I appreciate your input Raiz. But your dead wrong in your keyboard analysis.
I spoke with Nal Ra, Yellow and some other progamers last time i was in Korea. I asked them about keyboard techniques and they admitted you should never be using two hands on the keyboard. EVER. Yellow was using two hands to macro a while back because his hot key setup was wrong. If you hot key everything correctly and have the right keys missing you should never need two hands.
this is what your keyboard SHOULD look like if you're a true SC player:
You should be using the right AND left shift key regardless of your race, I'll use protoss to exemplify this point.
Here's the key locations protoss uses for the 'build' command, notice the build key is highlighted.
You should always be using two fingers to build anything. Right after you build something you immediately goto the shift key so you can tell the probe to return to gathering minerals.
by = pinky on b ring finger on y thumb on shift key. bp = pinky on b index finger on p thumb on shift key. bn = pinky on b ring finger on n thumb on shift key.
going to the far left shift key will waist time since you can hit the shift key on the right with your thumb more quickly. Fuck the windows keys, BREAK THEM OFF NOW.
You even need to do this with the advanced building key, only to make the observatory though
use index on 'o' for the vo command, pinky on v and thumb on the right shift.
I wouldn't trust what you see pros do with their hands to begin with. I don't think the vast majority of them are too interested in sharing hot key positioning and patterns. Look at this VOD:
Why the fuck is boxer spamming the arrow keys? They shot from this angle so people could see how to use your hands. And instead he's actually randomly hitting the arrow keys as if to make things more confusing. Now you get a whole bunch of newbs spamming arrow keys at lans and they don't even know why they're doing it. And for god sake no one respond to this saying that you should ever be using the arrow keys in starcraft.
Now look at this picture:
This picture is a lot more recent than the other one... He sure seems to have a lot more keys missing too... You need keys missing and to truly master Starcraft you must master the keyboard along with all the complex strategies intertwined in the game. Otherwise you'll just be a smart starcraft player who can't keep up.
This is the whole point of me bringing up new keyboard combinations to build off of how starcraft was played. Instead this thread has had only a few new ideas brought up since apparently the vast majority of tl.net has not yet learned how to use their keyboards x.x what a shame indeed.
.. BoxeR is famous for using the arrowkeys when playing (at least he USED to use them, I dunno).
And what you are saying with regards to my post is that, nal_ra decided that aboutstarcraft, the on TV showmatch, isn't worthy of him playing seriously so he just decided to take his right hand off his mouse to hotkey his expo? Oh and btw, his keyboard looked like a normal keyboard.
There's a clip of boxer's hands while he's playing Junwi on OGN (I think at least, it's on bifrost) and he's using his arrowkeys (as far as I remember) to position the screen while he's microing vultures vs lurkers.
There is not some universal 'right way' to use the keyboard for SC for fucks sake.. I don't mind removing a few keys but I hit them once in a blue moon anyway so why bother? If I was playing for a living sure I'd remove them, I wouldn't want to hit the windows key on TV.
On July 12 2007 11:58 FrozenArbiter wrote: .. BoxeR is famous for using the arrowkeys when playing (at least he USED to use them, I dunno).
And what you are saying with regards to my post is that, nal_ra decided that aboutstarcraft, the on TV showmatch, isn't worthy of him playing seriously so he just decided to take his right hand off his mouse to hotkey his expo? Oh and btw, his keyboard looked like a normal keyboard.
nal ra found out about breaking keys off the keyboard late, most likely because he has "_" in his name. A p player should always have the "_" key missing because they are constantly hitting 0 and P. You wouldn't want to get your fingers in the wrong location and end up not making a probe or something. I think Nal Ra also learned about breaking off the right windows key later than other pros did.
The pros had to learn how to play SC the best way possible. They didn't start out knowing it. Some didn't even learn about it until AFTER they played on tv. That's probably why you've seen some with all their keys. Who knows? Maybe boxer didn't know to break off those other keys because he hadn't learned that technique yet. Regardless, he's done it now, probably because it's VERY important to do.
I don't buy that whole using the arrow keys crap. Why in the world would you EVER use your arrow keys playing starcraft. I don't care who's doing it. How would arrow keys help you at all, you should be using your mouse to move the screen, not the fking arrow keys. Just think about it.
I don't fucking know, all I know is boxer used it all the time in the past. People don't question it because it's boxer=.= Yes, it seems stupid, but he used it for something (I think someone said he had them to very low sensitivity for careful movement of the screen or something, I dont know).
Well you need to know that nobody plays the same style as yours nor boxer. And i think it's all good since each player has his own style of keyboard typing. I'm not a P player, therefore i don't really use (if not exclusively) the right shift. But i do play right ctrl a lot since i don't really have bigs hands for groups 8 9 0 (even if i can reach them i'd rather use the right ctrl which is easier). Also keep in mind that noone has the same mouse sensitivity. Therefore they'd rather play with arrow keys because it'd take a long way for slows mice. I know a player which really excels at arrow key, and it doesn't hurt him at all. Hell he'd even beat a lot of players with his style :x Usually, the chance for experienced players to miss a key is no more like 1% per game, if not less. Look at me : i use 3 u for burrowing lurkers, 0 w for defilers then darkswarms and i don't miss them at all unless maybe in importants matches which i lack of. But i recently used it and there was no problem. I think you're a bit too deep about hotkeys. No offense
Also arbiter is right : Boxer used the arrow keys against someone else where he was microing vultures and, believe it or not, they were very usefull. Constantly microing vultures while you can move them everywhere thank to the arrow keys. Even if i don't like him, you need to know that he used to own everybody by this style, so i'd think twice before saying something that you're not truely aware of.
I still don't understand how on earth boxer could use his arrow keys to actually help him in what he was doing. And maybe i'm crazy but i still don't buy that he's constantly using the arrow keys when he's not being filmed first person. He obviously owned everyone with his own style back then but he doesn't own people like he used to because of this new macro style that many of the new pro korean players use.
I doubt the legitimacy of the arrow keys also due to the fact that at WCG Italy Iloveoov had the arrow keys broken off on his keyboard. I even pointed at them and asked him why they were gone. He shook his head and said that the arrow keys are bad to use. Keep in mind he knew boxer very very well on SKT1, in fact boxer was originally his teacher and best friend.
I'm not bashing on boxer, I'm just saying i wouldn't' be surprised if he was hitting those arrow keys in his fpvods so other people couldn't copy his keyboard patterns as easily. That's all.
On a side note, I use "by" with thumb, pointer, pinky on the left shift key.
EDIT: Omg, I do the same thing with "bn"!
Thanks for the labeled diagrams, since I didn't realize the advanced buildings only require use of the right shift key for the observatory.
An additional question: For upgrades, should a hotkey be assigned to the building (let's say the core) so after the main upgrade from the building (range, usually) is done, we can reassign the hotkey once we have enough units/buildings? For instance, I frequently reassign 7 to the Arbiter Tribunal, so once it researches Stasis, I can quickly research recall immediately. Once I grab my ups (+energy too), I reassign 7 to whatever I feel like my strategy calls for.
one of the reasons why sen is the best foreigner around is because of the way he plays starcraft using his keyboard.. he uses like all 5 fingers so he can do things really fast
EPT
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