SteelSeries is but one of the many hardware companies implementing custom lighting options for the keyboard, but it's taking a different angle to make the lighting experience just a little bit better. The company released a beta version of new software called GameSense, which will utilize some of the company's peripherals to display in-game information.
A video, released today, showed off how GameSense would work, using Counter Strike: Global Offensive as an example. The information stored on the keyboard was the player's ammo (function keys), armor (numbers) and health (QWERTY row).
At the beginning of the round, all three rows were fully lit, but as the weapon ran out of ammo and the player took more and more damage, the number of lit keys dwindled. When only the last key is lit, it blinks to indicate near death or that you're close to running out of ammo. Other stats that can be tracked on the keyboard include headshots and regular kills.
For now, GameSense only works in Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Minecraft. If you want to add more information and lighting to work on the keyboard, SteelSeries provides access to its GoLisp coding language. The company is also making it easy for game developers to encode GameSense capabilities to their games in an effort to spread the new software to more titles.
This type of lighting software is somewhat interesting. Instead of just implementing custom animations, or a mosaic of different colors on the keyboard, you can now have it react to what's happening in the game in real time. It seems like a daunting task if you're just an amateur programmer, but SteelSeries made it easier to incorporate it into games. However, it remains to be seen how many developers the company can attract and if they're willing to put a little extra effort into placing GameSense in their titles.
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