Preferences

Before continuing with editing, let’s quickly have a look at the preferences settings. Press Ctrl+Alt+U to bring up the preferences dialog.

macOS users can always use the standard Cmd+, shortcut as well.

General tab

The first setting in the General tab is Load last map. This allows you to continue from where you left off when you next start Gridmonger.

The next few settings control the Autosave behaviour. By default, the map gets automatically saved every two minutes. This is great in general, but you need to exercise some caution in order not to accidentally lose your work (e.g., if the autosave kicks in right after deleting some levels and you quit the program, you won’t get the save confirmation dialog as the changes have been already saved…) Also, if you’re going to experiment with the editing functions on the included example maps, it’s best to either turn autosave off, or create backup copies of the example maps first.

Important

If autosaves are enabled and the current map hasn’t been manually saved yet, an autosave file Untitled 1.gmm will be created in the special Autosave folder located in your User data folder.

If Check for updates is enabled, Gridmonger displays a notification if a more recent version is available on program start or when you open the about dialog.

Editing tab

The Editing tab contains settings that affect the editing operations.

Movement wraparound controls whether the cursor should appear on the opposite side when moved past the edges of the level (see Movement wraparound).

YUBN diagonal movement enables the YUBN keys for Diagonal movement in Normal Mode and WASD Mode only, in addition to the numeric keypad.

Walk mode Left/Right keys controls whether the left and right cursor keys perform strafing or turning in Walk Mode. This is especially useful on keyboards without a numeric keypad. This only controls the behaviour of the regular cursor keys — the cursor keys on the keypad are unaffected by this setting.

  • Manual toggle – All link lines are shown when you hold down the ' key, and only then (apostrophe key, to the left of Enter).

  • Current cell – Link lines are shown for the current cell, holding the ' key shows all link lines.

  • All – All link lines are shown all the time.

Open-ended excavate controls whether the excavate (draw tunnel) tool should close the tunnels off with a wall in the excavation direction (see Open-ended excavate).

Interface tab

The Interface tab is the home of all user-interface related settings.

Show splash image controls whether the nice Gridmonger logo should be displayed at startup, and the following two settings whether it should be auto-closed after a set number of seconds.

Then you have the option to enable Vertical sync. The program does its drawing just like a game engine; it’s locked to your desktop’s refresh rate if vertical sync is on. Disabling it may increase the responsiveness of the UI, but at the cost of potentially much higher CPU consumption. Generally, you should leave this on.

Interface scaling lets you set the scaling (zooming) of the entire user interface between 100% (no zoom) and 500% (5-fold zoom). Gridmonger takes your operating system’s DPI and scaling settings into account, so this scaling is applied on top of that. The new scaling factor takes effect after closing the preferences dialog with the OK button.

Important

You can reset 100% scaling with the Ctrl+F11 shortcut (or Cmd+F11 on macOS, depending on your settings.) This is handy if you’ve accidentally set such a large scaling factor that you can no longer navigate the preferences dialog to reset it.

Shortcut modifiers is a setting only available on macOS. By default, Gridmonger uses macOS user interface conventions for most keyboard shortcuts, so the Cmd and Cmd+Shift modifiers are used.

This user manual only lists the Windows and Linux keyboard shortcuts for brevity, so by default, when you’re asked to press the Ctrl + Key shortcut, you should press Cmd + Key instead.

Similarly, Ctrl+Alt + Key becomes Cmd+Shift + Key, and lastly, Alt + Key becomes Opt + Key.

You can switch to Ctrl & Alt based shortcuts even on macOS by selecting the Ctrl, Ctrl+Alt option in the Shortcut modifier keys dropdown.

The below Cmd-based system level shorcuts are so pervasive that they’re also available in Ctrl, Ctrl+Alt mode:

  • Cmd+O to open a map

  • Cmd+S and Cmd+Shift+S to save the map

  • Cmd+, to open the preferences dialog

  • Cmd+Q to quit the program

Tip

The program always displays the correct modifier key labels in the user interface. You can also refer to the quick keyboard reference panel by pressing Shift+/, which shows the actual shortcuts.