Problem: game controls - are they fixed?

[Aspsusa]

[Lengthy preamble]
Hi, I've been playing smac on and off since it came out, mostly at a very low level (like other ppl play solitaire ) and never tried any kind of multiplay. Never really been much into scenarios, creating my own factions and such either. Bought crossfire but tired of it pretty quickly. Now mostly play with all movies and sound turned off.
[/lengthy preamble]

Now I have stumbled on a problem:
I recently had to get a new laptop (HPcompaq nc4000) and of course I want to play smac on it too. It works very well, I didn't even have to reinstall or anything! (just copied the directory from my old laptop, w2000=>xpPro, too!)
BUT this new lightweight baby doesn't have the keys for moving around (arrows, PgUp, PgDn, End, Home) in such a place that it is really possible to play without scratching your head for at least half a minute when I want to move a unit diagonally.

I have tried searching the game for any way of re-assigning the keys but haven't found anything helpful at all. I tried searching this forum (and generally googling) but I can't come up with search terms that would give me meaningful answers.

Is it possible to change the keys controlling movement?
How?

And if it isn't, anyone have any idea of some work around for this problem? (like some kind of alternate keyboard layout I could run together with smac)

Please, please help - I know this is a very trivial question but I am just too stupid to figure it out.

[Chaos Theory]

You can move units by dragging the mouse to their desired destinations, if you can't figure out how to use the keyboard to do so.

[Quango]

Give yourself a little while. I eventually figured out that the pages are right (the up and down make sense), home/end are left (end is down). You get used to it, and then every once in a while, you send a former the wrong direction and you curse your fingers.

[bondetamp]

You could also buy one of those USB keypads that accountants-on-the-go are so fond of.

[Commy]

Personally, I don't like moving units with the keyboard for a couple of reasons:

Sometimes, I easily make mistakes...

Sometimes, I get confused which keys to press, especially when it is 4 in the morning and school is in like 3 hours...

And lastly, sometimes when you move a unit into a fungus square using the keyboard, the unit doesn't go into the square, but you still get the effects of moving into that square. So like, if I want to move from square A to square B, and square B is fungus, and square B has a unity pod, and I attempt to move into square B using the keyboard, sometimes my unit will still stay in square A, but I still somehow open the Unity pod. Strangely enough, the Unity pod is still there, and you can actually "open" the pod again. And, say if the pod opens a new river or gives a bonus resource, the bonus would appear in square A, not the square with the Unity Pod. Strange...

But anyway, either use the mouse on the laptop, or get a normal mouse that can be connected to the laptop. Or, you can always use your special resonance abilities...

[Sikander]

I find the keyboard much more efficient and less prone to making mistakes than the mouse. When I got Civ 1 I didn't have a mouse installed on my machine, and played entirely on the keyboard. Some of my friends teased me about this until they saw me play! I was much quicker than they were with keyboard only, and my eyes tired more slowly as I didn't have to constantly zero in on "mousable" target areas.

[Aspsusa]

Thanks for the tips.
I tried the mouse-technique but I fear it is not for me - too slow and I find that I still prefer to use the arrow keys, so a lot of switching back and forth.
The tip about PgUp/Dn being right and home/end being left is nice if I could only remember it (lets hope practice makes perfect or I find another solution) - on my keyboard Pg-keys are to the *left* and home/end to the right.... sigh.
That USB-keypad is an idea - if I ever happen upon one dirtcheap I might even buy one.

But it does bug me that this laptop has an embedded numerical keypad that would work quite well if I could only find some way of using it (obviously when you hit numlock you only get the numerical functions of it)!

I do agree with you, Sikander, using the keyboard is almost always more efficient than mousing. It was only when I started using laptops with touchpads that I stopped being extremely anti-mouse when it came to *everything* (being of the opinion that localised versions of software that change the hotkeys to something else should be banned as detrimental to work-efficiency and the mental health of users...).

[Quango]

[SIZE=1] But it does bug me that this laptop has an embedded numerical keypad that would work quite well if I could only find some way of using it (obviously when you hit numlock you only get the numerical functions of it)!

I think the reason you can't go to the embedded pad is that almost every key on your keyboard has a function in Smac. It would probably be twice as time consuming if you had to go to menus to "L" sleep unit, "M" build mine, or any other key that the embedded pad would disable.

Having the pages on the left is brutal! I don't think I'd ever get the hang of going left to move right.

[Aspsusa]

Originally posted by Quango


I think the reason you can't go to the embedded pad is that almost every key on your keyboard has a function in Smac. It would probably be twice as time consuming if you had to go to menus to "L" sleep unit, "M" build mine, or any other key that the embedded pad would disable.

Duh! Didn't think of that one.

Having the pages on the left is brutal! I don't think I'd ever get the hang of going left to move right.

Indeed. Brutal is the word. For other tasks it isn't as bad as I feared, but I'm starting to believe that learning to use them for smac is hopeless. (Been practising all day )
The ironic thing is I chose this laptop over quite a few other candidates based primarily on the fact that I liked the keyboard (well, weighing only 1,6 kg was a nice thing too)... but I must have been thinking about doing "useful stuff" and not smac...

Think I'll have to check out those USB-keypads, and just resign myself to playing solitaire when on the move.

[Chaos Theory]

Maybe you should get one of these for when you play the Pirates...

[Enigma_Nova]

Where the hell are CTRL, ALT and DEL?

[Chaos Theory]

That would be mapped to Avast-!, I would expect

[Enigma_Nova]

Problem is, your comp would restart if you try to type Avast! and all you could say would be RRRrrRRrrrrRRRrrr!

What happens if you press SHIFT-! ?

[Chaos Theory]

Maybe you get a large exclamation mark with a normal exclamation mark as its exclamation point? Something like...

!
!
!
!
!

!

[Enigma_Nova]

I think I've typed to someone with a keyboard like that...