Spawn Larva with workaround

The workaround spawn larva is a component of a technique to spawn larva (also known as inject larva) that requires some special hardware.

The advantage is that it does not require SHIFT to be held down (this helps a bit to avoid roaming queens), and it does not require to press the spawn larvae hotkey once per base (this makes it a bit faster). The drawback is that it does not work on all hardware.

Here is the method:


 * 1) select all the queens
 * 2) press and hold the spawn larvae hotkey
 * 3) press the base camera hotkey
 * 4) press the left mouse button on the hatchery/lair/hive in the middle of the screen.
 * 5) repeat step 3 and 4

In standard conditions, this would not work. What happens instead is that as soon as you click the mouse button, the cursor goes back into its standard state instead of waiting for another target assignment.

In my opinion, the reason this happens is that, in this specific situation of Spawn Larva, the game's device interface is programmed to stop listening to signals of keys of the same device that are being held down. This is by design, to help against accidental double-presses. This is not a hardware limitation: when you scroll with the keyboard, the game keeps on listening to each arrow key you press, or else you would not be able to move the camera in diagonal.

It is possible to work around this limitation in two of ways:

The workaround employed in this technique is compatible with other techniques that use a single group for all queens.
 * Bind the spawn larva hotkey and the base camera hotkey to buttons of separate devices, like one to a (programmable) mouse button and one to a keyboard key. If your mouse allows to bind keystrokes to some of its buttons, you can assign V or backspace (or whatever keyboard key the base camera or spawn larva command is bound to) to one of the mouse buttons and this method will work. Just as a proof of concept, you can test this by using two keyboards: hold the spawn larvae key on one keyboard, press the base camera key on another keyboard, and click the left mouse button on an hatchery.
 * Use a keyboard that is interpreted by the system as two keyboards, like the Noppoo Choc Mini (see also this post in GeekHack.org). If you have one of these weird gaming keyboards, you can find a pair of keys that your keyboard can handle correctly. A simple way to test if a pair of keys would work is the following. Click on some place where you can write some text and press both keys simultaneously. If the result is a sequence of alternating symbols (e.g. g=g=g=g=g=g) then the pair is good. If the result is a sequence of the same symbol (e.g. g=========) then the pair is not suitable. Once you found a good pair, you can change your hotkey layout: assign the base camera hotkey and the spawn larvae hotkey to that pair and this method will work.