Uber special gaming keyboards and where to find them.

H

Hotel California

Mildly Dipped
There is a lot of cool stuff to buy out there.

Linky

Anyone know of any others, own one, or have thoughts about them?

p.s. I'm looking for a site that will ship one to the UK but can't find a dealer that does them.
 
Meh. I use a Saitek gamer's keyboard and I move with the arrow keys. WASD makes no sense whatsoever because the keys are not arranged naturally, you have to move your middle finger over to hit the "W" and on me that is excuciatingly painful. Also I have use the arrows since "Castle Wolfenstein" and simply added the mouse with the right hand when it became the de facto standard. Somewhere along the lines I chaged left and right to strafe from turn and began to turn just with the mouse. I never have trouble with this way of doing things. Having your move keys lined up is SO much easier.
 
Cat said:
Here's a wild and radical thought:

How about using the mouse with your left hand, and using the numeric pad for movement?
Click to expand...

If you're ambidexteros or left handed maybe but otherwise it is counterintuitive. Why reduce accuracy and comfort. The only advantage i can see with the numberpad is its lack of windows key or caps lock.

Lord said:
WASD makes no sense whatsoever because the keys are not arranged naturally, you have to move your middle finger over to hit the "W" and on me that is excuciatingly painful.
Click to expand...

I dunno - i've never had that problem. Its only slightly to the left and if your keyboard is angled slightly clockwise it presents no problems.

On regular keyboards it creates a lack of buttons problem. The arrow keys are stranded.

Also I have use the arrows since "Castle Wolfenstein" and simply added the mouse with the right hand when it became the de facto standard. Somewhere along the lines I chaged left and right to strafe from turn and began to turn just with the mouse.
Click to expand...

I have real trouble using anything with a turn system instead of strafe. Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness really turned me off and it is gathering dusk because of its total lack of strafing. Turning is what the mouse is for.

On the Saitek keyboard what exactly do you use the numbered thingy for? It looks more like a tool for splintercell than anything else.
 
Whatever happened to that high-tech keyboard that had programmable keys that would change function and appearance depending on what game you played?
 
Hotel California said:
Anyone know of any others, own one, or have thoughts about them?
Click to expand...
overpriced & pretty useless imo.

there are some friends of mine (CSers) that use a special small kb for movement & special keys, but i never saw the point. it doesnt do anything you cant do on a regular keyboard. i dont know the real name of what they use, but we call it a gaylord. i dont know who started it, but it stuck...

a lot of money for a pretty useless piece of hardware imo.

Unkillable Cat said:
Here's a wild and radical thought:

How about using the mouse with your left hand, and using the numeric pad for movement?
Click to expand...
euhm, moron :p

almost no righthanded person is as agile with his left hand as his right hand. not to mention a lot of mice are right handed only.

anyway, use WASD? no need to switch hands. (besides, you can use numpad without switching mousehand...)

Lord 342 said:
Meh. I use a Saitek gamer's keyboard and I move with the arrow keys. WASD makes no sense whatsoever because the keys are not arranged naturally, you have to move your middle finger over to hit the "W" and on me that is excuciatingly painful. Also I have use the arrows since "Castle Wolfenstein" and simply added the mouse with the right hand when it became the de facto standard. Somewhere along the lines I chaged left and right to strafe from turn and began to turn just with the mouse. I never have trouble with this way of doing things. Having your move keys lined up is SO much easier.
Click to expand...
i dont find WASD unnatural. sure, it's a little crooked, but nothing that gives me any inconvenience. the advantages are legion though. without moving my hand, i have access to more keys than i could possibly need in a pinch.

i mostly use HL1 / CS beta standard key layouts.

for CS for instance:

W = forward; S = backward; A = strafe left; D = strafe right
Q = flashback weapon (go back to previous)
E = use
R = reload
Tab = scores
Shift = walk/run
Ctrl = crouch
Space = jump
F = flashlight
G = drop current
1 = primary weapon; 2 = secundary weapon; 3 = knife; 4 = grenades; 5 = bomb

T = ventrilo (since the bastard doesnt take my 5th mouse button)
Y = (written) talk
U = (written) team talk

F1-F10 = various buybinds
F11-F12 = scripted name changes
Z, X, C = fungun buybinds
I, O, P = clanrelated spam
numpad = tacticsrelated spam

@ Lord 342: i'd advice you to change your movement keys from arrows to home/delete/end/pagedown or to numberpad, a friend of mine does that since he doesnt like WASD, but this gives him more keys within fingerrange. much better that way.

@ Hotel California: do you really need some expensive crap to do stuff you can easily do on a normal all purpose 15$ keyboard?
 
The Overseer said:
Whatever happened to that high-tech keyboard that had programmable keys that would change function and appearance depending on what game you played?
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "change appearence"?
does it light up? or is it some kind of shape shifting keyboard
 
Milo said:
What do you mean by "change appearence"?
does it light up? or is it some kind of shape shifting keyboard
Click to expand...

Click the linky - the keys are all back lit with OLED which allows them to display anything you can think of (within pixelular restraints).

SuAside said:
@ Hotel California: do you really need some expensive crap to do stuff you can easily do on a normal all purpose 15$ keyboard?
Click to expand...

I dunno, i was merely asking. My current keyboard is lovely. It has a whole set of media buttons along the top and works fine but is shorter than a regular, has no end/pg up/down/etc block in the centre and so has a function key where ctrl should be. I like it a lot. But it'd be nice to have something specially shaped to the hand and less fidley-Pressing Tab, \ z x c is hard and slighly contorting sometimes. The Wolfking Warrior thing looks nice and it pretty cheap at only $40 or so dollars (remember i'm british - we're used to paying extorbernant prices).
 
I've used the same key bindings since the Legends Quake clan, from CS to Postal 2, and they work beautifully.

First, use your mouse in whichever hand you use it most commonly in. If you're a lefty, you're already ahead of the game at this point. If you're a righty, slide your keyboard to the left and use the NumPad.

Bindings are so easy and logical, it's no wonder that Zboard uses a similar setup.

8 - Forward
5,2 - Backwards
4 - Turn Left
6 - Turn Right
1 - Strafe Left
3 - Strafe Right
7 - Lean Left or Inventory Left
9 - Lean Right or Inventory Right
/ - Postal 2 I use this for kick, but it can be used for flashlight or other equipment, like the * and - keys.
Ins/0 - Alt Fire
Del - Crouch
+ Reload weapon
Enter - Use

PageUp, PageDown, Home, End, Insert, and Delete, all can be used for other equipment, vision mode changing for Aliens vs. Predator, putting your weapon away, etc. 22 bindable keys within easy reach around a centralized pad you don't have to look down or grope for the Tab key to make sure your fingers are placed right. Just feel for the raised tab on the 5 NumPad key.
 
I have played allot of FPS games in my days.

I have played on high level in most of them and i have never used any of all the "gaming keyboards".

I use the same config as SuAside said, only i have moved it one step more to the right. so "E" is my forward key.

This way you get even more keys on both sides that you can use.

However there are very few games than will even come close to use all those keys.

In short gaming kb are generally for people who suck and think they will be good just cus they have an expensive kb.

This is the case for FPS any way, maybe in WOW and other MMOs its good to have one, cant really say cus i haven't played it. But i think the difference is minimal even there.
 
On the topic of keyboards, I was curious if there was one designed to maximize typing speed. Or for that matter, is the standard keyboard designed for that purpose?

What I mean is, the placement of keys is designed so that keys that are frequently used in conjunction are in a position to make them faster to type in sequence.

Not sure if such a thing exists or if it would make a difference, was just curious.
 
SimpleMinded said:
On the topic of keyboards, I was curious if there was one designed to maximize typing speed. Or for that matter, is the standard keyboard designed for that purpose?

What I mean is, the placement of keys is designed so that keys that are frequently used in conjunction are in a position to make them faster to type in sequence.

Not sure if such a thing exists or if it would make a difference, was just curious.
Click to expand...

QWERTY was designed with that in mind, with the most-commonly used letter pairs divided between each hand so that while one is hitting a key, the other can be on the way to the next.
 
Roshambo said:
SimpleMinded said:
On the topic of keyboards, I was curious if there was one designed to maximize typing speed. Or for that matter, is the standard keyboard designed for that purpose?

What I mean is, the placement of keys is designed so that keys that are frequently used in conjunction are in a position to make them faster to type in sequence.

Not sure if such a thing exists or if it would make a difference, was just curious.
Click to expand...

QWERTY was designed with that in mind, with the most-commonly used letter pairs divided between each hand so that while one is hitting a key, the other can be on the way to the next.
Click to expand...
euhm, Rosh... QWERTY was designed to prevent type writers' typebars from getting caught into eachother & jamming the typewriter. to do that, they moved most used letter pairs away from eachother. this makes it harder to write fast since layout isnt logical & it wasn't designed specifically with fast typing in mind, but simply to keep machines from jamming. however, as usual, man addapted and succeeded in typing fast with it anyway.

anyhow, the fastest method of typing i've ever seen, was some special gizmo i saw at a facility my dad owned in Morocco at the time. it's one handed thing, thats basically as big as an adult's hand. its use is far from simple. you rest your hand on a conductive plate and by touching the plate with your fingertips, you complete the electrical circuit (even though you dont feel a thing). with all the possible combinations, you can somehow form all keys on a keyboard. it blew my mind to see people write that fast. it's not something you can use without heavy training though.
 
Roshambo said:
QWERTY was designed with that in mind, with the most-commonly used letter pairs divided between each hand so that while one is hitting a key, the other can be on the way to the next.
Click to expand...

Aye, but also "Frequently used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document" is no longer necessary, and QWERTY is actually fairly outdated and no longer "ideally fast".

Dvorak is probably the best known "designed for speed" keyboard layout. A friend of mine used it for some time.
 
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