Moving around¶

Gridmonger is a modal editor, meaning that a given keystroke often performs entirely different actions in different operational modes of the program. There is no great mystery in this — just think of how the state of the NumLock key affects how your numeric keypad functions. Modes work in a similar fashion.

There are four navigational modes, and as you’ll see, these different modes have implications on other shortcuts as well. Then there are a few further special modes for advanced editing; these will be discussed in the Advanced editing chapter.

Common navigation keys¶

The level-related navigational keys are the same in every mode.

You can zoom the view in and out with the = and - keys, respectively. There are 20 zoom levels in total.

To change the current level, you can use the drop-down above the level, or Ctrl+-/Ctrl+=, PgUp/PgDn or Kp-/Kp+ to go to the previous or next level.

Note

When it comes to keyboard shortcuts, Gridmonger uses the US keyboard layout, regardless of the keyboard layout and language settings of your operating system, or what the key labels on a non-US keyboard indicate. This is very similar to how most games handle the keyboard. For the more technically inclined, the program only cares about positional scancodes.

Normal Mode¶

The most basic mode of operation is Normal Mode; this is what most people will use 90% of the time. When you start Gridmonger for the first time, you are in Normal Mode. This is indicated by a square shaped cursor.

Normal Mode (square cursor)

One of the defining features of Gridmonger is its Vim-inspired keyboard interface. This means that in addition to the standard cursor keys, you can also use Vim-style HJKL key navigation to move around. You might have already encountered this style of navigation in some text-based games originally developed on UNIX systems, such as the venerable Rogue and NetHack.

If this doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry! Just keep using the standard cursor keys or the keypad for now. But I do recommend you to read the About Vim side-note at the end; you might find it interesting enough to explore this topic further.

The following table summarises all the movement keys you can use in Normal Mode:

Arrow	Keypad	Vim
`←`	`kp 4`	`H`	Left
`→`	`kp 6`	`L`	Right
`↑`	`kp 8`	`K`	Up
`↓`	`kp 2kp 5`	`J`	Down

You can use the 8456 keys on they keypad for right-handed WASD style navigation.

Note

NumLock must be off if you want to use the number keys on the numeric keypad for navigation.

To move in 5-cell jumps, hold down Ctrl while using the movement keys. Similarly, you can pan the level by holding down Shift. This can be combined with Ctrl to pan in 5-cell increments.

Note how the current coordinates change in right corner of the status bar as you’re moving the cursor. You can toggle the display of cell coordinates around the level with Alt+C. If you wish to change how the coordinates are displayed, you can do so in the Map properties or Level properties dialogs.

Changing the cursor location can be done with the mouse as well: left-click on a cell within the level and the cursor will jump to that location. You can even click-drag to move the cursor continuously.

Walk Mode¶

Walk Mode can be toggled with the ` key (that’s the grave accent or backtick key located in the top-left corner of the keyboard before the 1 key). The cursor is displayed as a triangle instead of a square in this mode. The triangle points to the walking direction and represents your avatar; you can turn, strafe, and move forward and backward, just like in a classic dungeon crawler.

Walk Mode (triangle cursor pointing to the walking direction)

The cursor keys perform different actions in this mode, and Vim-style HJKL navigation is not available (it would be too confusing):

Arrow	Keypad
`←`	`kp 4`	Strafe left
`→`	`kp 6`	Strafe right
`↑`	`kp 8`	Forward
`↓`	`kp 2kp 5`	Backward
–	`kp 7`	Turn left
–	`kp 9`	Turn right

Similarly to Normal Mode, you can use the Ctrl and Shift modifiers to perform jumps or pan the level, respectively, and you can also left-click on a cell to move the cursor there.

WASD Mode¶

Certain cRPGs, typically dungeon crawlers with real-time combat, are best played with your left hand on the WASD keys for moving the party, and your right hand on the mouse for combat. Gridmonger’s WASD Mode was designed with players in mind who prefer to do the bulk of their mapping with the WASD keys and the mouse when playing such games.

WASD Mode can be toggled with the Tab key. You will see an indicator in the top-left corner of the window when WASD Mode is on.

WASD Mode (square cursor and WASD indicator)

When it comes to navigation, this mode is the same as Normal Mode, with the addition that you can also use the WASD keys for cursor movement. Editing, however, is a little different — see Editing in WASD Mode to learn more about editing with the mouse in this mode.

Note

In WASD Mode, you cannot use the Ctrl movement modifier with the WASD keys for 5-cell jumps because that would interfere with other shortcuts. You can, however, use the Shift modifier with them, and both the Ctrl and Shift modifiers are available with the other movement keys.

As we’ll see in the Editing in WASD Mode section, the mouse buttons are used for editing actions in this mode, so you need to hold Shift while left-clicking to move the cursor.

WASD + Walk Mode¶

If you enable both WASD Mode and Walk Mode (yes, you can do that!), the movement keys become a bit more interesting:

Arrow	Keypad	WASD
`←`	`kp 4`	`A`	Strafe left
`→`	`kp 6`	`D`	Strafe right
`↑`	`kp 8`	`W`	Forward
`↓`	`kp 2kp 5`	`S`	Backward
–	`kp 7`	`Q`	Turn left
–	`kp 9`	`E`	Turn right

Admittedly, this is the most complex mode, and while some people might find it really useful, if it doesn’t click with you, don’t feel compelled to use it. In fact, yours truly pretty much only use Normal Mode, even when playing real-time dungeon crawlers with WASD controls…

WASD + Walk Mode (triangle cursor and WASD indicator)

Navigating dialogs¶

Apart from the usual Enter to accept and Esc to cancel, there are a number of other handy shortcuts available in dialogs to maximise efficiency.

Tab and Shift+Tab cycle between text fields in forward and reverse order, respectively.

To switch between tabs, hold Ctrl and press the left or right navigation key. To jump to the Nth tab, press Ctrl+N, where N is a number key (from the top row of the keyboard).

In some dialogs, you need to select something from a list of options (e.g. an icon or a colour). You can use the navigation keys to do that. (You will see examples of this later.)

Finally, you can press Alt+D to select the Discard option where applicable.

Tip

Hardcore Vim enthusiasts, such as yours truly, remap the quite useless CapsLock key to Ctrl with a tool like SharpKeys on Windows for extra efficiency. The Ctrl+[ Vim alias for the Esc key is supported by Gridmonger for these people (it’s much more efficient to type than reaching out for Esc with your left pinky!)

About Vim

If you’re not a programmer, you’re probably wondering what the hell this Vim thing is about! In short, Vim is a programmer’s text-editor for people who know how to touch type. One of its most iconic feature is to allow typists to move the cursor without lifting their hands from the home row (the ASDF and JKL; keys), and perform most common editing tasks with one or two-letter commands, without ever straying too far from the home position.

Ergonomics wise, editing a grid-based cRPG map is very similar to editing a text file. Having to move your hand back and forth between the cursor keys (or the mouse) and the rest of the keyboard thousands of times a day is a huge performance killer. No wonder that people who learn how to touch type and get a taste of Vim rarely go back to their “old ways”! As the saying goes, there are only two types of people in the world: those who love Vim, and the rest who haven’t learned it yet!

In my opinion, touch typing is an essential skill that anyone working on a computer several hours a day should master. If you haven’t learned to touch type yet, I very much encourage you to do so, and then give Vim-style navigation a go. I almost guarantee that you will be very positively surprised!

There’s tons of free touch typing trainers online, or you can just go old-school and use the completely unattractive but 100% effective GNU Typist like I did back in the day. I was able to re-train my erratic typing patterns ingrained over 10+ years of constant computer use in about two short weeks, so if I could do it, then anybody can.