Hot Virtual Keyboard is a program that displays an on-screen keyboard which highlights which keys you are pressing. This makes for some interesting activity to watch during intense matches of StarCraft 2, as keys are lighting up all over the place. I thought it would be cool to see how this would look in a player stream, and after customizing the keyboard a bit, I ended up with a pretty pleasing result.
Video Demo
I'll try to re-record a higher quality demo after the April Fools Warhounds disappear
You'll either need 2 monitors, or enough space on your current monitor to capture the program and overlay it on your stream. My current set up is one monitor (23" 1920 x 1080) with OBS, using software capture for SC2 in windowed mode and Hot Virtual Keyboard.
I've been told it should work after the 30 day evaluation period.
Customizing the look There's a lot of customization that you can do with the program, and I'm excited to see what people create. You can technically skin the entire thing from scratch, or simply change the colors of the keys and background image.
My current keyboard style:
Options > Theme Style -> Dark Edit 'Selected' keys to be a bright green (Hue: 57, Sat: 203, Lum: 155, Red: 176: Green: 241, Blue: 88) Background: HotS Evolution Chamber Screenshot
Looking forward to see what the community does with this, I think it has a lot of potential.
Set up with one monitor For people looking to software capture the program directly so you can stream on one monitor (without having to capture screen area on the second monitor) - go to Options > Themes and check Native Style of Windows. This will make the virtual keyboard show up in the software capture options as "On Screen Keyboard"
On April 02 2013 02:43 tuho12345 wrote: pretty cool idea, kudos! But I'm not sure how helpful it is to the audience, seems a little too much distractions for them
I would love to see this on the top player streams. It could be a scene that they switch on for some games, show other stuff for other games (in case they're worried about advert space). Really really cool idea and suggestion shindigs
That's a great idea. Handcam/Controllercam/VirtualController is already quite popular in the speedrunning community. I wondered why nobody did this for SC2. I'd really like to see some progamers pick this up and show their amazing keyboard speed.
On April 02 2013 03:01 EGLzGaMeR wrote: I would love to do this, but I only have 1 monitor.. So I don't think I can do it? ;;
I'll take a screencap of my setup. I'm on one monitor too, a 23" monitor at 1920 x 1080. I played SC2 in Windowed Mode so I open up some more space at the top of my monitor where I have Hot Virtual Keyboard. PM me if you'd like more assistance.
I use Software Capture in OBS to specifically capture SC2 and HVK, I don't capture the portion of the screen.
With 2 monitors, I think its easier to keep one monitor Fullscreen Windowed and have HVK on the other monitor.
This is an awesome idea! Have been thinking about optimal ways of capturing keyboard interactions to see what keys I could optimize, and this would be pretty useful!
Thanks for putting this together will definitely give it a try ^_^
I actually think this has also has potential for coaching and learning SC2. Watching my VoD over again, I can already see parts of my gameplay that I can improve. Its better then having a camera over your hands IMO because you can see the exact buttons you're pressing.
Be super careful with entering your passwords on stream with this. There's an option to not show buttons when you're entering passwords, but it doesn't seem to work with Starcraft to this point for me.
It sounded pretty cool, but in-game it's fairly meh. Just like watching actual hands it's not really that interesting in practice unless its at an extreme apm. Then again, their face isn't really that interesting to see 99% of the time either.
I think this is considerably more interesting than watching a streamers fingers moving around the keyboard. Easier for me to see what's being pressed and seemingly less affected by fps issues than a webcam is
Got it working - pretty nice feature. Took a little effort to figure the settings to get it looking the way I want it to, but otherwise it's nothing too difficult.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pkY03y9.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SoG6zG3.jpg)
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