前阵子,读了Sid Meier的回忆录,《Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games》。我在上大学的时候花过很多时间玩他的《文明》游戏,一开始玩的是DOS版,然后是Windows下的《文明二代》,后来,来美国以后,因为改用了苹果的Mac,所以还买过Mac版本的《文明二代》,在上研究生的时候也玩过相当长的一段时间。读这本自传的时候,唤起了很多的青春回忆,决定把这两款游戏重新找来玩一下。
Several months ago, I installed a copy of DOSBox on my Windows 10 laptop, and installed the original Sid Meier’s Civilization on it. Decades ago, in college, I played Sid Meier’s Civilization quite often. Recently, I read Sid Meier’s memoir!: A Life in Computer Games, and for nostalgia’s sake, I installed the original DOS game on my Windows 10 laptop in the DOSBox emulator.
Soon I realized I have a problem: the game is designed to use the numeric keypad as directional keys to move the units on the map, as shown below:
Normally, the numeric keypad is present in all normal full-sized PC keyboards, and it’s great for playing the Sid Meier’s Civilization. However, for laptop computers, many do not have this dedicated numeric keypad on the right side, making the gameplay rather cumbersome: although the four orthogonal directions can use the normal arrow keys, the diagonal movements are cumbersome: you need to press Home and End keys for upper and lower left, and Page Up and Page Down for upper and lower right. In most of the cases, the Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys are not arranged in an intuitive way for directional movement on the map in the game.
An alternative is to move the units with the mouse, but still, using the numeric keypad is the fastest way. Using a mouse is tedious and cumbersome, and with a touchpad is almost twice as bad.
After some frustration, trial and error, finally, I figured out that I can use the embedded numeric keypad on my laptop for the directional movement:
If the laptop keyboard has an embedded numeric keypad, as the one shown above, you can use Fn key and the JKL, UIO, and 789 keys for the directional movement.
Even outside the game, the Fn and numeric keypad can be used as general cursor movement keys;
Fn+J
End key
Fn+7
Home key
Fn+K
Down arrow
Fn+8
Up arrow
Fn+U
Left arrow
Fn+O
Right arrow
Fn+L
Page Down
Fn+9
Page Up
Of course, when Fn-NumLk key is togged, those keys are used as numbers. In this case, the Alt-number keys can be used for entering special symbols.
set gfn=Consolas:h12:cANSI
set gfw=NSimsun:h12
set columns=100 lines=48
set fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-8,cp936,gb18030,big5,euc-jp,euc-kr,latin1
set fileencoding=utf-8
set encoding=utf-8
” set tw=0 fo=cq wm=0 “set no wrapping for Chinese input
set guioptions-=m
set guioptions-=T
unmap <C-F>