Little program for customizing Hotkeys / Inventory keys

General Discussion
1

With Warcraft 3 Reforged Blizzard provided a hotkey preset called Grid. “Gridkey profiles map each slot in the command card to a specific key. These keys are applied to ALL unit command cards”. (tooltip in WC3)
It’s nice to have such a builtin hotkey setting however (apparently) a big disadvantage of the Gridkey layout is that also the research card (when you want to learn a spell) will have the same hotkeys.
So for example if you assign ‘B’ to ‘Move’ the top left spell in the reseach card (e.g. “Learn Blizzard” for Archmage) will have ‘B’ as hotkey as well … But I got used to it and you can too :stuck_out_tongue:
Moreover Blizzard didn’t implement a user friendly interface, you have to edit a text file and you have to know the ASCII table. Thats why I created this little (minimalistic) program for myself & friends. It provides an easy to use interface
and edits the War3Preferences.txt file according to the user’s input.

Screenshot:

 https://ibb.co/qy4Ty4m

In order to use this program you have to have Java installed on your PC.

  1. Make a backup of the War3Preferences.txt file which resides in Documents\Warcraft III\ in case something goes wrong.
  2. Put the app on your Desktop.
  3. Start it (with right click -> open), then click on a button and press any key which you want to use as a hotkey.
    3.If you want to use a modifier (Alt, Ctrl, Shift), press and release the modifier first and after the key. (Example: First press Alt and release it. Then press B => Alt+B is set as hotkey)
  4. If you wanna undo something click on the button and press Backspace to delete the old hotkey.
  5. When you are done go to File->Save. This will create a new War3Preferences.txt file into the same directory where the app resides.
  6. Copy and paste the new War3Preferences.txt file into your Documents\Warcraft III\ and try a game.

Further notice: If you wanna test your keys in single player mode, some hotkeys might not work e.g. Alt + S. Instead, it will open a window for saving the game. (Blizzard’s fault that they didn’t considerate it) To fix this problem go to Local Area Network and start a game from there.

You can download the app here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/p29zisfhmfnu0cg/TufusWC3Hotkeys.jar/file

If you don’t know / trust me then don’t download it. Most people know me as the guy who maintains and keeps the DotA map alive for Battle.net
You can write and ask me questions in HIVE Discord channel (Tufuuu#7962)

Cheers

1 Like
2

What about your app is better than other apps that actually offer customization? I do not understand why you setup custom keys for ZXCV when you can just select the “Grid align” setup in the options menu?? ZXCV hotkeys is already a standard setting in the options menu with no need for customizing (if thats what you want)

However, most people do not like having the Move hotkey as Q and spells on ZXCV… because most people prefer having all spells on QWER, which is just like most MobA style games (and many other RTS). its much easier using QWER for spells since you have less distance to reach the # keys!

Many people use the following guide (link below), because it has more options for non-letter keys. I also have my inventory on TYGH and, you have the option of Swapping the Ctrl key plus more:

the above guide uses customkeys.txt instead of war3preferences.txt file, unfortunately customkeys.txt does not work with custom games, but aside from that I find the war3preferences file is not compatible with AHK and I prefer using AHK since it comes from a reputable source

and if people are concerned about downloading malicous software, all my links are strictly just for text files, but heres is yet another hotkey tool just incase https://jcfields.gitlab.io/warcraft3-hotkey-editor/

If you have any questions regarding how to setup custom hotkeys, please let me know :slight_smile:

3

Your attitude to advertise your stuff over and over again and to denigrate my solution in the same breath in my thread (even though we already had a convo about advantages / disadvantages of both approaches) where I offer a free and easy solution is kinda disgusting.

4

lol I totally forgot, that was quite a while ago…

so Im trying to remember what the advantages were… lets see, your style works for custom games, thats one advntage… but I still dont see why you are promoting the ZYXCV setup over QWER, and I dont know why your setup requires an app download? cant you just provide a few text files?

5

and I dont know why your setup requires an app download? cant you just provide a few text files?

that would be hardcoding. The purpose of his program is to allow the person to easily customize their keys. The screenshot and stuff are just examples of what can be done.