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I am a dev and am currently transitioning into a linux based scala stack and decided to learn the dreaded vim.
If you have no idea what i'm talking about then let me put it like this:
The aim is to do dev work at about 300 apm and never use my mouse.
So i fired up KTouch (https://edu.kde.org/applications/all/ktouch)
and start relearning to touch type without all the stupid hand positioning i have learnt from basically freestyle typing for 30 years ... holy shit 30 years ... anyway.
Whilst burning through the tutorials aiming for 350 chars per min it struck me that i am doing what could be an amazing out of context sc2 exercise.
Now I dont have the time (nor the inclination as i dont really play sc2 anymore ... come on legacy ...) but it strikes me that it would be fairly trivial to write a dictionary of sc2 words ... eg 1a2a3a4a ...if your terran ... or just 1a if your protoss i guess.
or more to the point, all those very repetative patterns, eg warping units out of a gate, marines and marauders, medivac micro, tanks, cycling and making view bookmarks, flicking between bases and making scv's, planting tumors ... these are all little words that exist in each races dictionary of actions. Various flaws in those ideas, but for training one hand maybe has value.
The way you would approach it is to generate a word table, some basic grammer for how to connect them and then rng the bad boy till you have lots of tests by race
Every sc2 player will have sticking points where their key layouts will impede their progress as you will need to use the same finger for 2 consecutive commands.
setting up something like this would probably pay off big time for beginners and also intermediate players.
Curious if anyone has tried it, also if someone fancies trying it out.
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Blizzard TOS forbid 2 actions with one keystroke, plus there's some key layout especially designed to minimise hand movement and key repetition. Go see The Core. Also hand/finger position for typing and playing a game, RTS or FPS, is very different, and I wonder how much pre-motor skills can be transfered over.
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On February 03 2015 14:41 varsovie wrote:
Blizzard TOS forbid 2 actions with one keystrokeover.
I don't see anywhere the OP said to perform two actions with one keystroke? I understand that he's just taking common sequences of characters one would press in game and turning it into a typing game. Imagine just typing "1a2a3a 5sd 8ac 4vvvvv" or something like that, just to get the character sequences into the fingers away from the game.
I think, assuming I understood correctly, this would only be of marginal utility to determine which hand position is most comfortable. The immediate limitation would be that mouse clicking is sprinkled between almost all of the sequences you would imagine, and beyond a certain amount of apm the necessary actions are muscle memory already anyways. But if you could come up with some way around it (maybe make the player click the words being typed, to emulate the clicks?) it might be useful.
A lot of actions are responsive rather than pre-determined, and even something like 5ddaaaaa6dd7dd for a typical midgame terran would change depending on what composition they're facing, which makes this program awfully difficult to write =/
Do you have any ideas around these limitations?
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Just make a typing game for fun that has sc2 words. That'd be awesome!
As for the effectiveness of the training method, I think it's better just to forget ladder wins and practice keystrokes if that's what you need to do. I have done that with particular playstyles to try and automate certain types of multitask sequences, and it pays off a lot. It's kind of like doing scales for piano. It's not playing music, but it makes you much better at playing music. This approach has the benefit of being always applicable within a context but without being invariant, e.g. juggling phoenix micro and 3rd base forcefield defense isn't always the same sequences but the pattern of attention and execution is always similar.
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sc2 is about mouse+keyboard though, not only keyboard, so training like this would have to include both to be meaningful. There are a few mouse accuracy games that includes the keyboard as well, my favourite is an old russion game called ClickMeR that is made for RTS games. You have to click appearing moving balls while at the same time clicking random letters on the left side of the keyboard. I find it really intensive, much more so than mouse-only accuracy games. It also forces you to keep your eyes on the screen, and thus hit the keys without looking.
So to do this properly, you should have combined mouse and keyboard "words", to simulate your macro cycles. But, to be honest, at that point I think you are better off making an arcade map that forces you to handle your macro/micro/multitasking.
All in all, I guess there can be some benefits to training jsut the keyboard part of sc2, but I think it is much more valuable if you can train the keyboard+mouse combination together.
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Not a bad idea at all, OP!
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I think this is a great idea under certain contexts, in particular macro keystrokes for terrain.
There is practically no need for mouse clicks, and cycling for certain types of units and commands groups could really help muscle memory. For example, using the core, I could pii oiiaaaa for build scvs and marine/marauders.
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On February 03 2015 16:33 Nimrod.519 wrote:
I think this is a great idea under certain contexts, in particular macro keystrokes for terrain.
There is practically no need for mouse clicks, and cycling for certain types of units and commands groups could really help muscle memory. For example, using the core, I could pii oiiaaaa for build scvs and marine/marauders.
the Core wants you to use from P all the way to A for building scv, marines and maurauders?? :o Can't be... I thought it was a well thought through hotkey setup!
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Actually, I've had the exact same idea a few years ago and started planning a program for BW. Sadly, I didn't finish it because real life stuff happened. It would be nice to have such a kind of tool. Of course, it doesn't help your real gameplay at all, but most players are still underestimating the importance of clean mechanics.
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In hindsight though, I think this side of what we call mechanics is probably the easiest to acquire and not worth dedicated time practicing it. I needed just a few games to learn my Terran hotkeys and what to spam on my keyboard during production cycles and battles, but it took me a much longer time to never misclick on things, watch regularly and access precisely the minimap, clicking on stuff while not really looking at it (and watching the minimap instead, for example, you can put down buildings easily without directly looking at where you put them), microing well in small and in big engagements, etc...
It would maybe be more worth it for BW, where you can't rebind keys and don't have MBS and all that.
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Not suggesting scripting lol. I am also well aware of the core - in fact if you know of the core and reference it then something like this is probably right up your street - the 2 things. Especially transitioning from a grid or standard layout into the core would be massively aided with this kind of approach)
Yeah this is limited but it is also focussed.
I also play music. the vast majority of my practice when aiming to get better is *not* playing songs. It is deliberate out of context practice. Scales, listening to how melodies sound over chords, training hitting a note, practicing playing one note well, improving stretching, accuracy speed. Then when i come to learn a song it doesn't take long at all - usually as long as it takes me to learn to sing all the notes because i have already trained my hands to play whatever i can think of.
Personally in sc2, controls have limited the rate i can think - suddenly switching tasks etc. Having something that forces me to detach executing commands from a thought process would give me a context in which to sustain whatever apm i can play at (on guitar that is 10 notes a second!) - it would break all the hand position habits. 6
As for guy above, granted. Soem people are always looking for edges though.
Maybe some kind of focussed ui would be good ... but then it'd be *far* more efficient to just make a level in the game itself. Which is probably the correct route if someone was to implement this idea.
The intent of this is very simple, it will very rapidly identify situations where your hand position severely castrates your ability to execute accurately and rapidly.
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This sounds like a good idea. The issue would be that often the actions which make up the macro cycle differ depending on the race and situation.
I think typing on a site like typeracer is just as beneficial. You want to be spending an equal amount of time training speed and accuracy. I taught myself to type 1 year ago and my apm/skill is rising consistently with my wpm and accuracy percentage. In a real game, 1 hotkey error can lead to all your hatcheries being unbound. Using sudden death typing programs that eliminate you the moment you make an error is a good way for eliminating errors of that nature.
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Kind of confused about it to be honest, would have to see it in action to understand.
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I'm not sure what you mean when you get into "words" and RNG tests.
To me it just sounds like you're just referring to setting up keystroke combinations for doing things, and using them to create automatic players (AKA bots). That, or just making an efficient keybinding layout, such as The Core. Aside from those two things, what you're saying doesn't make sense to me.
SC2 is not keyboard-only accessible. It pretty much requires significant use of the mouse for many core aspects of the game. The camera panning keys can be used to make it a bit less problematic (which is how disabled people tend to play as far as I know, such as a/the man who plays Starcraft without hands), but it is a major hassle to deal with, and not nearly as efficient as being able to just click the minimap or quickly select a target.
That said, despite having no major disabilities myself, I've always thought it would be great if more games were more accessible, such as having more audio queues, visual cues, and alternative input supports. It really opens the door to new play styles, more efficient play styles, and even more immersive play even when a player has no major disabilities. An example would be a system of providing visual or audio cues (or haptic feedback) to a player in a pitch black room to know where the walls are.
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EPT
