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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

ADOM II movement keys on notebooks

Finally I seem to have struck a balance in the ADOM II keybindings that I can live with (stress: "live with", not "enjoy from the depths of my heart" - but the latter problem seems to be impossible for me to solve while using a bare notebook).

During the past weeks I have been wrestling with the decision to buy a numeric keypad for my Macbook. While I most certainly will do that at some point in order to be able to use the keypad for movement in ADOM II I still am somewhat sad about the fact that my shiny Macbook alone does not seem to be a sufficient gaming device for ADOM II.

Thus before the release of ADOM II 0.2.4 I started to toy with various configurable keyboard layouts (which - among other problems - were responsible for the quid series of releases of ADOM II 0.2.5 and 0.2.6 as I messed up some of the key configurations and failed to discover all problems).

For those of you who didn't yet notice: you now can switch between four different keyboard layouts by using the following key commands:

  1. $kj activates the JADE bindings I have been using since the release of 0.1.0.
  2. $k1 activates classic ADOM key bindings.
  3. $kc activates custom keybindings that you can define in your own configuration file.
  4. $k2 activates completely new ADOM II key bindings.
Currently I am only using the new ADOM II key bindings and I continue to optimize them. The most important change is that only the cursor keys (together with modifiers) or the numeric keypad can be used for movement. With the ADOM II key bindings I have completely abandoned the idea of binding movement keys to any letters as I always seemed to miss important letters for other commands and a notebook keyboard usually seems to crowded for that (at least my Macbook does ;-) ).

My preferred movement mode right now works like this:

  • Use the cursor keys for the four cardinal directions. The cursor keys on my Macbook are situated to the bottom right, so they are easy to reach and easy to find after using other keys.
  • Use the Ctrl and Alt keys to modify them for diagonal directions. Ctrl is situated to the bottom left of my keyboard, Alt sits directly besides Ctrl to the right. The ensuing logic here is that "Ctrl Cursor Up" moves to the north west (the mnemonic being that Ctrl is the western key of the two modifier keys) and "Alt Cursor Up" correspondingly moves you to the north east. Repeat that for "Cursor Down" combined with Ctrl and Alt for south west and south east.
My mind gets rather well along with this definition (although it completely failed to use modifiers in combination with "Cursor Right" and "Cursor Left") and I have all letter keys at my disposal for standard commands.

While this setup still is not perfect as it requires two hands for movement (in classic ADOM I was accustomed to just using my right hand for movement and kept my left hand on the keyboard for all other commands), it's better for me than anything else I tried so far.

I think the original idea for this came from someone on Facebook but sadly I failed to find the post. So if you remember making that suggestions send me a mail to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com so that I can give you the credit you deserve!

See ya!
um

19 comments:

  1. TollMay 8, 2012 at 9:35 AM

    Hmm it still seems like ADOM uses excessive amounts of keys that can be greatly reduced through the use of situational keys, 1 key that does many different things based on what is currently available to player and imidiate surroundings. 'g'ive shouldn't need a stand-alone key for example, how often do you need to give something to someone. Does it warrent its own key? These sorts of things may be the comprimising you need to make for a compact keyboard.

    Using Ctrl and Alt as modifiers to do something as common as moving diagonally seems very inelegant.

    Certainly a problem that will need to be overcome for version 1.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The CreatorMay 8, 2012 at 8:43 PM

      As I said... it's for notebooks. I don't see a better solution. Specific ideas are welcome.

      I agree though on reducing the total number of keys. 'u'se already can be used to read scrolls and books, eat food, drink potions, use tools, ... (and later on zap wands, etc.). Since you have more choices though 'u'se usually required more interaction and using the specialized commands can be faster. Thus I personally believe that "fewer keys" does not necessarily equate to "better".

      Delete
    2. TollMay 9, 2012 at 1:01 AM

      Indeed it is a difficult plight!

      Delete
  2. iron cashMay 8, 2012 at 9:43 AM

    I like it, seems logical to me. Though I made sure I got my keyboard with a numeric keyboard... 'cus I'm a a nerd, and crazy addicted to adom.

    ReplyDelete
  3. iffiMay 8, 2012 at 9:55 AM

    I'm still unable to use the dollar sign with either a Finnish or English keyboard (Finnish Win7). Pressing 'k' after the dollar always results in an attempted kick.

    If you are not planning to use the 'q' for anything, consider replacing '#' with it. The w# is a bit cumbersome.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The CreatorMay 8, 2012 at 8:45 PM

      I'm right now learning that almost every non-letter seems to be hard to press on some foreign keyboard... something I never considered. '#' on German keyboards is just one key press, '$' is Shift+4. I guess I will remove all those special characters from the next version of the ADOM II keybindings and replace them with something more straight forward...

      Delete
  4. Octogenarihexate!May 8, 2012 at 7:21 PM

    Long ago, in the mists of time (so a few years back), I redefined my keys for ADOM to VI keys, and managed to keep a lot of the old keybindings. I could put my adom.kbd up somewhere if you'd like to look at it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @PunkCapitalistMay 9, 2012 at 8:09 PM

      I would appreciate, if you could share them :)
      I lost mine, and stopped playing adom just out of extreme laziness for redoing them.

      Delete
  5. anoddladMay 8, 2012 at 7:47 PM

    Personally, I view the keybinding issue as a problem with your macintosh, not with ADOM ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. vichqMay 8, 2012 at 7:56 PM

    You can also use some touchpad gestures (like two finders sliding to move in appropriate direction). Or may be just tapping touchpad can move you in appropriate direction (e.g. left top corner - north west direction, top center - north direction, etc)?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Darren GreyMay 8, 2012 at 8:18 PM

    One interesting thing the roguelike Hydra Slayer does is give you the option of 8-way or 4-way movement. Depending on what you choose all controls, spells, monster abilities and FOV are changed to match that movement type.

    Let's face it, serious ADOM II players will want a proper numpad, whilst laptop users are likely to be more casual players who would probably prefer just 4-way movement.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The CreatorMay 8, 2012 at 8:46 PM

      That's why the ADOM II keybindings are optimized for me ;-)

      Delete
    2. moozoohMay 9, 2012 at 12:45 PM

      >Let's face it, serious ADOM II players will want a proper numpad, whilst laptop users are likely to be more casual players who would probably prefer just 4-way movement.

      The casual players will still need (and I mean "need") the 8-way movement/aiming in ADOM when they're surrounded or when the only way forward is through a diagonal hole, so the argument doesn't stand at all.

      Delete
  8. moozoohMay 9, 2012 at 12:42 PM

    Been a while since I last posted here... Anyway, I find the solution very elegant. Beats using the Fn key for sure!

    ReplyDelete
  9. pnutMay 10, 2012 at 7:05 AM

    I approve of this solution but would also request for CTRL and ALT to act as up and down modifiers respectively. This would mean that CTRL+LEFT=north-west, CTRL+RIGHT=north-east, ALT+LEFT=south-west, ALT+RIGHT=south-east. From your post it seems these combinations have not yet been bound to anything so adding these combinations would appeal to those who view CTRL and ALT as UP/DOWN instead of LEFT/RIGHT.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Zeno RogueJuly 9, 2012 at 2:39 PM

    Actually, some roguelikes use a system which is similar, but different: Shift and Ctrl are used to change left/right to diagonals. It is playable with one hand on my laptop (it seems different on Mac keyboards, but it's their fault).

    Anyway, I recommend using it, better to use someone else's standard (I think it was invented in Infra Arcana) than to introduce a new one.

    ReplyDelete
  11. damiencasoniAugust 5, 2013 at 4:22 PM

    Shift & Ctrl are a better choice than Ctrl & Alt, for a laptop AND a station.

    ReplyDelete