Razer Tarantula keyboard and key assignment

[update]

I got it working, woop!! cheers for your help everyone.

[end upate]

Hey I just bought a Razer Tarantula keyboard and I have a Razer copperhead mouse on the way. Does anyone know if its possible to set up the controls inside GWs to accept the left and right extra buttons on the Razer keyboard and mouse?

I tried just now and it wouldnt recognise any of the keyboards extra keys!

Does the game not recognise this keyboard? Because if not, thats gonna suck if I cant use it to its full potential

Freeked, I assume you have the device installed with any software that came with it?

If so, is it showing up as a HID Keyboard Device in the device manager?

I use the Belkin n50 and n52 SpeedPad's on occasion, they are treated like USB Keyboard Devices in Windows XP. The Razer should work out in much the same way. If the device is treated as a USB device, the game should have no issues with it. You may need to recheck your device installation and Guild Wars keyboard control config.

But, I'm just guessing.

You cant have the game recognize the keys on your keyboard, you have to create macros bound to them that use keypresses registered with the game.

custom key1 = keyboard left key
custom key2 = keyboard right key

Just like this.

You can accomplish a multitude of things with macros you create such as have repeating sets of keys or have have multiple keys used in sequence at the push of a button.

Yeah, if the Razer's hardware key isn't hardwired for that particular function as a default it will have to be assigned via the Razer's control config. So, perhaps the "mouse' buttons need to be set.

With my Belkin, I had to reassign the thumb-pad controller to WASD, etc.

Well at the moment its just the keyboard I have, the mouse hasnt arrived and probably will tomorrow!

However I have never dealt withm macros before, but I understand what they are... kinda of!

All the software and hardware is installed though and it still wont recognise the keys being pressed. When you look at the setup software the keys on the left and right have macros already assigned like "PL1|PL1^" but that means nothing to me.

The L meaning left and the number being the number of the button.

Well many USB keyboards can have mouse functions on them as well: mouse buttons scroll wheel etc... If such control buttons are present, they should normally have the default behavior of a normal mouse.

But, it sounds like you need to configure your Keyboard for the more advanced capabilities.

I realize you have a Razer device, but perhaps it is similar to my SpeedPad as far as configurations go:




There should be a software utility that allows you to define controls and create a profile for particular games and apps. Once that is done, the game shouldn't have any issues in recognizing the keyboard device.

When I load Guild Wars the profile I created (as seen above) is automatically loaded.

Macros can be assigned by using the configurator, but I simply assign the standard keybinds like TAB and other commonly used keyboards shortcuts.

A macro is a sequence of keypresses with or without specified time delay between them.

That being said, if your using a specific profession and your build needs skills used in a very specific order, you can simulate the regular skill usage order and the software will register it and assign it to a key

Once you press that macro key, the entire sequence will be repeated each time you press that single button.

for instance:

1, 4, 5, wait 0.10 seconds, 2, 7, wait 0.25 seconds, 8

Ah ok, I think people are under the impression that I want to do really complicated things with my new keyboard.

Im not really wanting to allicate sequences of keys to activate! All im wanting to do is assign a key to certain pre-set controlls in the controlls opions.

For example I want to assign one of the extra keys on the keyboard to "open chat" as in the controls, and another to target next enemy instead of pressing.

Im not really wanting to do overly complicated stuff, I just want to assign the buttons to simple controls like targetting and so on.

But the keyboard has come with software to set up the buttons and macros, but its still all a bit more then im familar with.

Im a VB6 programmer, not a macro expert

I would have expected GWs to just recognise the extra keys as stand alone buttons that I could assign to actions ingame.

You shouldn't be "forced" to assign/create macros. Single key values should be an option for you. It's nice to have the ability to assign macros to a single key, but I find it more efficient to just assign already available keyboard shortcuts that are recognized by the game.

I still think you are failing to configure the keyboard and/or specific profile you need to use for Guild Wars.

The game will not use buttons that have not been programmed.

You will need to set functionality for theses unassigned buttons via the Razer's config utility.

I, for instance, have the number 6 button on my SpeedPad set for ~ which toggles the chat interface on and off. But, I had to assign that because there was no default value before...

Unfortunatly games do not work this way. You sound like a Console gamer, just plug-in a controler and all the custom keys work automatically.

You still have the full usage of your keyboard and things like your up, down, left, right or W, A, S, D keys should still move you around.

This isntt he case with custom keyboards of input devices and games, unless maybe the input device is MADE for a precise game, like ZBoard for WoW maybe.

Your keyboard should work fine on its own. It comes with a software that you will have to use for your custom keys. What you want to do is just a matter of going into Guildwars, Pressing F11, see what action you want and assigning one of the NORMAL keys to it, then going into your keyboard software, picking one of the custom keys and then assigning that single keystroke to it.

It's not really complicated, just spend a few minutes with the software that came with the keyboard.

You may find yourself creating more complicated things later on when you get more experienced.