EPTI have been playing SCII with the grid setup. I enjoy it very much but I found that some of the keys are just too annoying to press and that in the immense speed your moves at, you may press a wrong key. Am I right? It absolutely sucks.
This is why I went to look for a different kind of hotkey setup out there that might feel right to me. After quite a while of searching, I stumbled upon the Core:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=341878
How this works is for you to read by yourself, but I tried it. It is said to work really well, but however hard I tried in playing games (around 50-60) I just couldn't get used to it. Thus I switched back to the grid setup.
After playing a couple of games I kept on hitting those wrong keys. It was soooooooooooooo annoying. I decided to try and build up my own hotkey layout based on the grid setup. I managed to work out a fairly nice layout while deleting the z, x, c, and b buttons from the hotkeys.
This leads to the following question: Where do those hotkeys go now? Well to be quite frank, just the row above 'em. With a couple of exceptions, almost all of the hotkeys on the lower side of the keyboard can be moved up one key. This creates a nice feel for the hands because they do not have to work as hard to make the awkward downward move to the lower z, x, and c keys ( b is less awkward).
EDIT: While in the process of desperately trying to make it better I have found a way to utilize more hotkeys with this system. I have upgraded the keys a little bit and have gone towards not having to use the q and a keys anymore for buildings, units, upgrades, abilities and commands. This gives the player more room for more more control group keys in q and a. I have found that these are easily accesible and easy to use. The last thing to do is to try and get the camera's into this setup. I now use the F1-F5 keys which work fairly well right now. However this can still be optimalized.
Also the CTRL key has for all but ctrl-click been replaced by alt/option. This means ctrl-8 is now alt/option-8.
With my amazing paint skillzzz I have drawn up a quick overview of what keys are in my experience to be used by what fingers and the starting positions of the fingers.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iy90T.png)
red= index finger
green=middle finger
blue= ring finger
yellow/orange= pinky finger
dark blue/purple= thumb
The dots are the starting postions of the fingers by color.
The layout as is is now applicable to all races. I however have to still find a comfortable key layout for protoss. This layout as it stands right now is available here:
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And for lefties:D
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This left-handed one is exactly the opposite from the right-handed one. I have no coordination whatsoever when my left hand is on the mouse and I do not have time to train myself that way. It would be awesome if you guys could help me out and give me feedback on this one to make it better :D
What is the idea of this setup?
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The idea of this setup is to use the grid as a template to build on. Furthermore I tried to put the most used button upgrades and spells on the middle buttons where the middle and ring fingers work. These are in my experience the easiest to use for this.
What is the deal with the move from Ctrl to Alt/Option?
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This is a good question. In my experience I have a bit of trouble using the ctrl-1 to ctrl-0 keys. My hand had to get in a really awkward postion to get this done. Because my hands aren't all that big they started to hurt when doing this a lot. This prompted me to switch to Alt/Option. This key utilizes the thumb to hit it and works a lot more smooth in my opinion.
Aren't you trying to copy TheJaKaTaK a little with this?
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No.
The JaKaTaK does great things for the SCII community and I definitely recommend going to his channel on twitch.tv, but this is something I am trying to improve because the grid setup just doesn't cut it anymore. I wanted to share this with you to get your opinions, advice and (positive) criticism on my project and hopefully you will help me better this system :D
The JaKaTaK does great things for the SCII community and I definitely recommend going to his channel on twitch.tv, but this is something I am trying to improve because the grid setup just doesn't cut it anymore. I wanted to share this with you to get your opinions, advice and (positive) criticism on my project and hopefully you will help me better this system :D
Will you do more of this?
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I will try to do more of this as the other 2 races are not yet tended to in this situation. I will also try to make a similar NewGrid setup for lefties if that is requested.
What can I do to help?
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Please, please, please let me know what you think. Requests, ideas you name it and I will try to get it done. Also please check out my stream on twitch.tv :D
Again, this hotkey setup is mostly of my own preference. Please let me know what you think and tell me your ideas on making it better suited for everyone :D
As a last parting word I would like to thank you for reading this and hope you all like what I trying to do :D.
I will be trying to edit this post as much as possible as I progress the NewGrid hotkey layout :D
Cheers and happy gaming :D
Devolhan
