Filco Majestouch 2 Tenkeyless

It's a new keyboard day. I don't know how long this model has been available, but it's without keypad section and it's Fin/Swe layout. It was 130 euros and the keypad (also Filco) 60 euros so it was quite an investment. However I feel now that getting tenkeyless version was really good idea. It's narrow without sacrificing the standard keytronic layout. Narrow is good, because then the mouse is closer to the body and your arm doesn't twist that much to the side. When you work with computer like I do things like this matter.

After so many years of tightly packed keyboard layouts I keep hitting Ctrl when I try to press left arrow and also I noticed that I press + from the keypad which isn't there anymore so I need to learn press it from the keyboard. This model is "brown cherry" (tactile). It's doesn't produce a clicking sound like blue one, but it does sound like "clank" when you press the key all the way down. It could be described as more noisy than a regular keyboard, but it's not too noisy.

The quality is an interesting question, because it doesn't really feel a lot different than old keytronics. But I guess keytronics were good. Keys are tall and wobbly, but easy to press down. The keyboard is small, but it's quite heavy and with those feet thingies extended it stays in the place and doesn't move even when typing hard.

Funny enough, I've run into one "bug". It happened when I was programming: suddenly the keyboard flushed about 30 space bars or so, like there was some kind of buffer problem. I think it might have something to do with the USB->PS/2 adapter which doesn't fit tightly in the slot. I haven't been able to reproduce that bug, but even if it does happen again I don't have the heart to complain. These guys are serious about giving great alternatives to your typical keyboards with these kind of special models.

I didn't even know how much I did miss the standard layout and feel of tall keys. Now it's time to kick ass with this keyboard and get some programming done.

Random thoughts

Working with Level class I've managed to narrow down from 21 functions to 15 in two days. The biggest issue with Level is how to determine what objects (mainly creature and item types) are created in a level of some theme. Previously I had static lists, but that's not very clever and it tends to create quite similar levels what comes to objects.

An idea I had with creatures is give each creature a difficulty point. That would allow to set a max level for each level theme and create monsters to that limit by determining how many difficulty points are used. If you create a harder monster you get less monsters. That way a balance in difficulty is maintained. Need also some kind of way to determine where the monster wants to be usually. It should be just a generic rule to allow most of the creatures to created everywhere, excluding quest creatures.

There are still special set of objects created in some level themes, but I've tried to keep that number low. One of the main goals in this version is increase the randomness which is pushing Teemu towards the realm of a roguelike game.