I wanted to do a post about the game I’m working on, but I’m not quite there yet. I’m hoping to make a video soon, but you’ll just have to wait a bit longer. Sorry about that.
In the meantime though, I have this post. You’re probably wondering what the heck “Keyboard Sith” means, aren’t you? Well, the story goes something like this: I’m a keyboard kind of a guy. I think using keyboard shortcuts makes me faster than always having to switch back and forth between the keyboard and mouse. It’s always fun to find a keyboard shortcut I can do in less than a second for something that to use the mouse would take a couple of seconds. When I came across a program named Keyboard Jedi, I knew it was something I had to try out. I actually really like it. Unfortunately, it seems to have some 32bit vs. 64bit problem and doesn’t want to run on my computer at work. There are some posts around about how to hack it to get it to work, but that seemed like too much work. And since the author of Keyboard Jedi doesn’t seem to have updated the application in a couple of years, I decided to create a replacement. And thus Keyboard Sith was born!
For those of you too lazy to click through to the Keyboard Jedi link, here’s the gist of it. The program locks the mouse cursor in its window, so you are forced to use the keyboard. You can turn the mouse capture on and off, just in case you really do have to use the mouse. But it provides a barrier larger than just reaching for your mouse.
Keyboard Sith is a little more limited than Keyboard Jedi in some ways. Keyboard Jedi has the option to capture the mouse only in Visual Studio or in all applications. Keyboard Sith always captures the mouse in all applications. Keyboard Jedi also shows you when you press special key combinations (basically, control or alt or shift plus anything else). That’s handy for presentations sometimes. Keyboard Sith doesn’t do that. But Keyboard Sith does have a nifty pop up notification when you disable the mouse capture, relating the Sith Code to the power of your keyboard. It also has an equally nifty notification icon that switches between a wussy blue light saber when the mouse capture is disabled and a powerful red light saber when the mouse capture is enabled. You can also disable the Sith Code notification via the notification icon (I’m assuming because you already memorized the Sith Code).
It’s not perfect, but it’s hopefully a handy little app that will help some people learn more keyboard shortcuts. And hopefully it will work on more computers than Keyboard Jedi. Embrace the dark side…
P.S. The .NET Framework 2.0 or higher is required. But no installation is required. Just unzip the EXE file and double click it.