hollow knight home row layout

I just made it past 100% in my main hollow knight run, so now I will allow myself to get silksong when it comes out. I did this with a little bit of YT guidance, but mostly just figuring it out. I only just discovered the reznormichael-hollow-knight-completion-check which got me an extra 2% for a few items I must have got and not saved on, because I was sure I had them.

Controller #

Hollow Knight is a game that can be played with keyboard or controller, You can use analog stick for movements, but they just translate to dpad, there really are no analog moves in the game. This makes it ripe for playing on pure keyboard. I really favor controller when there are more than one analog (throttle, brake, steering for example).

On controller I've switched to only using d-pad as I feel like it gives me the most crisp of controls. It is really easy to miss a pogo on analog by hitting slightly left or right.

My Keyboard #

My daily driver keyboard is a custom built 40% monoblock keyboard I absolutely love using it, it perfectly plops down on a laptop when I am in laptop mode and really fits me quite well for my wrok as a software/infrastructure engineer.

WASD #

We've got to talk about pinky stagger

I can use wasd perfectly fine on it, I have a layer that has no holds on any keys so that they are all nice and crisp and tailored to gaming operations that would require a hold.

Now what I haven't ran into before is that trying to game with wasd and use the right side is very uncomfortable with this steep of a pinky stagger. Generally with keyboard an mouse games I have the keyboard a little slanted and move my fingers to wasd just fine, but it just does not work well with both hands on the keyboard.

Enter asdf #

Today is day one, I'm not quite sure how long it will last, but I am giving asdf a try for arrow keys. This will work much more akin to a fight stick where each finger has a primary direction instead of using one finger for both up and down.

This seems weird #

So Ya, I know it's weird. I did some searching wasn't able to find much other than this one reddit post talking about using asdf. oddly one person reccommended sdfg, this souds so much like vim, which makes a lot of sense, but brings back moving fingers off of home row position or using one finger for down and right, which aint gonna work.

First thoughts #

I'm about 20 minutes in and struggling on False Knight, I could be a bit more patient, but I'm trying to work on pogos on all the mobs on the way in.

Holding up or down

The ability to just hold up or down as you run through the map with enemies coming from above or below feels superior, and its going to be nice, I really just got to put some time in to get use to the layout, maybe even make some changes.

I realize now that Hollow Knight rarely needs quick swiching between up and down and would probably be fine on a wasd layout if i were to be using a split keyboard or a bit less pinky stagger that would work out, but for now I am giving this a shot.

My Son's experience #

So my son is playing along with me, new save as well. He went with wasd and mouse, while this sounds insane to me to use mouse for clicking and no movement the natural feel that it has, has him blazing through faster than he does on controller, doing pogos he's never done before.

False Knight down #

The recording somehow stuck on the menu screen and did not record video, but I got this screenshot of the victory.

Vengeful Spirit #

Day 2 I managed to make it to the Ancestral Mound and get the Vengeful Spirit cast. Everything is starting to feel much better and more natural. Surprisingly my main issue is with up and down since they are used a bit less, left with my pinky has not been any issue.