Steelseries Apex macros

Question

I'm looking at the Steelseries Apex keyboard; I'd love to get it since it looks very ergonomic to my typing/gaming style but there is a but. Macros are crucial to me, I could not play most games without them since I'm rather heavily handicapped. I also happen to be studiing CS so for my Logitech G110 I wrote some neat-ish jumping-running-rope-climbing macros in Lua. The Logitech Gaming Software, as it is called, is rather weak when it comes to non-trivial macros but thank God for the possibility to just hack up a script. It makes the macro-ing possibilities almost endless.

Now, my actual question: How powerful is The Engine of Steelseries? I hear, there is no scripting language? Does that mean that you cannot create macros that go beyond stringing up several keystrokes? Are "toggle-macros" possible (like, auto-run)? How about holding-two-buttons-at-the-same-time macros?

Answer 1

I have a SteelSeries Apex and frequently use the macro keys powered by the SteelSeries engine. I am using SteelSeries Engine 2, but I have used version 3 previously (I downgraded because I was experiencing a few compatability issues).

There are three types of macros available:

• Kepress Macros allow you to record a sequence of keys, optionally including a delay. This includes pressing multiple keys at the same time.
• Text Macros are similar to keypress macros, but they are better optimized for text (specifically capitalized letters and special characters), with optional start and send keys.
• Launch Application buttons will open any executable file (.exe). Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to natively support command line arguments. However, you can write a batch script and convert it into an executable to do basically anything you want.

There may be more macro types available for SteelSeries Engine 3, but if I remember correctly, it didn't really add any earth-shattering functionality.