[G] TheCore - Advanced Keyboard Layout (beta)

As incredible as this is... Say I play on the road from time to time on my macbook keyboard... Would it just be better to learn darkgrid or Jakatak righty? If so, which one do you guys recommend?

"Friendship ain't a business deal"

bgalang92 United States. June 04 2012 09:08. Posts 155

Profile #

Learn darkgrid or Jakatak Righty. This layout requires you to tilt your keyboard.

ImmortalTofu United States. June 04 2012 09:12. Posts 1040

Profile Blog #

On June 04 2012 09:08 bgalang92 wrote:
Learn darkgrid or Jakatak Righty. This layout requires you to tilt your keyboard.

Oh that's the only limitation? If so I wouldn't mind my comp at a slightly skewed angle while I play for significantly more efficiency :D

"Friendship ain't a business deal"

bgalang92 United States. June 04 2012 09:36. Posts 155

Profile #

If you can hit the shift key comfortably with you thumb, as well as the "." and "/" keys, there should be no problem!

uoeahtns June 04 2012 10:53. Posts 49

Profile #

I'm have a problem where right control acts differently from left control. At the moment I cannot use the right control key as a modifier.

Any fixes for this? Help is appreciated!

emaster United States. June 04 2012 12:24. Posts 32

Profile #

Righty Palm grip here.

I just played one game with it, and it was a terrible experience.

switching over to a new layout is kinda weird, especially since this one is on the opposite side of the keyboard. I kept wanting to move my hand back to the other side. You said that would feel weird, so okay.

I have one big complaint though... I really feel like I was thrown under the bus. I have never really changed anything with hotkeys, and I haven't paid much attention to them before so maybe thats why I am having this problem but... I didn't know how to do anything that wasn't on the button part of the screen. I started off with my fingers on the "k l ;" keys to begin with until i kept pressing those "j i o p" keys often enough to just leave my fingers there. Nothing actually tells me what butons to push for stuff like setting control groups and base cameras and shit. I actually still don't know how. What I had to do was hover my mouse over the control group button in the game for it to tell me how to do the control group. Eventually I figured out how to get the second macro group by hovering over the 2nd control group button, and then I eventually made a third control group for a blob, but it really didn't help. I feel like the only way I'm going to get those kind of hotkeys is to go through the hotkey screen and write them down on a seperate piece of paper one by one. Worth it, but I think it would be much better if you made a second video or a better explanation of what to do.

I guess I had high expectations because when I saw jakataks first thread it seemed quite clear, and now it's just leaving me confused.

I can't say that the layout is amazing, because im not really qualified to say so. I will however put the effort to transition into it in good faith because you guys seem pretty legit.

I hope you guys don't take my complaints personally! It seemed like you guys are pretty interested in constructive criticism so I'm hoping you take it as such. Even more though, I'm hoping you guys can update it and make it easier for retards like me

I think the layout has a lot of potential, and I excited to see you guys keep up your good work in the future!

ScoSteSal United States. June 04 2012 12:26. Posts 54

Profile Blog #

@emaster: what you do is you go to the menu, then the hotkeys thing, then the theCore hotkeys, then the global tab, then look to your heart's content

Iustum Agere Arduum Est...Sed Modo Sine Day9o

xavra41 United States. June 04 2012 12:33. Posts 220

Profile #

Hey jakatak, i currently use your old layout, but i did try this one. I think that the old one is better for me because i prioritize things much differently than you do. For example, you have eight army hotkeys and that is totally unnecessary. This isn't brood war where you need that many keys to move your army and nobody is ever going to be microing with that many keys. What you did sacrifice with those keys is useful shit like comfortable hand position, easy access camera location, harder to reach next subgroup etc. Also the spacebar, ctrl, and shift keys are much harder to press because before your hand was hovering over them already. I mean I could go on but those are some of my comments from when I was trying to switch over.

emaster United States. June 04 2012 12:40. Posts 32

Profile #

@ScoSteSal Yeah I know I could, but it'd probably be easier if developers put it up in the thread I think, or just tell people which ones are important to lookup or somethin. I'm just sayin I wish there was some explanation of the layout itself up there. I REALLY like that they added a section how to transition, but the advice is general. You could even use that advice to go from not using any hotkeys at all to using the default hotkey setup for the most part.

Dark.EX United States. June 04 2012 13:51. Posts 1505

Profile Blog #

Why not use spacebar instead of alt for making camera hotkey locations? I can't use alt effectively because my thumb has to push against my hand in order to reach alt, but if I twist the keyboard more so this doesn't happen I can't reach shift.

Also it's really hard to set camera hotkeys at the beginning of the game when whenever I press alt the screen goes to the current selection. It also makes it impossible to create a rally camera hotkey.

Edit: Can you update the OP with the camera hotkeys and which ones to use for what? Also it's hard to use Ghosts reactively against Protoss since you press K to select them with your ring finger, then I to start using EMP's and that's both a redundant action with 1 finger and you have to move the same finger twice once down and once up. Maybe rebind EMP to / instead of I, and Snipe to I? I find Snipe isn't a heavily used hotkey personally, especially since the nerf.

Last edit: 2012-06-04 16:04:48

Amaterasu1234 United States. June 04 2012 14:01. Posts 317

Profile #

As someone that switched to Darkgrid from standard....being presented with this feels exactly like it did when I played with the standard layout: this is ridiculous.

I'll have to play around with this layout a bit more. I tried it once earlier and I certainly didn't like that I made drones with my pinky. But, you know, whatever. I learned Darkgrid once. I can probably learn TheCore, too.

adacan United States. June 04 2012 14:35. Posts 117

Profile #

Why do you take off the 2 keys for righty?

FoxyMayhem June 04 2012 14:44. Posts 618

Profile Blog #

We put drones on J so that players can quickly roll their fingers pressing P (hatcheries) I (select larva) J (drone). It's faster than P I I. But since drone is spammed so much in the begining, it may need to be placed on I anyway. This is exactly what this beta is for.

Sorry I can't provide tech support, I'm swamped with RL!

StratWaffle United States. June 04 2012 15:13. Posts 28

Profile #

It is kind of weird to have I be select larva and also build overlord. It results in a lot of accidentally build overlords. I will see If I can avoid doing this as I go along and get better at using the layout.

Also, as I go through and inject I'm accidentally building a lot of queens, which is annoying when cancel is 'F5'. I'll see if this stops happening as I get better.

Dark.EX United States. June 04 2012 16:57. Posts 1505

Profile Blog #

Hmm, why not have cancel be F8? It's much more natural to reach your middle finger to F8 than it is to reach your pinky to F5.

Last edit: 2012-06-04 17:04:10

kollin United Kingdom. June 04 2012 17:12. Posts 4216

Profile Blog #

I'm kind of confused about the mouse buttons. As a zerg it says I need hatch and queen on mouse 1 and mouse 2, but then how would you do things like right click move?

@kollinsc2

Dark.EX United States. June 04 2012 17:31. Posts 1505

Profile Blog #

On June 04 2012 17:12 kollin wrote:
I'm kind of confused about the mouse buttons. As a zerg it says I need hatch and queen on mouse 1 and mouse 2, but then how would you do things like right click move?

He means extra mouse buttons 1 and 2, aka buttons 4 and 5.

kollin United Kingdom. June 04 2012 17:48. Posts 4216

Profile Blog #

On June 04 2012 17:31 Fencer710 wrote:

Show nested quote +

He means extra mouse buttons 1 and 2, aka buttons 4 and 5.

Oh OK. What if you just have a mouse with only 2 buttons? I don't want to have to reach too far down my keyboard for hatch and queens.

@kollinsc2

poeticEnnui United States. June 04 2012 18:02. Posts 71

Profile #

On June 04 2012 08:34 JaKaTaK wrote:

We couldn't find a better set of keys for the job, N is definitely the least comfortable IMO as well, but with practice it shouldn't be much of a problem (there are much less comfortable things on other layouts) If you can make another key work that is more comfortable than N, we'd love to hear about it. (non-sarcasm, it would actually be great)

As far as making things "easier to remember" we did not keep that in mind when designing the layout. For JaKaTaK Righty I did that, but for this one, we went purely on data and efficiency. In time you will learn to use I for creep tumor. It is 4-5 times faster to hit than K is, and will speed up your creep spread mechanics considerably.

Yeah, I kept it on "I" -- maybe I spoke too soon, because it only took a game or two to get it down.

As for the camera hotkeys, I changed Camera 4 from "N" to "M" and from "M" to ",". Hitting "IJKM," is much faster than hitting "IJKNM", I find, even with both plugged into muscle memory. I don't know if "," is optimal distance-wise, but it's definitely the most natural key to reach for with the pinky (bending inward instead of outward).

Anyway, I plan to practice all day today. Mid-master league zerg, on my smurf account "Dragoon" as soon as I finish this paper. ._.