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Newest Quake 'Productivity Tool' -- The CLAW
W. Starlight writes: "LinuxWorld Australia has a good article about a new type of PC game gadget called the CLAW (claw.com.au). The CLAW simply plugs into your keyboard port and has nine programmable buttons to make playing 3D shooters games like Quake easier. Also, the CLAW needs no device drivers or other software to work, hence it is operating system independent. The review has photos of the CLAW being used with a mouse to play Quake. I can't wait to try it myself!" From the number of people who sent this in, this must be second only to the Fountain of Youth among objects of untapped desire.
I have enough trouble having to position a mouse on the other side of the keyboard everytime some right-handed person comes and sits down at my PC.
I doubt they will do a left handed version of the Claw, (that will fit the Right hand, mouse in Left)...
That's a weird quote, since God didn't write all the books. Man did. And mankind is equally affected by both the devil and God. No apologies should be forthcoming. What was dear old Sam thinking?
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+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
When I play First Person Shooter games, I remap all the commands I need to the numeric keypad area. Then, with LEFT hand on the keypad (keyboard moved leftward), and RIGHT hand on the mouse, I have all the controls I need without hand motion.
I started this with the first Descent, but it works for Hexen II or others, too.
7,9 = turn left, turn right (others)
There, now I don't need to spend money on a gadget that only has nine programmable keys.
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sort of products is that they don't fit anyone with unusually shaped hands (long/short, wide/thin).
:^))
Very true, and if you've been typing on computers since the age of nine [ZX81 doesn't count - It didn't have a real keyboard!!), the likelyhood that you have rather long fingers is pretty high!
A personally moulded one however will cost hundreds if not thousands of [insert your currency here] to produce... Still I wouldn't be surprised if they get some queries - some people take their fragging very seriously indeed.
leftmouse = fire
rightmouse = mouselook (with lookspring ON)
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My problem with those "moulded perfectly to your grip" sort of products is that they don't fit anyone with unusually shaped hands (long/short, wide/thin). So your fingers wind up (in my case, having long fingers) sitting all curled up, well outside those cool ergonomic grooves.
They should just send the buttons, the circuitry, and the clay.
I personally prefer my MS Strategic Commander. Its features include both X and Y axis, plus left and right rotation. Each axis or rotation is fully programmable. On top, it has 8 programmable buttons. Also, there are 3 buttons for the thumb to press that can select a subset of the 6 main buttons on top, for a total of 26 programmable buttons. All this for about the same price. The only down side is that it is for windows...for now.
Heh. I didn't know they were still selling Gravis Game Pads. I discovered awhile ago on one of my joysticks that the hat switch was perfect for directional movement (i.e., back, forward, left strafe, right strafe). Unfortunately the damn thing is just too big when I jsut need the hat switch. I was thinking about buying a gravis gamepad for that use (i used to own two), but I couldn't seem to find them in the stores anymore.
Does this thing actually work? Or does someone know of a good device for what I need?
Why did they do this only left handed? I mean, the original designer was probably a lefty, but certainly he realised that most... oh, wait. They're in Australia where everything is upside down, so lefties must be the majority.
Eenie meenie miney moe
Stupid voters have to go.
Inca dinca dinca do
I can do it, why can't you?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Sure, that's a great idea. They could ship a half-pound of Sculpey(tm). You could form it to fit your hand, then bake it. The electronics isn't going to be hurt by a trip through the oven at the low temperature that Sculpey requires.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The Matsushita microswitches I did it with worked fine. Plasticine clay hardens at a very low temperature. What is it, 220 degrees?? I always have to go look it up.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
When Douglas Englebart invented the mouse back in the late 60s, he also invented the chording keyboard. The idea was a lot like this claw, one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard and no need to take either hand off its designated input device.
For some reason, the chording keyboard never really took off. Perhaps because it is a little complex to start using, there is no 'hunt-and-peck' way to use a chording keyboard. You've only got five buttons and you have to remember which combination of simultaneous button presses will generate the characters you want to type.
One really good thing about chording keyboards is that because there is so little hand movement required to operate them, they are far more ergonomic than regular keyboards.
I read the article and there is no mention of chording on the claw, but it sounds like it is programmable enough that it shouldn't require any other than new software.
Now, if only it had a USB connector so I could use it on my HP workstation in the office.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
By the way, it's hard for anyone to take you seriously when your .sig consists of two ASCII birds propped on an ASCII penis.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Started to. Didn't finish it. Found a better keyboard. Kinesis Essential.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Not OS-independent, but a hell of a lot more swankier. Plus, it wouldn't take much effort to craft some rudimentary drivers in Linux.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
No! Not Craw! Craw!
A scene from when I was in grad school living in a house with 5 fellow students. After seeing this episode they turn and say to me:
Craw!
See nick.
If G-d uses tools like these to control the world, it would have to be this one specifically, with slightly remapped buttons: Left, Right, Up, Down, and "Smite".
Think about it... what a great timesaver!
There are some activities for which a "specialized" controller is nearly indispensible.
I have a SpaceORB 360, which is basically a joystick with 6 axes (three translation axes and three rotation axes). It's in the shape of a sphere which you grab and twist (gently) to move around. It also has six buttons. It shows up as a DirectInput device under Windoze, and there's support for it in the Linux joystick driver suite. (Sadly, SpaceTec/Labtec no longer make the controller. They show up on eBay from time to time.)
Now, as a game playing controller, its use is limited. You can't whip around as quickly as you can with a mouse, nor can you aim as accurately. However, as a spectator camera controller, it kicks extreme ass. In fact, when John Carmack announced he was taking parametric joystick control out of Quake-3, I was very disappointed, since it meant it was now much more difficult to record good demos off a live server. I even created a page of ORB demos to make my argument but, alas, parametric control was still lost.
The point is: Keyboard and mouse is good for a lot, but for some work, specialized controllers are just amazing.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
When I play Quake3, my left hand covers 17 keys, doing everything from movement to weapon selection to zooming getting the score. When I play Thief, my left hand covers 21 keys. And of course, the right hand always does looking with the mouse and attacking. What makes them think that 9 keys is a big advantage? It's only useful if, #1, you are a pure keyboard user, and #2, your right hand is on the inverted T arrow keys.
I knew one guy who was a pure keyboard user, but he was actually pretty good. He kept both hands on the home key and then used the right hand for moving and looking with the left hand for weapon selection. I think he had special macro keys bound to make him turn ultra-fast as well. Of course, that's still no substitute for a good mouse.
If you're curious about my config, I keey my left fingers on W-E-R-T. I use the 3x3 square of 1-2-3/Q-W-E/A-S-D for weapon selection (yes, I really do use all the weapons). This is much faster than using a mouse wheel or otherwise cycling. More commonly used weapons are closer to the home row, which reduces finger stress. I use T/G for forward/backward and R/F for left/right. Since you never want to move both forward and backwards, or both left and right, you only need 2 fingers to move, which frees up 2 fingers for faster weapon selection. The other 4 keys are score (tab, handled by pinky), zoom (space-- thumb), walk (alt-- thumb), and use (B-- thumb). Fire, crouch, and jump are on the mouse buttons.
Thief has even more bindings because you have 3 different walk speeds, 4 inventory commands, and you need lean left/right. Now how could you put all of those onto 9 buttons? Maybe it would work for Counterstrike, when you rarely switch weapons...
-Ted