On June 15 2012 13:36 ScoSteSal wrote: Now, when the hand rests on the left side of the keyboard, the weakest finger (pinky) has to contort itself and the whole hand to reach the shift key
you couldn't be more wrong,
most people that play on the left side of the keyboard have the pinky resting on shift, how is that harder than using your thumb?
Because your thumb is stronger than your pinky. Good point made on the resting position though, many people don't know that.
Your thumb is by far your slowest finger. Pinkies are by far the fastest because of the muscle groups involved. Any drummer with any amount of experience will tell you the same. As such, pinkies should be used on the keys that are spammed the most.
"Weak" vs "strong" does not make any difference, it's small motor muscle groups that matter because they are the most easily manipulated, and thus have the fastest response rate when overal dexterity is increased.
Yeah I would not say that the thumb is the strongest finger either, the difference between the thumb and the pinkie is not response time though it is flexibility. Which is precisely why theCore has the best thumb position, by having the least flexible finger on the most used key and pretty much no other keys except for /. This means that the immobility of the thumb is negated while you get maximum use out of the thumb since it is always placed on shift, and the pinkie is quite correctly placed on the borderland between the more used and less used macro keys meaning that you can allow the flexibility of the pinkie to account for all of those keys that have a very wide range of how common they are.
@xTrim Nice caps Darkgrid has your hand resting on QWEF and space. Not shift.
@VanGarde/vesicular I am open to the possibility of the thumb being overburdened right now, but I want to see some evidence as to why you think the thumb is weak/slow/inflexible.
Am I the only person here who thinks theCore is the most comfortable keyboard layout I've ever used? Even though my keyboard has a nonstandard layout (it has "\" in between Shift and "/") so that my thumb has to reach over a key, I still think it's far more comfortable and intuitive than any other layout, Darkgrid included.
On June 15 2012 13:36 ScoSteSal wrote: @Death_Gun with your thumb, it sounds like you aren't tilting the keyboard enough that the thumb naturally rests on cntrl and shift (i think Jakatak goes over that issue specifically in detail in the 1st video in the OP)
yes, you have to do some reaching with the pinky in this layout, and that is unfortunate, but the thing is that such pinky-stretching happens in every layout and is even worse in any layout that has your hand on the other side because your pinky has to reach over to shift every time you queue any commands
I dunno if the problem is lack of tilting, when I start overtilting the kb my other fingers begin having problems reaching the keys they are in charge of. I dunno but I think it would be better to keep that key that is at the side of the r-Control and use it for the shift function.
About the shift beeing activated by the thumb versus it beeing activated by the pinkie, I dunno if its better at all because in this setup the pinkie ends up being the most used finger of your hand and for critical activities, the ones taht needs precision and are game changers. I dont know if Id like to leave a lot of functions, important functions, to my least skilled finger.
On June 16 2012 08:51 JaKaTaK wrote: @VanGarde/vesicular I am open to the possibility of the thumb being overburdened right now, but I want to see some evidence as to why you think the thumb is weak/slow/inflexible.
The thumb is not weak! It is, along with the pinky the strongest finger on your hand as they are both connected to the largest muscle groups on the hand. But the thumb moves in a different direction from the other 4 digits. It's optimum movement is not up and down, it is rather towards the other fingers. This is why we use the thumbs for the space bar and not much else on the keyboard because the pads of the thumb do not lay or move flat like the other digits.
I also PM'd you some videos of why the pinky is often overlooked in how much dexterity it can have.
After using TheCore for a little while now, the thought of using my pinky to hit shift makes my left hand ache a little. The main moves you have to do with your thumb are towards the other fingers, hitting "/" and "." for build/adv. build. The "home" position of J-I-O-P-Shift feels great, and while certain aspects are pretty weird (like trying to think about where right-hand-side keys are with your left hand) at the very start, the logic behind the whole setup is so solid that it sinks into the muscle-memory background really quickly (though i don't have years of competent SC2 mechanics to remap in my brain). I'm still an almost-brand-new-noob, but using TheCore has allowed me to focus on actual in-game stuff SO much more.
The dexterity stuff people are talking about kind of misses the point - not to understate how nimble some people's fingers are/can be, or the value of fast, accurate movements. But it seems like part of the sweetness of TheCore is that it demands LESS dexterity to perform the same. Your fingers physically move smaller distances, and your brain spends less time processing where to move your fingers. All those extra brain-cycles can be put towards time you spend using your eyes to look around the screen and think instead.
On June 16 2012 04:27 xTrim wrote: TBH I agree with Malak in MANY points...
Also, I like to alt-tab quite often in the very early game... Of course it will be impossible to do it with my hand on the right side of the KB....
Finally, I still think darkgrid is superior: even though you have statistics of stuff and etc, the PINKY does rest in shift spot, and hell, having the thumb hit keys besides space is SO unorthodox!
also, with alt-tabbing u can reassign that behavior to another key combo either with the operating system options or with a program that you can dl off the internet that will mess with that for you
I don't have a lot to say but I've been using this for almost two weeks now and I think it's fantastic. I love using thumb on ctrl/shift. Upgrades and spells are all easy to remember, and I use all the camera keys now which I never did before. Using 5-6 control groups per game now too, great for not losing overseers/easy muta harass in two places if necessary.
As a zerg player I found it hard to inject using the cameras. Seeing as I never used the select next subgroup with the setup I used before I changed it to cycle the base camera as I use the backspace method. So now to inject I hit o i shift - click - click - click and on and on. The - key can be hit with the index finger when shift is being held with the thumb.
@Pheint I test my improvement method while using TheCore and always have the camera on my hands when I am streaming this. Right now I am limiting myself to Lvl 1, so that I can find out where that Lvl of the improvement system will land you, but feel free to give it a look occasionally. At least for mouse/keyboard setup and hand position. Hopefully I will move on to the more complex levels soon, but I am taking this moment to perfect my worker production, supply blocks, and spending so I will be on Lvl 1 for longer than the average player. Look at the info section of the Twitch Page to see what I mean about the Levels.
You only really use ctrl for resetting a control group, right, since you can essentially create one with shift by adding to an empty group. This means it isn't really useful in combination with buildings, and since it has no use in combination with abilities either, why not use it for recalling locations? Much easier than ctrl + shift.
If you have base locations on IOPJK, they wont overlap with any of the unit control groups you actually need to reset sometimes, and you won't mess up your production control groups.
Ctrl + shift can be set to create control group for O and P, just in case, and as before, alt for create locations.
As someone pointed out the effective way to stutter step is : |: right mouse click (=move units) - attack move hotkey :| so it's no problem with the pinky - and you can also do |: right click - patrol move :| or |: right click - stop moving :| as alternative methods if required - my point with |: stop moving - attack move :| was wrong! ;-)
So everything works pretty well for me atm. Only a few little issues but they are my personal learning problems - i.e. if I switch after a lot of zerg games to terran or protoss I mix the keys for CC and production, because hatcheries are on production hotkey and queens on CC hotkey and my brain has yet to learn the difference. Also it happens sometimes that my fingers shift a key to the right (using the Core RRM no mouse) after some thumb actions and also happening from time to time screwing up control groups by adding accidentally the wrong units - that happens fast when keys are so close by. but over all I think if it's all memorized and used very often it should not be a longterm problem.
On June 18 2012 02:40 Hylite wrote: As someone pointed out the effective way to stutter step is : |: right mouse click (=move units) - attack move hotkey :| so it's no problem with the pinky - and you can also do |: right click - patrol move :| or |: right click - stop moving :| as alternative methods if required - my point with |: stop moving - attack move :| was wrong! ;-)
So much ":|" It looks like bored faces lol
I can't tell what you're trying to say from it. Is that lowercase l or capital i or shift+slash?
One thing I noticed was how many times, according to the data analyzed while creating this setup, the select larvae key was selected. (463.289 times!) It seems like an injustice to place select larvae and then the drone key, the most built unit by the zerg, on the ring and pinky fingers. On darkgrid, I could place select larvae on f and then the 9 units on the 3x3 grid of letters ot the left. This allowed me to create every single unit with very much ease. However, on this setup, I find myself awkwardly scrambling around with my ring and pinky finger to create almost all of the units.
One thing that I think is important is to add up how many times a certain key is pressed, and not simply the functions. While ability 1 might be pressed (for units alone) 95,153; 45,353; and 39,883 times, but If you add up how many times the first ability is pressed for each unit and building, the number would be a lot higher than however many times most control groups are pressed.
If you add up the first ability for every "group" of commands then you will get, (again, for zerg) a total of 863,371 counts throughout all the replays.
Exceptions: ability 1 instead of attack, return cargo instead of build basic, unburrow instead of burrow, both root and uproot added for crawler.
Now, the most pressed control group was pressed 590,647 times. Seeing as how the most used ability was pressed more than the most used control group, I do not feel comfortable placing the first two control groups on the two easiest-to-press keys if the goal is the most efficient keyboard layout.
On June 18 2012 06:47 uoeahtns wrote: One thing I noticed was how many times, according to the data analyzed while creating this setup, the select larvae key was selected. (463.289 times!) It seems like an injustice to place select larvae and then the drone key, the most built unit by the zerg, on the ring and pinky fingers. On darkgrid, I could place select larvae on f and then the 9 units on the 3x3 grid of letters ot the left. This allowed me to create every single unit with very much ease. However, on this setup, I find myself awkwardly scrambling around with my ring and pinky finger to create almost all of the units.
The point is to make o and p, the macro control group keys, to be pressed more easily.
One thing that I think is important is to add up how many times a certain key is pressed, and not simply the functions. While ability 1 might be pressed (for units alone) 95,153; 45,353; and 39,883 times, but If you add up how many times the first ability is pressed for each unit and building, the number would be a lot higher than however many times most control groups are pressed.
Just because something is pressed more often, does that mean it wouldn't be pressed more often if it was in a more comfortable position?
Besides, this entire hotkey setup is mainly based around the frequency of occurences as a base. Everything else is secondary.
Now, the most pressed control group was pressed 544,972 times. Seeing as how the most used ability was pressed more than the most used control group, I do not feel comfortable placing the first two control groups on the two easiest-to-press keys if the goal is the most efficient keyboard layout.
Again, just because something is pressed more often, does that mean it wouldn't be pressed more often if it was in a more comfortable position?
EPT
