SC2 Custom Mac Setup

Just dug my Belkin n52 SpeedPad out of the closet (it reeks of WoW) and picked up a shiny new Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse from Best Buy.  Time to get busy and setup a nice custom interface to enhance my Macintosh SC2 experience (i.e. dominate noobs).

First things first, I had to download some software to control these new devices.  Belkin was nice enough to release a Mac Driver for the n52.  This installs just as you’d expect, and allows you to configure your device via the System Preferences pane.  Logitech does not officially support the G500 for the Mac, but the basic functions work right out of the box, and a nice program called SteerMouse can be used to program the rest of the buttons.

The next step was to customize my hot keys in SC2.  As it turns out, this can’t be done.  In the midst of my cursing Blizzard, I realized that they provided a profile of hot keys that lines up almost exactly with the buttons on the n52.  To enable these key bindings, go to Menu –> Options –> Hot Keys and select the Grid Profile.

These key bindings will map a hot key to a position on the control bar (as opposed to a specific unit command).  Since both the control bar and n52 buttons are 3 rows by 5 columns (except for the last row on the n52), every possible unit command can be mapped to the n52.

In order to do this mapping, you’ll need to configure your n52 from the System Preferences pane.  From here you can bind keystrokes to each button on the SpeedPad.  You can also setup three shifts (red, blue, and green) that allow you to bind different keystrokes to the n52 buttons when said shift is active.  I chose to bind keystrokes 1-10 to the first ten keys of the n52 in order to easily access control groups.  I then set the thumb button to trigger a red shift, and bound all the command button hot keys to their corresponding control bar positions on the n52.

The next step was adding customization to my G500.  Much like the n52 software, SteerMouse allowed me to map custom keystrokes to each button on my mouse.  I chose to map the top and bottom side buttons to Shift and Control, and the middle side button to T (attack control bar position).  This would easily allow me to set command groups (when used with the 1-10 n52 key bindings), add new units to command groups (Shift select), and attack move.  I also bound the scroll up and scroll down mouse wheel actions to Tab and Shift-Tab.  This allows me to easily change the active units in a control group.  And as an added bonus, this removes the annoying zoom function previously bound to the mouse wheel!

Both the n52 driver and SteerMouse come with the ability to create custom profiles for different applications.  Unfortunately, it takes a little trickery to get these to work correctly with the SC2 Beta.  When adding a new profile to either program, instead of simply browsing to StarCraft II Beta –> Starcraft II  in your Applications folder, you’ll need to use Spotlight to search for “SC2″.  From here, select the most recently opened SC2 app in the list.  This is the program that actually opens when you launch the game from your Applications folder, and if you don’t select it, your key binding will not work while running SC2.  I imagine you’ll have to repeat this step every time Blizzard patches the Beta, but hopefully not when the final version is released.

Time to take her for a test run.  Wish me luck!

Update:

The last patch didn’t break the program profile associations.  Yes!

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Tagged as: Hardware, Starcraft 2 Beta