Alright, time for an update.
Here is the current revision of all the kits that are intended to be available in the SA Oblivion groupbuy scheduled to come to Massdrop around Q3 of this year. I'll try to get a updated estimated date soon, Yanbo is currently in china, but we will be having a chat next week when he is back. I'm very happy with the current iteration, it would not have been possible if the GB was pushed ahead earlier, so in hindsight I am very glad that it is taking so long. I'll be redoing keyboard renders from scratch in the coming weeks to show off the new changes, and generally updating them since I improved some rendering techniques since the last ones were created. I'll be updating the GitHub page accordingly when that is done.
Also, I'll have the kits priced out by Yanbo in the coming weeks so I can make sure that everything is in line, especially with the Git and Assembly legends used. This will give me some time to adjust if necessary before the drop.
I'll be doing this update changelog style like t0mb3ry likes to do, so here we go
- Added BFP and RAS accent colors, see Monochrome Modifier kit for usage
- Removed F5 - F8 from the Alphas kits, you can get them via the new Alternate Function Colors kit
- Replaced R3 1.75u CONTROL key with FUNCTION. The control key is only used by HHKB layout people as far as I am aware, and they need to grab the specialties kit anyways so I moved it there. The FUNCTION key is offered by default to replace CAPS LOCK, I hope TKL and 60% people will adopt this key, like seriously, who needs Caps Lock in 2017
- META key has been replaced by FUNC
- blue CODE keys have been added to allow for a unicolor bottom row, I've come to appreciate it.
- ALT GRAPH key has been included to take some weight off the NorDeUK kit which would have had all 4 version of this key in it (2x 1.25u, 2x 1.5u). Also some ANSI people like to use it, and personally I find it rather pretty, I'll be using it too.
- Moved legends around, can't be arsed to list them all, not really needed anyways. Just look at how its now
(includes some changes in Git Specialties kit)
- PULL and FETCH are also available in blue and orange/red now
- Removed numpad INIT key, moved it to the appropriate kit (and changed to APPLY)
- FUNCTION key
- ALT GRAPH key
- HoneyCadet accent keys! I wanted to make the set a bit more attractive. While I really appreciate the Monochrome look, and personally I feel like I'm looking more forward to GMK Oblivion with Monochrome Addon than the default legends, I think after some time one could feel like spicing it up a bit. Initially I wanted to make this a separate kit, but after rendering it with regular Oblivion modifiers, I realized there is no point in doing that because it looks super meh when combined with those.
Edit: this change was actually originally suggested by WASD_Greg (
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=84978.msg2310271#msg2310271), I wasn't happy with how OAV looked as accent keys so I went with the Honeywell red instead, and paired it with SpaceCadet blue.
- Replaced horizontal ENTER with vertical RETURN. This gives a nicer color distribution across the key and looks less cramped.
- Added APPLY and LOG keys for Git legends, APPLY was previously INIT in the Git Modifiers kit, and the NumLock key was supposed to be filled with the GIT key from the regular modifiers which required the Git icon to be used as escape, or vice versa. But I felt someone might want to have the keyboard legends only, without having to use the meme GIT GUD key.
- Added 1.5u ALT GRAPH
- Added second 1u ALT and 1u CTRL
- Replaced both 1u SYS and META with CODE
- Added blue CODE keys for unicolor bottom row
- Added HOME and END keys
- Added R3 1.75u CONTROL key that was previously in the standard modifiers kit
- Added R3 stepped FUNC key, I love my layers
- See above, more or less
- See above above, more or less, more or less
- Added blue R1 POP and JMP to fill the voids of Preonic layouts. Ideally the colorway starts with orange/red at the top, but it would have required to add a lot of keys so that the color pattern can be applied to both Preonic and Planck layouts. So I think starting Preonic with blue at the top is the best solution. An alternative idea was to have them in GAL color (Monochrome) but that seemed more off.
- Removed green R3 ADD and SUB, previously they were ment to add the green color to all the other R3 keys so that this kit could be used to fill a bunch of macro keys like a RAMA M-10 or on the VE.A, but I added a new appropriate kit for that purpose. See below.
- Now with two blue 1.5u keys instead of two orange/red ones, since blue is the more prominent color in the bottom row after all.
- No changes required
- No changes required either
- Still nope
- This will probably get a couple people upset, but I felt it had to be done. I merged the entire international support into a single NorDeUK kit, the same way it has been done on SA Carbon Round 2. Having two alpha colors is a PITA, so splitting off the international customers into more groups seems like a bad move, it is more likely to succeed this way IMO. I alleviated the price of these kits a bit by moving the ALT GRAPH to the standard/specialty kits, and also dropped the R2 Z key that Carbon has, the R4 Z from regular Alphas is identical when turned 180 degrees. So I see these kits starting at something like 62,99 or so now instead of 69,99 like on Carbon. While the Orange NorDeUK kit is suffering on Carbon, the ratio between Beige and Orange alphas is also like 6 to 1 on that drop, unlike Oblivion where in the GMK run it was 3 to 2 or so, a much more balanced ratio. So I'm crossing my fingers that this is the right move. If someone is super loaded and you'd like to contribute, pick one up or two please to help the international fellas out!
- New kit, makes a unicolored function row possible. Desired by some TKL users and also 75%/96key that wish to have a big block of alpha colors instead of F5 to F8 cutting in as modifier colored keys.
- New kit, bringing the assembly legends to the TKL portion of TKL/Fullsize keebs. No unicolored row possible here, would add another 16 keys to the kit. Sorry! The extra R3 key is so you can use them on 65%/75% layouts as well to fill the right side. Separate HCF as it is more a novelty key (short for Halt and Catch Fire, not part of the original x86 instruction set, so it is kept optional as someone might get triggered. It is a nod to the TV show of the same name)
- New kit, lets you fill Macro keys such as M-10 keypad, VE.A macro block etc. Uniform R3.
- Yep, that's what arrows look like
- You guessed it, these are Spacebars
- For when you break your keeb in half
- Heathen
- New kit, for those among you that get hard on LED's. Might not make it into the GB, I noticed on Carbon that the LED keys account for noticeable price differences between kits, so I have a bad feeling about this one. Going by the differences on Carbon kits, I would guesstimate this kit at 50+ dollars, but maybe I am wrong and not seeing some other factors, will get it priced and then decide.
- Brand new GeekHack logo, text only was lame so I created this icon, inspired by the DT logo. Big thanks to t0mb3ry for vectorizing it and suggesting the use of Cherry font, it looks fantastic now
- Using t0mb3ry's RMK logo, thanks again
- Purple key has been decided on my part, but waiting for confirmation. Initially I wanted to make this the Octocat logo from Github, but sadly they did not permit me to use it (
https://assets-cdn.github.com/images/modules/logos_page/GitHub-Mark.png)
While I will keep this IC open for discussion, I do not intend to make any changes to these kits besides fixing errors. I'll say >intend< as I am awaiting pricing now, and also because locking the kits the last two times didn't work either. The only things on my list that I had to cut out is support for Filco, and with it support for the new 60% layouts with dedicated arrows as they were utilizing 2u and 1u shift keys as well. Supporting Filco apart from APP key and using CODE and or FUNC instead of the two FN keys would have required another 3 keys to be added to the specialties kits, and two 3u keys to the Spacekeys kit. While that does not seem like much, I have to draw a line and keep the Specialties kits down in price. There are three of them, and while SA Oblivion has received great reception from the community, I don't have solid sales data on it yet so I can't just throw a 50+ dollar kit out there (which even started out as a 80 dollar kit) like Carbon and expect it to sell like hot cakes. I wish to be more in line with Chocolatier/Godspeed in this sector. Sorry again, but sacrifices have to be made.
Thanks everyone for checking this out, and I'll keep you posted on the update regarding drop date.