purely from an anatomical standpoint, your thumb is the most capable finger you have. with the ring finger being the least (pinkie is close behind). That is why it is moved to the right side of the keyboard. It gives the most capable finger the maximum opportunity to use buttons, where as the traditional setup seems to utilize your two weakest fingers to press the most used buttons.
as far as placing your hand on the keyboard differently, do you really hold you hand on the home row keys when you play starcraft? Most people using basic hotkeys that I know basically stretch their hand over the keyboard with their pinkie centered on shift/control.
There are a lot if important Keybind bound to "J" and i need to push that with my pinkie? If the pinkie is the least capable (together with the ring figner) why are so many important things bound to my 2 "weakest" fingers?
I was trying Core for some games but i could not get used to it yet. I may try but for now i am using QWERTZ- Grid (german layout) and my pinkie can be on shift or crtl without having problem. I am also used to the placement of the fingers because i write like this. I am still skeptical if the change would be worth the effort.
If you want to support TheCore please tweet @Artosis with a link to this thread asking him to check out TheCore and tell us what he thinks. Works for Facebook too. www.facebook.com/artosis
On July 31 2012 05:23 JaKaTaK wrote: The reason for the thumb being on shift and not another finger is that is provides for the most ergonomic hand position, while letting you combine with the maximum number of keys. If any of the 4 other fingers are used for shift, you lose a bunch of combinations. If you use your pinky for shift, you cannot use any key normally pressed with the pinky in combination with shift without moving your hand considerably, which is both non-ergonomic and inefficient. Additionally, you can combine more keys with shift on the thumb because of the larger space between your thumb and index finger. The distance you can reach from your thumb to your pinky is far greater than from your pinky to index. It also allows for you to press Ctrl+shift at the same time with 1 finger. This opens up new options for speed and efficiency that the pinky could not do as ergonomically.
Does that make sense to you?
Yes, this makes sense (in particular, a lot more sense than the "you have to contort your hand to press shift with your pinky" argument -- I think anyone playing SC2 with default hotkeys will have their pinky resting on shift). I'm willing to give it another shot. I do have one follow-up question -- with TheCore, what button do I press to deselect whatever I have selected? I need this to set up my camera bindings at the beginning of the game.
On July 31 2012 06:04 JaKaTaK wrote: @JDub Shift+click on the main screen (not wireframe area). The shift+click, ctrl+click and shfit+ctrl+click functions are unchangeable at this point.
Thanks. It's funny to run into something so simple that I've never learned to do in 1000s of games playing SC2.
On July 31 2012 06:10 SirPsychoMantis wrote: Hey Core people, I posted my new hotkey trainer over in sc2 general. Please give it a try if you are looking at trying out TheCore for the first time.
For experienced Core people, please let me know if there are any bugs when using TheCore with my program.
Hell yea SirPsychoMantis! I will put it up on the OP :D
EDIT: We'll be starting on the different layouts for different hand sizes in the near future. This is one of the last big steps necessary before we move on to a full release and will take us from 16 layout choices to 48 layout choices (Small Medium and Large sized hands).
PHATENCY I need to know what you input format is for the program that translates keyboards, or, if you wouldn't mind making and "imaginary" keyboard that would move all the keys in the layout either one key to the left, or one key to the right. Thanks :D
Hey guys, Artosis just released his hotkey vid. It's less a tutorial, and more a conversation starter, which is great! The reddit thread is starting some good conversation, If you use reddit and want to upvote the thread and post for this layout, check the thread, and TheCore post.
We'll be looking through the rest of the posts there for ways to improve theCore.
purely from an anatomical standpoint, your thumb is the most capable finger you have. with the ring finger being the least (pinkie is close behind). That is why it is moved to the right side of the keyboard. It gives the most capable finger the maximum opportunity to use buttons, where as the traditional setup seems to utilize your two weakest fingers to press the most used buttons.
as far as placing your hand on the keyboard differently, do you really hold you hand on the home row keys when you play starcraft? Most people using basic hotkeys that I know basically stretch their hand over the keyboard with their pinkie centered on shift/control.
There are a lot if important Keybind bound to "J" and i need to push that with my pinkie? If the pinkie is the least capable (together with the ring figner) why are so many important things bound to my 2 "weakest" fingers?
I was trying Core for some games but i could not get used to it yet. I may try but for now i am using QWERTZ- Grid (german layout) and my pinkie can be on shift or crtl without having problem. I am also used to the placement of the fingers because i write like this. I am still skeptical if the change would be worth the effort.
I used "strong" and "weak" incorrectly in that above post.
I was thinking more in terms of range of motion than actual muscle strength. While the pinkie is very strong in terms of a downward, grabbing motion, it has very imprecise horizontal control when separating from the ring finger.
So for instance, using the normal setup, if I am trying to press ctrl+anything, I must spread my pinkie away from my ring finger, which is bad for two reasons:
The ring and pinkie, which are connected, are separated and because of that each is harder to control precisely The pinkie is usually used as a pivot point (also bad but more on that below) resting on shift, but when you move it to control, it moves your entire hand frame away from the pivot it is used to, which increases the chance of miss clicks.
The thumb on the other hand has a very wide range of motion, and it is easy to control that entire range. This allows the thumb to manage the multiple keypresses that it is responsible for better. However, more importantly it makes it a better pivot point than the pinkie.
The reason for this is that you have better awareness of where your thumb is in space than you do your pinkie. A good illustration of this is violinists. When you are playing violin and you want to shift up on the fingerboard, you do not move your index-pinkie fingers up the fingerboard to where you think the note is. Rather you use your thumb to guide your hand to a memorized position and then place your fingers down.
However, the pinkie/ring finger are very good at quickly repeating vertical movements like drumming. So it makes sense for "J" and "I" to be the most common unit build keys as well as H being stop for stutter step micro.
However that being said. I think there are still small awkward movements with the build, like that pressing N is just as difficult as the standard setup's shift to ctrl movement (but obviously not as vital as shift/ctrl), and pressing something along the lines of ctrl+???? then H or U can completely throw my hand off (trying to build marines pressing H or scvs pressing U). But compared to the standard hotkey setup, these problems are very minor.
On July 31 2012 03:16 JaKaTaK wrote: I'm thinking about making the cancel and idle worker keys more accessible.
How do you guys feel about 6 for cancel (hit it with the ring finger, should feel similar to the old hitting escape and easier than F8) and = or Backspace for idle worker?
EDIT: 7 for cancel and ` for idle worker for lefties
6 is a little too far away for my comfort, I'd rather stick with the F8 and F9 keys. Might be personal preferance but they feel a lot easier to reach. I'd prefer = as a control group over ].
I've gone to remapping my camra groups. alt JIOPK for setting, and ctrl to jump to them. I use the subgroup on P as a hatch tap, so I don't remap it often. I use ctrl shift for setting the control group on P, and still have shift mapped as the add to group, so I use that for initially setting the hatchery to the group..
On July 31 2012 03:16 JaKaTaK wrote: I'm thinking about making the cancel and idle worker keys more accessible.
How do you guys feel about 6 for cancel (hit it with the ring finger, should feel similar to the old hitting escape and easier than F8) and = or Backspace for idle worker?
EDIT: 7 for cancel and ` for idle worker for lefties
I like having F8 for cancel, personally. Because of the ways the F keys are on most keyboards, F8 is easy to hit without thinking about, compared to 6, which is in the middle of a bunch of other keys.
I like the general idea, but I would like to comment on the "less strain" part. Sure, developing a keyboard layout to minimize hand strain is good, but the fact is, your mouse hand will always be the limiting endurance factor in your play, not your keyboard hand. I've never heard of progamers with their keyboard hand hurting after playing, while it's way more common for their mouse hand. Most players will be just fine playing with slighty customized hotkeys based on the original layout (not this completely revamped system). I moved a couple of hotkeys around in my setup myself, and my left hand (keyboard hand) can go on for hours without feeling anything, while my right hand (although I've looked for the best position possible) will tire after like 5-6 hours of non stop playing at relatively decent APM (which I would assume is pretty normal and not really worrying, I'm not a pro or anything). You can't really play anymore when your mouse hand is tired/hurts, whichever fancy keyboard layout you use, so I would keep it simple and not get too excited over a potential revolutionary ultimate keyboard layout.
Still, nice job gathering all those data and designing this smart system.
I exacerbated wrist RSI to a very bad point using grid setup. My left wrist took me out of playing SC2 for several months. While the mouse hand is often an issue, taking care of the left is great. I was able to return to playing SC2 regularly after the invention of DarkGrid, and TheCore goes far beyond DarkGrid. So maybe it won't let your right wrist play longer, but it sure did let me play longer.
I figured this might good for other newcomers to see, I made a video of myself playing a short game with theCore (do note however that mine is missing some of the latest updates, but they're very minor).
In the description I have a link to a replay. Jak and Foxy hopefully this helps.
Ideally, what we need is a side-by-side of gameplay and keyboard, one player using standard and one player using TheCore. Showing them performing roughly similar actions (like lategame army control and macro). That way we can point and say, "see how much more you can do with less".
On July 31 2012 03:16 JaKaTaK wrote: I'm thinking about making the cancel and idle worker keys more accessible.
How do you guys feel about 6 for cancel (hit it with the ring finger, should feel similar to the old hitting escape and easier than F8) and = or Backspace for idle worker?
EDIT: 7 for cancel and ` for idle worker for lefties
6 for cancel? HELL NO, F8 is perfect as it is atm.
On July 31 2012 18:40 FoxyMayhem wrote: Ideally, what we need is a side-by-side of gameplay and keyboard, one player using standard and one player using TheCore. Showing them performing roughly similar actions (like lategame army control and macro). That way we can point and say, "see how much more you can do with less".
This is really helpful man.
I'll try and do this on my stream this week (before I go off on holiday)
Hope Twitch.tv VoDs will be good enough, if youtube is preferable then I'll have to figure out how that exactly works.]
Herp, nevermind, didn't read correctly. not sure how I would do this t.t
I can provide gameplay with keyboard cam at the same time if that's something you're looking for though.
____
Either way,the cancel and idle worker change is interesting. Having thought about it a little, while 6 is a similar movement to escape I think it can easily be missed because there's a lot of keys surrounding it. F8 has the advantage of being directly above O for the middle finger. So the only displacement would be vertical, making it easier to return to the homekeys.
for Idle worker I would prefer = as it would be statisticly better then F9. F9 is also harder to hit while pressing Ctrl to select all Idle workers. I feel backspace is a bit too much of a stretch, so I'm not sure.
Hi i created this images because i think their are better than a table for the start (Frequently Asked Questions: 4. Which keys do I press with which fingers?). The qualitiy is not the best maybe you can do it better with your original keyboard image. Maybe you can mark the standard position JIOP. It helps me and i hope others too
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1UTis.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/K8ANp.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0aOdQ.png)
