit)
- Drone S (brings it in line with Probe and SCV although you have to double tap)
- Ling A
- Roach Z
- Hydra C
- Ultra X (brings it in line with other T3 units although I can see why it's on S to avoid double tapping more common units)
- Consistency in unit upgrades
+ Show Spoiler +- Changes to unit built hotkeys should be reflected in their respective upgrade hotheys
- Zerg unit upgrades should be S rather than correspond to the unit hotkey if it's a unit that you'd want to build immediately before/after you start the upgrade since you have to select larva before you can build the unit. This means you can select the upgrade (S) with one finger, select your hatches (D) with another and then select larva (S) without having to move the first finger
- Consistency in construction hotkeys (not as important)
+ Show Spoiler +Probe
- Twilight Council X (brings it in line with X for upgrade building)
SCV
- Armory X (brings it in line with X for upgrade building)
Drone
- Changes to larva should ideally be reflected in the hotkey for the respective units' tech building
- Pool A
- Baneling Nest S
- Roach Warren Z
- Spine C (brings it in line with C for ground static defense)
- Spore V (doesn't match Terran equivalent, could possibly switch Turret and Sensor Tower around?)
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On May 03 2012 12:10 oMNY.SEA wrote:
The true logical answer to all this is that people should tailor their own hotkey setup to -their own hand- and -their own movements/positioning-.
The "Be all and End all Hotkey Guide" Should not be a hotkey setup like this, it should be a guide on how to tailor your own hotkey setup to your own hand. Im sorry to shoot down your year and a half of research, but that research applies to you only, or a handful of people that have the same hand size and positioning as you, at most.
I used the scaffolding of darkgrid and added a 3x3 grid that incorporates Q W E, A S D, and Z X C. The grid takes care of buildings/unit control while the surrounding keys take care of everything else. For instance, i use ` and 1 as screen hotkeys, 2 and 3 as CC+Tech and Production. 4/5 is scout/harass, R and T are Medivac/Viking (If T isnt in use then whichever im using goes on R for efficiency), F and G are Main Force and Ghost/Tank, Spacebar is Ghost/Tank. Caps lock i had as Full Army but i think ill change it to Base Camera and put main army elsewhere. My other screen hotkeys are on F1 - F4 as i completely agree with the above poster that mentioned holding down alt is counter efficient when trying to snap to camera locations - A bit of reach is acceptable to counter hand deformation that happens when holding alt.
I also made several changes i feel are very important to help with error cancellation. I downloaded SharpKeys and changed the Left Alt and Left Windows Key to both output as Left Ctrl. This gives you a control group assignment button that is 3x as long.
Mouse button 1 and 2 are used as Control and Shift, so you can create/add to control groups and camera locations quickly. This also addresses the issue of Mouse Accuracy and future tournament changes as you can choose to use this method to increase your efficiency but not when accuracy will be vital and cannot be effected at all.
The key to all of this is that this setup fits -MY- hand well, the strings of keys i press alot (for instance, 2 > E for SCV's and 3 > Q for Marines) are all really easy to hit in succession and the perfect balance of Reach vs Hand Deformation (holding Alt/Ctrl while pressing other buttons) has been reached.
To anybody thinking of blindly switching to this hotkey setup and following it word for word, i urge you to please mess around with it and see if you feel like anything needs to be changed around to suit your own hand, this is very important. You can start by laying your hand out on the keyboard how you normally would when you play and then starting to take note of how your hand moves when you carry out certain actions, use this to ascertain what changes need to be made and where.
I have to criticize you a bit for starting with "The true logical answer to all this" and later saying, "The 'Be all and End all Hotkey Guide' Should not be a hotkey setup like this." By using that opening, it is as if you are claiming that you have the "be all and end all" judgement of what the conclusion everyone should be drawing from "all this". You use of language here is hypocritical. That being said, I think you bring up a lot of good opinions here.
Everyone has their own style; I both respect and encourage that. However, not everyone has the time to spend creating the perfect hotkey setup for them, and standard or grid leave a lot to be desired. Chameleon is an ending point for some, and a starting point for others. Notice I label one section "how I use it as Terran" and not "how you should use it as Terran" etc. We all have human hands, (aside from those of us who have bear hands), and there are certain consistencies about how the human hand works that I have kept in mind to design this layout.
This is not the be all, end all, hotkey setup. This is a work in progress. I spent a long time working on it in private because I wanted to make it as good as I could without help, before asking for help, therefore not wasting anyone's time. I think Chameleon is in a good place for testing by other people so that all of us can work together to find the best overall setup for most people. I want to provide an alternative to standard, grid, and Darkgrid (for people who don't want to use 4th and 5th mouse buttons.) for all players. Many people don't have the time (or don't want to spend time) working out the best setup for them, but still feel standard and grid are sub-optimal.
Concerning your personal setup, I think its really great for people who are down to remap keys on the keyboard and use extra keys on the mouse. I especially like the idea of reducing "Hand Deformation". From the evidence I have seen, and felt, the Darkgrid method for screen hotkeys (using Alt) does not cause wrist or hand strain and is faster and more accurate than reaching for the F1-F4 keys. I am totally willing to change any and all of my opinions as more evidence comes in. I honestly appreciate your contribution to this project, despite a somewhat aggressive language choice. I make the same mistake in discourse often and am working to give my opinions more humbly. If you think my language is inaccurate or rude I definitely would appreciate the heads up, it is hard to fix things like that without help. :D
Hopefully there is something you can take from this post and add to your setup. If not, thanks for helping us out :D
On May 03 2012 14:03 Zariel wrote:
Pro Tip: Change Immortal hotkey from I to E
hahaha, yea yea. The Immortal hotkey on standard is sooo ridiculous.
On May 03 2012 17:05 FoxyMayhem wrote:Hey JaKaTaK! Enjoying the thread, looks like a sweet setup. Looking forward to that write up comparing it to Darkgrid. Looks like you put a lot of work into it. There's a few thing that jump out to me as less efficient than Darkgrid at first glance at this late hour: 1) Typically 3 consistently injected hatcheries is all that's needed to inject, and many games go up to 3 injected hatcheries. Due to the placement of the control groups, you cannot use a 3-finger role to perform the layered camera inject, forcing the zerg player to either take the extra 120 milliseconds to reposition a finger and creating a disjointed motion, or awkwardly scrunch their hand to reach QWS. Darkgrid places the first 3 on QWD, a more easy sequence to roll through the events. 2) Quick-reaction units are not placed under the resting fingers. For instant, the most time-sensitive reactions such as tanks for baneling focus fire and sentries to block a surprise rush are placed under the thumb (space), requiring no finger adjustment time. 3) Things like sentries having their own control group. Sentries require no micro that cannot be performed through using them in the main army, due to their spell casting being the unit page you get if the army control group is created without Templar in it. This complicates the unit assignment process by adding an extra step every time sentries are warped in, takes away a control group from somewhere else. 4) I don't know if this is actually an issue, but in Darkgrid every spell's position is optimized based on their control group, so that the fingers used to select a unit are not used in it's casting. For instance, stalkers on B is quite a reach for a unit that must be frequently independently microed, and I don't know where that puts the fingers used to select Blink. When reaching for B, only my pinkie is unaffected by the reach. If blink is not on the pinkie, the shift in finger positions is less effecient and can make for awkward back-reaching with the ring finger. If it is on the pinkie, you're placing the burden of blink on the finger that must also press shift for the shift-blink micro, which you know is bad news. Also, if the default position of the fingers for this layout is QWER, then one must twist their wrist to reach B every time, making the layout less ergonomic. I'm too tired to look deeper, and sorry if I brought up something that isn't actually a problem. Look forward to your post. (P.S. the mouse buttons in Darkgrid only select production structures, which means your next action is on the keyboard. The user must perform a keyboard action before using the mouse for anything ]aside from rally points which don't need high precision], so the small loss of accuracy has time to be restored long before one micros their units, all with the bonus of increased speed by spreading the burden of selection and production across both hands. I'm not saying you should switch yours to use mouse, I'm glad someone is developing a key-board only so I can focus on the mouse enhanced stuff. What I am saying is that all the know liabilities of using mouse buttons have been accounted for and made a non-issue.) I really like having more control groups under the resting fingers, I may work that in with the HOTS update. Nice work man.
Firstly, I am honored to hear from you and look forward to working with you on this project. I'll get deeper into Darkgrid as soon as I can, got a 10 hour day today, so hopefully I can make some good headway on the comparison.
1. I use the Base Camera Inject method with this layout and use the screen hotkeys to jump quickly to a base in case it is dropped. The inject method has your pinky on CapsLk(base cam), middle on D(queens) and pointer on V(inject). Zerg is definitely my weakest race out of the 3 and I recently learned that in order to not tie up extra supply, 3-4 queens are the most top players use to inject and build extra hatcheries instead to keep up larva production. I am going to do a lot more research on various inject techniques and try to find the most efficient one I can incorporate into this setup without sacrificing too much.
2. The spacebar was a late addition to the setup. Originally I had decided to exclude the thumb entirely but I realized that is was a huge mistake. I may have to start from scratch and rebuild the layout with spacebar as a home key. Do you leave your thumb on the space bar the entire time you are playing? I usually rest it just below the spacebar to avoid hitting it accidentally.
3. Because sentries have a range 5 attack and you want them in the middle of your other units for guardian sheild anyway it seems like a good idea to just cast with them from the main army. However, in a situation where you have stalkers zealots and sentries attacking an enemy force, the stalkers will line up behind the sentries to attack because they have a range of 6. Once the zealots are dead, the next enemy target is the sentries. If the battle doesn't go well, saving the sentries often takes priority over saving the stalkers. I want to be able to grab all my sentries quick and start running away first, while i micro my stalkers to buy time for them to get home. You have a scout control group on Darkgrid instead of having a sentry control group. I am not sure if it is worth having a scoutCG and ctrl clicking to micro all sentries instead of not having a scoutCG and microing sentries with their own control group. I have to spend more time thinking about it. What are your thoughts? (I use my harrassCG to probe scout and poke scout currently as I don't have as much use for both harrass control groups at that point in the game)
4. There are no repetitive finger strokes (that i know of) in Chameleon. This is because I use a left right split instead of the standard up and down split. Blink is on S. Attack move is on A. Shift blinking is pinkyShift, ringS, stalkersB. I feel very comfortable doing this, but i do see the effect on the ring finger. Do you really avoid any movement of the fingers via reaching in all keystrokes? Just the most common ones? I haven't gotten too deep into Darkgrid just yet, but if you have accomplished this, I am incredibly impressed and look forward to mining more golden nuggets from Darkgrid and adding them to this collage of ideas.
Edit: when reaching for the Q, your middle finger does not rest on the D. So using QWD for larva injects is very similar to me using Shift S B for stalker micro (i would argue that the hand position is more natural in Shift S B than QWD but that's some serious hair splitting and I don't think we're at that point yet)
5. ASDF are the homekeys in this setup. I hope things make more sense to you now. I look forward to a deeper critique when you have the time :D I won't be waiting until the HOTS update to rethink the spacebar, I will get to work right away.
6. I didn't realize how nicely it worked having the macro keys on the mouse. Thank you for explaining that to me, it makes a lot more sense now. Well done, seriously. Also, I didn't know that you do not need to get any 3rd party program to bind the 4th and 5th mouse buttons either! (this was a serious deterring factor for me). I am absolutely going to have to rethink not using the mouse buttons. Long term I want to have a lefty and a righty and now maybe a lefty w/mouse and a righty w/mouse as well. Definitely going to get into some more testing right away. Thanks!
7. "Things like sentries having their own control group." What are the other things. If you have the time I am really interested to see what other things you think are better to use for control groups.
8. Do you rest your hands on QWER with Darkgrid?
9. Have you experimented with FGHJ homekeys?
10. How do you solve the problem of zerg overlap with hatchery upgrades and larva abilities? This overlap often causes accidental queens and upgrades.
Continue to kick ass. Looking forward to your response.
On May 04 2012 00:21 iCanHasSkittles wrote:
If this is designed to guide/attract new players I think it's a little over complicated and will easily lose/deter new players.
This guide is somewhat separate to the show TheJaKaTaK. I will be presenting Chameleon to new players (because it is easier to learn than standard and more efficient than standard IMO) and presenting Darkgrid to new players who like to use extra mouse buttons (like MMO players). However, the point of this post is not to attract new players, it is to present Chameleon for criticism and scrutiny in order to push it to the next level of efficiency with the help of all those interested. I agree, this is a terrible place to start for a new player. I don't discuss any in depth hotkey stuff with new players aside from telling them that they should probably start off with Chameleon or Darkgrid so that way they don't have to change down the road. (which is much harder) TheJaKaTaK is very much long term focused so that new players can get the best setup available now, for the things they want to do later.
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On May 03 2012 04:24 JaKaTaK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2012 03:22 Pabs wrote:
Wow, grats on working hard saving money to work on a life goal. I as well plan to live off of savings soon so I can dedicate as much time as I like to gaming. So far I bought a house and rented out the extra rooms. I got less than a year left of 70 hour work weeks. Soon I'll install the solar panels for free power and refinance so the renters cover my expenses. I will look up your show. I apreciate dedicated people with good attitudes.
Woah! That's awesome man!!! You going pro? Or do you have something else in mind?
No plans to go Pro, the idea is to reduce the stress of time and money management not to make it the focal point lol. I'm a big proponent of doing whatever the hell makes you happy and the critics be damned. I'm pretty sure that last statement is the secret of life or something like that. I'm quite happy with the simple addictive allure of improvement and mastery. If I manage to get really good at starcraft in the process then great... Though its one more game my friends wont let me propose for the next lan party...
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On May 04 2012 01:50 Akinokaze wrote:Hm, I've been playing around a bit with the default hotkeys you have for building units and structures. I feel like there could be a little more consistency in how they're assigned: - Consistency in spell hotkeys, S for primary skill, W for secondary, Q for "special". I realise that some of the current hotkeys are "optimised" in relation to the units' ideal hotkey location I feel like this could get confusing (possibly cause I play random but something to keep in mind). + Show Spoiler +Sentry- Hallucinated Phoenix Q (very useful as you can quickly go QQ, rest of the units aren't important ) High Templar- Feedback W - Morph Archon Q Ghost- EMP S - Snipe W Raven- PDD S - Turret W - HSM Q Infestor- Fungal S - Infested Terran W - Consistency in unit production. Q and W seem to be used for caster and harass units respectively while X is a tier 3/high tech unit and A the most common/basic fighting unit: + Show Spoiler +Robo
- Observer Q
- Warp Prism W
- Immortal A
- Colossi X (S is reasonable though since it's pretty common in all matchups)
Factory
- Thor X
Hatch
- Queen Q
Larva (probably need to play around with this a bit)
- Drone S (brings it in line with Probe and SCV although you have to double tap)
- Ling A
- Roach Z
- Hydra C
- Ultra X (brings it in line with other T3 units although I can see why it's on S to avoid double tapping more common units)
- Consistency in construction hotkeys (not as important) + Show Spoiler +Probe
- Twilight Council X (brings it in line with X for upgrade building)
SCV
- Armory X (brings it in line with X for upgrade building)
Drone
- Changes to larva should ideally be reflected in the hotkey for the respective units' tech building
- Pool A
- Baneling Nest S
- Roach Warren Z
- Spine C (brings it in line with C for ground static defense)
- Spore V (doesn't match Terran equivalent, could possibly switch Turret and Sensor Tower around?)
Thank you so much for your very detailed critique. This is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping for!
I was going for consistency in spell hotkeys! Instead of going for which spells are used the most (which is dependent on the game and the player) I decided to change to S = single target, W = AoE and Q = Special, meaning that you have to get an upgrade to use it, it is rarely used, or if you accidentally hit it, it would be bad. Q is also the morph key, it is used to make archons, banelings, broodlords, overseers, lairs, hives and greater spires.
Also, Pressing the same key twice in a row is both less reliable and slower than using 2 keys (test it on a key logger if you don't believe me) If you look under the OP title "Avoid Repetitive Finger Strokes" it has a more complete explanation as to why that is.
+ Show Spoiler +Sentry
Hallucinate Phoenix is QW (faster and more reliable that QQ) When reaching for the Q key, your ring finger naturally moves to the W key, making QW the most efficient and comfortable choice.
High Templar
S for Feedback (single target)
W for Storm (area of effect)
Q for Archon (morph)
I think having feedback on S and Q on warp archon is much better. It is harder to accidentally hit Q than S or W and accidentally selecting the feedback or storm command is no problem as it requires an additional click to cast, while accidentally morphing 2 or more full energy high templar can be game changing. I am changing it and updating the file/credits.
Ghost
S = Snipe (single target)
W = EMP (area of effect)
Q = Nuke (special)
Raven
I am not convinced that PDD is a more pressed command than Auto-Turret. It might be at the pro level in the current meta game, but Auto-Turret costs 50 energy while PDD costs 100, so there will be more situations where you need something to give you an edge but only have 75 energy on the raven and can't wait for 25 more to drop the PDD. Also, PDD only works on units with ranged projectile attacks. Auto-Turret can help sway the tide of a battle against any enemy unit and even harass worker lines, or cut off reinforcements. I feel that Auto-Turret is more versatile and has more opportunities for use on average than PDD. What is your position on this? Q for Seeker Missile for sure tho.
Infestor
The Infested Terran spell is often used with shift, whereas the fungal growth spell never uses shift. Shift S is faster than Shift W. Infested Terran gets S, Fungal gets W. (this is why W is AoE and not S)
Consistency in Unit Production and Building Construction (T and P)
+ Show Spoiler +I used Q for spell casters, A for the most common unit, S for the 2nd most common unit, W for the 3rd most common unit, and X for capital ships previously. In addition, I also made all of the buildings that unlocked those units match up as much as possible with the key to produce the unit. X for fleet beacon and fusion core, Q for Robo Bay, W for armory. I made these consistencies to lessen the learning curve without having to sacrifice anything (especially for random players) I really like moving the armory and twilight to X to continue the upgrades theme. I really like using Q for the templar archives instead of W.
After a huge shuffle here's what I got.
Gateway
Q for high templar
W for sentries
(this allows templar archives to be Q and sentries are more common than HT anyway)
Robo
Q for observer
S for warp prism
A for immortal
W for Colossus
(this allows Robo Bay to be W)
I agree that immortals are more common because a player is likely to make more immortals per game than observers.
warp prisms and observers are probably about tied for commonality. For consistancy with the medivac, I will keep the warp prism at S.
Stargate
Z for Carrier
(this allows for X to be twilight council and for Z to be Fleet Beacon)
It worked out that Z was also available for Fusion Core and Battle Cruiser with some slight modifications.
Factory
Thor is X
(this is consistent with the armory being X)
Starport
Select Builder is moved to H (it is a very uncommon command and hitting it accidentally could be bad)
Battle Cruiser is Z
(this is consistant with the Fusion Core being Z and for all capital ships to be Z)
To avoid repetitive finger strokes and increase consistency, Turret is now made with 2 and Sensor tower with Z
Concerning the Zerg
+ Show Spoiler +With the zerg, you only make each "unit unlocking" building once (or more if it gets destroyed or is a spire or if you're doing a crazy double roach warren upgrade timing) Compared with the terran and protoss which make multiple "unit unlocking" structures because they double as unit producing structures. This makes the puzzle a bit more tricky. Because zerg have supply producing units instead of supply producing structures A is available for a structure hotkey.
The most frequently built zerg structure is definitely the spine crawler. (do you agree?)
A for Spine Crawler.
The 2nd most built frequently built structure is definitely the spore crawler (excluding the hatchery and gas geysers for consistency sake, do you agree?)
S for Spore Crawler
2 for baneling nest.
All upgrades match their unit or ability key when possible.
All units match their unit unlocking structure still.
The morph command has been moved to Q for increased consistency and less accidental morphing. (hive, lair, greater spire, archon, baneling, overseer and broodlord all morph from their previous forms via the Q button now)
Because of this I moved Queen to W.
The Ultralisk is on S to avoid accidental unit producion (ultra is high up in the tech tree)
The Select Larva command is on S and the drone is on A to make things more consistent for random players.
(FS to build workers with terran and protoss, FSA to build workers with zerg)
The reason why A isn't for all workers is because of the planetary fucking fortress (goddamn attacking buildings). But also because this works out much better; the second button you press to make a worker is always S, the first is your control group for your nex, hatch, cc (F for the way I use my control groups)
I also moved the select idle workers back to F1 until I think of a better idea. (Some Zerg stuff still causing problems)
Burrow is now on a toggle (N for burrow and Y for unburrow)
Credit has been noted for those who helped facilitate the change.
The download file has been updated.
Continue to kick ass. :D
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On May 04 2012 03:01 Pabs wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2012 04:24 JaKaTaK wrote:On May 03 2012 03:22 Pabs wrote:
Wow, grats on working hard saving money to work on a life goal. I as well plan to live off of savings soon so I can dedicate as much time as I like to gaming. So far I bought a house and rented out the extra rooms. I got less than a year left of 70 hour work weeks. Soon I'll install the solar panels for free power and refinance so the renters cover my expenses. I will look up your show. I apreciate dedicated people with good attitudes.
Woah! That's awesome man!!! You going pro? Or do you have something else in mind? No plans to go Pro, the idea is to reduce the stress of time and money management not to make it the focal point lol. I'm a big proponent of doing whatever the hell makes you happy and the critics be damned. I'm pretty sure that last statement is the secret of life or something like that. I'm quite happy with the simple addictive allure of improvement and mastery. If I manage to get really good at starcraft in the process then great... Though its one more game my friends wont let me propose for the next lan party...
That sounds fantastic man, good luck to you :D
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What do you think about using G for main army? I feel like this is more natural(For protoss at least-- late game especially) to tap D F then go back to moving army around with attack move and G. Also -- I feel like its much quicker to G - A vs 3 - A.
Thoughts?
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I appreciate the time and effort you put into this, but like you, I shake my head at every kotkey thread (including this one). Hotkeys are personal, and everybody's hands are different. Not only that, but there is a learning curse to every setup. You said it took you a year to develop this, which means you had a year to get used to this setup. To me it has two major flaws. This first is that it is highly unintuitive. Looking at it, while there is some spatial reasoning, there isn't a whole lot of mnemonic reasoning. It would be very hard for someone who isn't you to learn and remember this setup intuitively. The other flaw I see is that while it is designed for overall economy of motion in that everything is close together, especially vertically, there isn't a whole lot of thought put into the economy of alternating fingerings. For example, having all of your different units on different hotkeys is useful (although in my experience you only really need three as casters often stack well with support units of a similar breed; e.g. ravens and vikings). Depending on how you are personally comfortable playing, there is a lot of awkward left-right movement with the same finger when sometimes it is better to have things spaced out so that you are using a different part of your hand anytime you are alternating between frequently used keys (i.e. closer isn't always better). My point isn't that it's not a good hotkey setup. You call it the ultimate hotkey setup, when you really mean that it's the ultimate hotkey setup for you. You mentioned reading these types of threads and being disappointed that they were as useful as you'd like, but the reality is that it wasn't as useful for you as it is for somebody else. It's a little bit of friendly narcissism to think that your hard work should pay off equally for everyone. While I love seeing what new ideas and solutions people come up with, the point is never to find what the "ultimate" solution is because that just doesn't exist. It would be a teagedy to see someone spend hours, days, or weeks trying to learn your hotkey setup in the hope that it will make them a better player when the reality is that is probably won't. So go easy on the promises and just be happy with the fact that you found something that works well for you.
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On May 04 2012 07:06 theBOOCH wrote:
I appreciate the time and effort you put into this, but like you, I shake my head at every kotkey thread (including this one). Hotkeys are personal, and everybody's hands are different. Not only that, but there is a learning curse to every setup. You said it took you a year to develop this, which means you had a year to get used to this setup. To me it has two major flaws. This first is that it is highly unintuitive. Looking at it, while there is some spatial reasoning, there isn't a whole lot of mnemonic reasoning. It would be very hard for someone who isn't you to learn and remember this setup intuitively. The other flaw I see is that while it is designed for overall economy of motion in that everything is close together, especially vertically, there isn't a whole lot of thought put into the economy of alternating fingerings. For example, having all of your different units on different hotkeys is useful (although in my experience you only really need three as casters often stack well with support units of a similar breed; e.g. ravens and vikings). Depending on how you are personally comfortable playing, there is a lot of awkward left-right movement with the same finger when sometimes it is better to have things spaced out so that you are using a different part of your hand anytime you are alternating between frequently used keys (i.e. closer isn't always better). My point isn't that it's not a good hotkey setup. You call it the ultimate hotkey setup, when you really mean that it's the ultimate hotkey setup for you. You mentioned reading these types of threads and being disappointed that they were as useful as you'd like, but the reality is that it wasn't as useful for you as it is for somebody else. It's a little bit of friendly narcissism to think that your hard work should pay off equally for everyone. While I love seeing what new ideas and solutions people come up with, the point is never to find what the "ultimate" solution is because that just doesn't exist. It would be a teagedy to see someone spend hours, days, or weeks trying to learn your hotkey setup in the hope that it will make them a better player when the reality is that is probably won't. So go easy on the promises and just be happy with the fact that you found something that works well for you.
People can customize to their own taste, it would just be better to use this or Darkgrid as a base and make your own customizations rather than the default or grid, either way you probably aren't going to start from scratch. He didn't say "RAWR DON'T CUSTOMIZE THIS". Frankly I'd like to see more hotkey threads so we can compare and contrast their positives and negatives, because all of them are better than Blizzard's default.
As I posted earlier it took me about 1 month / 35 games (which isn't that many games) to learn darkgrid to the point where I felt comfortable and played well.
Also please use line breaks.
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On May 04 2012 07:50 SirPsychoMantis wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2012 07:06 theBOOCH wrote:
I appreciate the time and effort you put into this, but like you, I shake my head at every kotkey thread (including this one). Hotkeys are personal, and everybody's hands are different. Not only that, but there is a learning curse to every setup. You said it took you a year to develop this, which means you had a year to get used to this setup. To me it has two major flaws. This first is that it is highly unintuitive. Looking at it, while there is some spatial reasoning, there isn't a whole lot of mnemonic reasoning. It would be very hard for someone who isn't you to learn and remember this setup intuitively. The other flaw I see is that while it is designed for overall economy of motion in that everything is close together, especially vertically, there isn't a whole lot of thought put into the economy of alternating fingerings. For example, having all of your different units on different hotkeys is useful (although in my experience you only really need three as casters often stack well with support units of a similar breed; e.g. ravens and vikings). Depending on how you are personally comfortable playing, there is a lot of awkward left-right movement with the same finger when sometimes it is better to have things spaced out so that you are using a different part of your hand anytime you are alternating between frequently used keys (i.e. closer isn't always better). My point isn't that it's not a good hotkey setup. You call it the ultimate hotkey setup, when you really mean that it's the ultimate hotkey setup for you. You mentioned reading these types of threads and being disappointed that they were as useful as you'd like, but the reality is that it wasn't as useful for you as it is for somebody else. It's a little bit of friendly narcissism to think that your hard work should pay off equally for everyone. While I love seeing what new ideas and solutions people come up with, the point is never to find what the "ultimate" solution is because that just doesn't exist. It would be a teagedy to see someone spend hours, days, or weeks trying to learn your hotkey setup in the hope that it will make them a better player when the reality is that is probably won't. So go easy on the promises and just be happy with the fact that you found something that works well for you. People can customize to their own taste, it would just be better to use this or Darkgrid as a base and make your own customizations rather than the default or grid, either way you probably aren't going to start from scratch. He didn't say "RAWR DON'T CUSTOMIZE THIS". Frankly I'd like to see more hotkey threads so we can compare and contrast their positives and negatives, because all of them are better than Blizzard's default. As I posted earlier it took me about 1 month / 35 games (which isn't that many games) to learn darkgrid to the point where I felt comfortable and played well. Also please use line breaks.
Thanks for saving my time by saying what I was going to say before I took the time to say it.
"You mentioned reading these types of threads and being disappointed that they were as useful as you'd like"
- no, I don't think I said that
"but like you, I shake my head at every kotkey thread"
- i also don't shake my head, I think many of them have a lot to offer.
"You call it the ultimate hotkey setup, when you really mean that it's the ultimate hotkey setup for you."
- no, i don't think i said that either
"the point is never to find what the "ultimate" solution is because that just doesn't exist"
- I am not looking for the ultimate solution, nor do I claim this is it. This is a work in progress. What we are looking for, is the best possible layout for the most people.
"It would be very hard for someone who isn't you to learn and remember this setup intuitively"
- I disagree. There have been several people who have said that the flow is very natural and intuitive and are picking it up quickly.
"It would be a teagedy to see someone spend hours, days, or weeks trying to learn your hotkey setup in the hope that it will make them a better player when the reality is that is probably won't"
- being able to execute commands more quickly probably will make them a better player, because they will be able to do more than they used to. Obviously this alone is not enough, it is a piece in a bigger picture. This layout (or other great custom layouts) will give those who learn it a greater capacity for actions, once they learn to fully utilize this increased capacity, they will be better players.
"So go easy on the promises and just be happy with the fact that you found something that works well for you."
-Definitely, good thing i didn't promise anything in the OP. The word promise is not anywhere. But you're totally right, when someone figures out something cool they should just hide it from everyone else so that they are the only person that can benefit from it, that's what community is all about.
You really ought to read through someone's post before you criticize it.
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On May 04 2012 06:41 Dahkar wrote:
What do you think about using G for main army? I feel like this is more natural(For protoss at least-- late game especially) to tap D F then go back to moving army around with attack move and G. Also -- I feel like its much quicker to G - A vs 3 - A.
Thoughts?
I definitely think that G is faster and more natural. My logic behind putting spellcasters on TGB instead of TB and something else, while army gets G is because it is easier to cast spells from TGB, where with the army, you only need to Attack move. It is definitely something I've been wrestling over for a while now.
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I'm thinking of switching R to main army and having 3/E as harass/Flank. Loving the hotkey set up so far though. The home keys feel really natural. The hardest part about switching is using the C/V as my build keys. My fingers seem to fumble and get confused when I reach for the bottom rows(especially those keys) One thing I did notice is that the C/V is backwards.(IE C is Advancd and V is normal buildings) Where as visually they are backwards. Was there a reason for this?
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Though I'm really worried, I'll give it a shot tomorrow.. got a feeling it will be a painful experience. Also like that mouse buttons aren't used.
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On May 04 2012 13:39 iokke wrote:
Though I'm really worried, I'll give it a shot tomorrow.. got a feeling it will be a painful experience. Also like that mouse buttons aren't used.
This is kind of something you have to go all in for. You will play like shit at first, don't use that as an excuse to say "these key bindings suck"
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Jakatak, don't worry too much about critics. People who see benefit will take a gander and others will simply move along. I created Base J last year, to pretty much positive feedback, but it's not for everybody. I had been considering posting my updated Base J setup, but between being busy with non-Starcraft stuff, and current tournament restrictions, I haven't bothered. But there is no doubt about it, well thought out customized hotkey setups are WAY better than standard or even grid. Personally, I think mine is the best, but the very things that make it exceptional for me make it "iffy" for tournament play. I use it because I have no intention of ever playing at MLG, but I wouldn't suggest other MLG-interested players switch unless / until MLG accepts keyboard and mouse driver changes. It's perfectly legal as far as Blizzard is concerned, so I wish tournaments would follow suit. We'll see. Good job on your setup, btw.
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I will try this, but btw, we both have the same name and people have been confusing me with you hahaha.
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Hi!
Really liking this setup; I was intimidated at first by the Darkgrid guide (rookie mistake), but I decided to try out this one and it definitely feels like a more efficient way to play the game!
I remapped some of the Q and Z hotkeys to C or V (index finger is used to hunting-and-pecking).
One small thing: in your Protoss guide, you have 4 mapped to Colossus and 5 mapped to Zealots, but in your explanation you say
Zealots are more common than Colossi. 4a is faster than 5a. Zealots get 4. Colossi get 5.
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EPT
