Keyboard Problem

[Jamison]

I have a dell 8200 system, and the keyboard is a 'Enhanced QuietKey Keyboard', has the standard PS/2 connector. I haven't had any troubles with anyother game, except smac. Smac does not recongize my num pad. So if I push 7, to go northwest... nothing will happen. I could always right-click and select 'move player here', but that would get old. Any tweaks that I could do? Or anyone know why the software doesn't look at my num pad?

[Qantaga]

I have the same problem with my keyboard if the "Num Lock" light is on. If I turn the "Num Lock" light off, then SMAC/X will recognize the directional keys. It's a bit of a pain when I go back to other programs, but it does solve the problem during SMAC/X.

[Darius]

I have to turn off the numlock at work, running under Windows NT, but it works fine with the numlock on at home with any of my three computers running under Windows 98.

[johndmuller]

I stopped using the keypad for movement (or even numbers) when playing the game because I wasn't sure I understood what to expect and I didn't want to have it do something unexpectedly bad when I thought it was doing something else. If there is a difference between operating systems, perhaps that would explain why I was confused.

Anyway, now I normally use only the mouse to move, but before I let go of the mouse button, I try to look closely at the lines that show where it is going to go (on land at least) in case it wants to do something dumb. Sometimes I use the (separate) cursor keys, particularly if a steep hill makes it hard to find the right spot for the mouse pointer, but of course they don't do diagonals. If necessary, there is the flattened terrain mode, where the steepness problem disappears.

[Chowlett]

The solution, as already mentioned, is to turn Num Lock off. johnd - as far as I know, nothing weird happens while doing this - at least it doesn't o me, and I'm running it under an OS it was never designed for (namely XP). Of course, YMMV, but I suspect you'll have no problems.