Keybindings

[Tyrnyx]

Ok. So I love this game. And I want to play it. But I'm a peace corp volunteer and I live in Sierra Leone and I only have a netbook. It has no keypad. I'm very used to playing with a keypad. What is the best way to change the keybindings around so that I don't go crazy. and then how do I do that?

I don't say these things to toot my own horn, I say them because the suggestion of "buy a USB keypad" has already been thought of and is not reasonable.

Thank you.

[Nobbse]

I say them because the suggestion of "buy a USB keypad" has already been thought of and is not reasonable. .

Well, it MAY seem not reasonable, but that's exactly what I did - ( two times! ) and I'm happy about it. By the way - one can indeed get accustomed to the normal ciphers. I did that sometimes when my old USB keypad was out of order.

[Tyrnyx]

I just can't seem to bring myself to send this message to my parents.

Remember how I wasted all that time back home mesmerized by what looked like computer symbols moving around a black screen. yah. I'd also like to do that here. If you could spend an ass-load of money on shipping and send me a USB keypad to do that I would be appreciative.

I just don't think it would go over well.

I have plenty to do but what they don't tell you is that there is also plenty of downtime. I've read around 50 books in five months. I want something else...

[Joe]

In my experience the easiest solution is to get your mind working with the regular ciphers. It's a bit confusing at the start but within an hour or two you really start getting used to it.

[SirTheta]

Please see my first post in this RFE: http://www.adom.de/forums/project.ph...uenoteid=10252

It has the methodolgy, etc. behind the keys and you can rebind the noted keys in it as you see fit. I highly recommend those keybindings (known as vim keybindings usually). They do take a little getting used to, but once you do, you'll never want to go back to the numpad. I believe there are some problems with the .adom.kbd I linked to [plus it's just adom.kbd now], so I recommend looking at it/how I did it and making the changes yourself, rather than saving it or copying it verbatim.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

To be honest, I have been struggling with this problem all my ADOM life (which is a lot of years), I have tried a lot of solutions, and the only one that half "worked" for me was using the "fake numpad" in my old laptop, switchable via an Fn key combination. I would switch before and after moving, and it wasn't too comfortable but I got used to it.

Then I got a new laptop which no longer has a "fake numpad" (you know, the trend with computers now is making them worse and worse... you had a screen with 1200 rows of pixels in your laptop? No luck, now you get 1080 wit so-called "full HD". Stereo mix? No longer shipped, go and buy a $80 external soundcard. Etc. etc.)

With the new laptop, I have tried all sorts of key combinations and just never found anything that would make me play ADOM there. Vi keys, honestly, I find them awful, and I'm an old-school UNIX user. There's people who find themselves very comfortable with those, but I think you probably need to have your mind wired in a certain way for that. In my mind, having a location of the keys which is inconsistent with the spatial directions they represent just doesn't cut it.

So I keep playing on desktop computers, and just playing other games when I'm on the laptop. Honestly I think this might be one of the greatest obstacles (if not the greatest) for ADOM adoption, as I don't think I'm the only one to have these problems. Many people don't even have a desktop computer, and there's no way newcomers are going to buy a special USB keyboard to play one single game if they never get to get hooked into it because they don't like the controls.

Fortunately the latest ADOM versions are making a lot of progress. First of all, in the latest NotEye versions you can click an adjacent tile to move there, which is sort of not extremely bad for diagonals. It does make me keep playing on the laptop for a while at least, if I'm playing a class that doesn't need diagonals a lot (e.g. a melee class, as opposed to a wizard with magic missile).

Secondly, and I didn't know this ten minutes ago, but faradan has just said in the RFE forum that "we have been able to use Shift + left/right arrow to move diagonal up, and Ctrl + arrow to move diagonal down. This is fantastic and a great solution to movement on a laptop without a numpad.". I'll sure try that, it sounds good.

[Deathwind]

I might be able to help you work out something, what model is your netbook?

[GordonOverkill]

I won one game on my laptop, using the normal number-row to move (three fingers on 1, 2 and 3, three fingers on 7,8 and 9, index fingers jumping to 4 and 6). After a while you really get used to it. Though it's not perfect of course, so I only play on the laptop when I am away from home..

[Tyrnyx]

when I am away from home..

It's going to be a while for me.

----

Yeah, I had no idea the control+move and shift+move did that until I opened up the config file and noticed that was an option. It took a while to get used to and it's still a work in progress since I'm so used to the other way. Yet I'm glad this option exists. Thank you creator and team!

[gut]

you shouldn't tell them to send you a numpad, but rather a new laptop, one with a proper numpad.
Honestly, where is everyone buying their laptops? Why would anyone NOT want a numpad?