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[Didjor]

While playing, in the middle of nowhere, my keys were not responding to dwarf fortress... Not all my keys ! The "Escape", "Enter" & "Space" were doing their jobs perfectly (and I could save, thanks dwarfs god !) but the other keys, like Q and others alphabetic keys, didn't work that well.

I'm sorry, I have no more information, it really happened in any special circumstances...

[Didjor]

I forgot to say something ! After rebooting the game, it works again.

[Keldor]

You didn't accidently hit caps lock in there, did you?

[Shadowlord]

Assuming it wasn't caps lock:

What operating system are you using, and are you playing DF in WINE, or a virtual computer, or anything like that?

(The first thing to think about is whether it's possible for it to happen without it being DF's fault - and on windows at least, sometimes the OS seems to think you're holding alt or ctrl or the like when you really aren't. But I don't think that should have done what you reported, since both alt-esc and ctrl-esc wouldn't have opened the esc menu in DF. They'd have minimized DF or opened the start menu, respectively. Oh, and shift-esc doesn't appear to be opening the menu either.)

[MMad]

Are you by any chance running a non-english version of windows, with a non-english keyboard layout?

It's possible to change your keyboard language in windows with Alt+Shift, which for example in my case (being Swedish) changes the "å", "ä" and "ö" keys to "[", "'" and ";". Quite insidious since there's no feedback at all from Windows, except the little "SV" changing to "EN" in the taskbar. Until I figured out what the heck was going on I kept hitting it by accident in games, could no longer type sensibly and had to restart to get things back to normal.

[Nazush Ebsas]

i'm pretty sure it's not possible to type sensibly in swedish?

[Reasonableman]

I forgot to say something ! After rebooting the game, it works again.

Don't mean to be mean, but that's what the 'Edit' button is for.

[Neoskel]

I forgot to say something ! After rebooting the game, it works again.

Don't mean to be mean, but that's what the 'Edit' button is for.

Technically the 'Modify' button on these forums.

[Didjor]

Yeah, that's the "Modify" button, and I was actually looking for the missing "Edit" button... 

Anyway... I'm on WinXP, familiy edition.
And indeed, my keyboard is an azerty. (French)
But, I played Dwarf for 2 years now (with some pauses) and it never did that before.

[Muffy St. Bernard]

I tried out 39b last night and had a similar (or the same) problem...but it may be due to something else.

The first time I launched 39b I noticed that the "-" key wasn't responding, and that if I tried to reset its key binding the "-" key on my numpad wasn't recognized by DF.

Then it seemed to me that many other keys weren't being recognized in menus, but I wasn't 100% sure of what was going on (see below).

I closed the program, came here, saw this message, then opened the program again...all the keys were certainly working, but the "-" key still wasn't recognized. I mapped it to another key.

The reason I'm uncertain about this is because I am now using a new computer (iMac with OSX.5.?) as opposed to my old eMac (OSX 10.3.9). So first off I'm baffled by how FAST the interface is on this new computer (too fast, actually...I'm still adjusting to what the heck's going on), and secondly I'm not sure if the keyboard problems are related to 39b or the new computer.

I am using the Canadian English setting in the OS, which doesn't do anything wacky to the numpad minus key. It would be nice to have that key recognized, as it's used so often.

Muffy
http://dangermuffy.blogspot.com

[Reasonableman]

I'm preeeeetty sure that you must've hit capslock. It's happened to me once or twice.

Also, about the modify button: Huh! Never noticed that it was called that. I always used the little in-line button, that allows you to edit from the same screen and is unlabeled.

EDIT: More also, Muffy, have you checked the connection between your keyboard and your computer? Mine is rather faulty, and if I don't hold the 'board at exactly the right angle, I lose my upper row of keys (qwer...) which gets rather annoying. Your problem could be a much more localized version of the same thing.

[Muffy St. Bernard]

Thanks for your suggestions! It definitely isn't capslock (I checked that while trying to find a NumLock key, which the keyboard doesn't actually have).

I'll check to see if the numpad-minus key works in other applications. My suspicion is that this keyboard has some keys that are somehow not recognized by the Mac version of Dwarf Fortress (a similar thing happened to me with Zangband on the old eMac...NONE of the numpad keys were recognized).

I DO hope it's as simple as pusing the USB connector in a little further.

[Draco18s]

Numlock off: --------
Numlock on: --------

Testing in applications that don't care about numblock won't matter, it's all about HOW the keyboard reports the keys (one is the same as the -/_ key, the other is a unique byte that happens to also print -).

[Muffy St. Bernard]

Shocking: Dwarf Fortress revealed a glitch in my keyboard...just before the warranty was up!

There was something wrong with that particular numpad key, but since I'd never needed it before I had never noticed it didn't work.

Ten minutes with Apple technical support and they're sending me a replacement keyboard.

Thanks, Dwarf Fortress! That alone is worth a chunky donation.

[Draco18s]

Nice!