keyset on a laptop? argh!

[chem]

I am a long time *band player who has always used a full size keyboard and the numeric keypad for movement. I have recently compiled [V] 3.0.9 and NPP 0.5.0 beta 4 universal binaries for Mac OS X on my Intel MacBook Pro.

But, I have no idea how to play now

The arrow keys are okay, but no diagonal! The roguelike keys are not in any sort of sensical order for movement (it seems to me). Is there some standard way that people remap keys to play on a notebook keyboard?? Do people force themselves to use roguelike keyset? I'm using a USA English keyboard layout.

This seems nuts. I don't know what to do. haha. I saw a couple of patchsets on google for [V] designed to help playing on laptops, but I think these are not in mainline [V] yet and I have no idea how useful they are. Any ideas?

thanks.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by chem

I am a long time *band player who has always used a full size keyboard and the numeric keypad for movement. I have recently compiled [V] 3.0.9 and NPP 0.5.0 beta 4 universal binaries for Mac OS X on my Intel MacBook Pro.

But, I have no idea how to play now

The arrow keys are okay, but no diagonal! The roguelike keys are not in any sort of sensical order for movement (it seems to me). Is there some standard way that people remap keys to play on a notebook keyboard?? Do people force themselves to use roguelike keyset? I'm using a USA English keyboard layout.

This seems nuts. I don't know what to do. haha. I saw a couple of patchsets on google for [V] designed to help playing on laptops, but I think these are not in mainline [V] yet and I have no idea how useful they are. Any ideas?

thanks.

If you search on eBay for "USB numeric keypad" you can pick one up for a few dollars. A friend of mine did this precisely to play Angband on his laptop, and swears by it.

CC

[Psi]

I use cursor keys and then 1,3,7,9 for the diagonals (not very logical but it has become hardwired into my brain).

Si

[Fuma]

Try playing the roguelike keyset for an hour and you'll love it. There is a picture in the online help showing that the directional keys are logically placed.
Y and U are for 7 and 9 - upwards movement.
H - left, because it's on the left side.
L - right, likewise.
K and J are up and down. Only these caused me a little trouble on the beginning to remember which is up.
B and N are 1 and 3 - downwards.

[Big Al]

I've been playing 'band on my Macbook Pro for a while. I use extensive use of the 'fn' key so that 'fn' + 'uiojkl' is '456789'. Now that I'm used to this I can't play on a keyboard without a fn key. It's nice because I never have to move my hands from the numpad to the main keyboard as I play. (My right hand has easy access to both the important commands like 'i', 'o', 'k', 'L', 'm' and the number keys without moving, just by use of the left hand pinky on 'fn'.)

[chem]

Al, how do you go about remapping the Fn key in OS X? Did you get a third party app? I am kinda new to OS X. I am thinking maybe of trying Fn key + ui for left right and hjk for the down directions; that would give me 789 for the top directions in some sort of logical layout...

thanks for all the replies; I may try roguelike keyset someday too.

EDIT: silly me. angband detects Fn-key combos fine in the macros/keymap menu. I thought it wouldn't. In fact by default something similar to my layout is in there. no problem.

[Big Al]

Are there not numbers at the bottom-right corner of the uiojkl keys on your keyboard? Those are the defauts for using fn. Note that fn + P is '*' too.