Razer Blackwidow Chroma keyboard

[Rin Stowleigh]

(Carryover subject from the Shadow Warrior 2 thread)...

I switched to this keyboard some time ago. It almost instantly became
my favorite peripheral (both for gaming and typing in general).
The feel of the keyswitches alone are enough to spoil you and make it
impossible to ever return to non-mechanical keyboards. Then there is
the key backlighting. This is not the dim, difficult to read
backlighting of my old Logitech 510s, the key lighting is much
brighter (or I should say adjustable to a very bright setting,
dimmable if you prefer). The model I have is a "compact" keyboard,
without the number pad on the right. I prefer this more narrow
footprint because it allows me to position the mouse closer to the
keyboard for a better hand position, which helps tremendously with
ergonomics/recurring pain from prior sports injuries to my right arm.

Basically you can set the backlighting on a per-key basis using the
Razer configuration software (Synapse, which I already had installed
since I use a Razer mouse), and you can do that on a per-profile
basis. For example you could make all the keys green, but the WASD
keys red if you wanted, and the lighting can be set bright enough that
the colors will be unmistakable even with strong overhead light.

I only recently got my first taste of the Chroma SDK. Chroma lets
either a developer build support for the keyboard lighting into their
game, or allows for third party customizations (plus of course the
configurations you can do yourself using the Synapse software). It
doesn't sound all that useful until you see it in action, which is
what happened for me with this game. Shadow Warrior 2 is the first
game I have tried that supports Chroma out of the box. Basically,
after loading the game and setting all my custom key bindings (the
first thing I do in a new game since I don't use the standard WASD
config), I noticed when I started the game, my keyboard changed to
show me where everything was on the keyboard (in other words, no need
to set manually anything in Razer's software, the game communicated it
back to the keyboard for me). As I said, this doesn't sound
particularly useful when someone else explains it, but it shows at a
glance which keys are used by the game versus which ones are unmapped,
which is very helpful when you're new to the game and have not yet
memorized all the possible keystrokes. The utility of this only truly
becomes apparent when you experience it.

You can accomplish some of the same benefit by simply creating your
own keyboard colorization layout with the common keys you use in most
games, then going into each game and mapping them, but the benefit of
just having the game do this for you, including slight differences in
key color based on the meaning of that keybinding in the game is
really a nice feature.

The number of games with support isn't huge at the moment, but it's
growing. There are also some interesting user submissions here, like
Outlook support:

http://www.razerzone.com/chroma-workshop/#page-1

I've written here before that I can't use another gaming mouse after
getting used to the Razer Naga Hex, which I've been using for maybe 5
years or so now. Aside from that I've been mostly ignoring Razer's
product line, just because their products tend to be pricey and until
you actually use them the price tag can seem hard to justify. I
landed on this keyboard after making the change to mechanical switch
keyboards on my work setups -- once you get used to them you wont want
to type on anything else, and I feel the same way about this keyboard
for gaming now. The durability / build quality is extraordinary. It's
built like a tank, and I suspect I'll be using it for a very long time
to come.

[Rin Stowleigh]

Here is the specific behavior you see in the Shadow Warrior 2. Note
the references to specific keys (WASD) change to whatever you've
rebound them to, if you don't use the defaults.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Background colour is black
Bound keys are highlighted in white
Special power keys are highlighted in blue (Q.X.C.V)
Mana is dynamically displayed on the numpad in blue from 1-9
(Increases when gaining mana, decreases when using abilities)
Movement keys are highlighted in golden yellow (WSAD)
Health is dynamically displayed from F1 – F12 (Increases when healing,
decreases when getting damaged)
Remaining peripherials are lit with golden yellow – the SW2 logo theme
color
On the loading screen the keyboard will pulse from white to golden
yellow slowly. After loading is complete the WANG keys and the Enter
key will be lit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note also the implementation varies for each game (details on the link
in the prior message, click on each game).

[rms]

>Mana is dynamically displayed on the numpad in blue from 1-9
>(Increases when gaining mana, decreases when using abilities)

>Health is dynamically displayed from F1 – F12 (Increases when healing,

>Remaining peripherials are lit with golden yellow – the SW2 logo theme

This is pretty frickin great. I can imagine the extra little frisson of
enjoyment this gives in integrating your hardware with the game. I
appreciate these cherry on the top sort of things.

rms

[Rin Stowleigh]

Things like the audio visualizer are fun :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmA_QqSR90c

There's the potential for even greater utility in games and other
apps. For example if you look under the Chroma link for Apps rather
than games, they mention FL Studio, which is DAW (digital audio
workstation software).

The Chroma implementation for that app can do things that go beyond
cosmetic, like display peak meters (decibel levels) for the mixer.
That's actually incredibly useful because when making music, mixer
levels are important, and every little visual indication of what's
happening helps in droves. For example if I'm turned 45 degrees away
from the displays to work with another piece of hardware, I could
literally keep an eye on mixer levels out of the corner of my eye.

Though, in my case FL Studio is more of a secondary tool that I use
less often these days, and even if I did want to buy another one of
these keyboards just for my studio room, it wouldn't work out because
of the fact it's wired, and space is at such a premium on my music
setup due to all the non-computer related hardware. I actually use
one of those tiny little Logitech wireless keyboards on that setup,
because my hands are usually on MIDI keyboards and knobs, and I need
to be able to physically move the keyboard around all over the place.

[Justisaur]

Rin Stowleigh wrote:
> (Carryover subject from the Shadow Warrior 2 thread)...
>
> I switched to this keyboard some time ago. It almost instantly became
> my favorite peripheral (both for gaming and typing in general).
> The feel of the keyswitches alone are enough to spoil you and make it
> impossible to ever return to non-mechanical keyboards. Then there is
> the key backlighting. This is not the dim, difficult to read
> backlighting of my old Logitech 510s, the key lighting is much
> brighter (or I should say adjustable to a very bright setting,
> dimmable if you prefer). The model I have is a "compact" keyboard,
> without the number pad on the right. I prefer this more narrow
> footprint because it allows me to position the mouse closer to the
> keyboard for a better hand position, which helps tremendously with
> ergonomics/recurring pain from prior sports injuries to my right arm.
>

How long have you had it?

I bought a Razer backlit kb a long time ago and the wasd keys the black
wore off within 2 years, so I'm sitting with all those keys
unidentifiable. Good thing I'm a touch typist, but sometimes for games
that want a specific key only I have to hunt or put my hand in the home
position so I get the right one.

- Justisaur

[Rin Stowleigh]

On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 12:52:27 -0700, Justisaur <just...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I've had this a number of months. Contact Razer for replacement keys.
I've only used their support a couple of times but it was good when I
did.