After the first round of Coniferous turned out way more popular than it really had an right to be, I’ve decided to finally give people the round 2 that they keep asking for. Now with much better compatibility than the first and more kits to choose from, I warmly present, GMK Coniferous Round 2!
Base Kit
Much better than Round 1, imo. A good deal more compatibility but less keys overall to lower the price. Extra accents and Frow keys are dropped in favor of good support for lots of layouts.
Spacebars Kit
Good ole spacebar goodness, this time with more layout options in both N7(green) and U9(beige).
U9 Mods Kit
I like “monotone” sets, and someone said Coniferous should have monotone mods, so lo and behold a kit for “shaving” the “bark” coloration from your Coniferous experience.
Bonsai Kit
2018 is the year of the weeb alphas, so why should Coniferous be any different? Plus someone on GH came up with the really awesome “Bonsai” kit name, so I was obliged to do it to go with that kit name.
Progress on getting to GB stage is currently a little slow with working on the planned novelty designs and the usual communication with GMK, plus I’m not wanting to run at the same time as Terminal due to the shared aspect of green on N9. Fortunately kit design is basically set in place currently, so once the time is right it can get right down to business.
I’m not at all looking to do icon mods. I personally prefer text only but I know there’s a lot of arguing about it, so I went icon + text to stay in the middle.
Just a wee little update since it’s been basically forever
Base Kit
Spacebar Kit
Bonsai Kit - spacebar wasn’t supposed to be included, may or may not stay
U9 Mods/Monotone Mods Kit
Take a look and let me know if there’s anything obvious that needs to be addressed. At some point when I’ve got more time to get my thoughts down I do need to discuss Bonsai Kit and U9 Mods Kit.
R2 offers considerably better compatibility for layouts, particularly having actual 65/75% support that isn’t just blanks, while reducing the amount of “fluff” in the kit. It also switches the windows icons for “code” on the win keys, which some will find to be a considerable improvement. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot different in Base kit since I really wanted to keep it feeling the same as R1 but still improve it. The Spacebar kit will also have split space support this time around, improving support there as well.
Well maybe if more ergo/ortho kits actually made it to MOQ then set designers would be willing to put the effort into offering them, especially for non-SP sets.
No, I’m actually excited and happy that you aren’t supporting them. I plan to support them exclusively in the very near future here, so thank you for funneling people my way!
After feedback I’ve hit up GMK to make a few changes to the kits before we move forward. Numpad will have no sublegends and novelties will be moved to their own kit since R1 owners expressed interest in picking them up, though they will also be included in the Base kit still. I hope to have updated renders early next week and move to GB phase soon™.
Updated Base kit, cleaned up numpad with novelties removed
Updated Bonsai kit, novelties taken out
Novelty kit, new home for the now expanded novelties to make them easily available to R1 owners and other buyers, will be included in the Base kit for R2 automatically
As long as these updates look good then I’m ready to start moving towards GB phase, perhaps get it going before the month is out.
Perhaps instead of removing the 6,25 spacebar from the bonsai kit, add a 7u so people (MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE :P) can purchase bonsai and monotome and have a functioning keycap set for most boards?
Nitpicking here, but I would like to have green enters and arrows in the monotome kit or bonsai kit for this But you will most likely say that makes no sense and I kinda have to agree with that
As of right now the 6.25u is staying, but I can’t easily guarantee the addition of a 7u due to pricing and other factors. Unfortunately, trying to balance the Bonsai and Monotone around one another while keeping the number of keys/pricing down just doesn’t work. As it is, the odds are already stacked against these kits because this is a GMK GB being run by someone other than MD, so chances of “non-essential” kits hitting MOQ are already low due to this. In addition to that, the people that would be buying these kits to use together rather than with the base kit or with R1 are going to be in the vast minority. Because of this, trying to add anything to either of the kits to make them work better with one another turns into “why should everyone buying this kit have to justify this added cost” and the answer always turns into “they shouldn’t have to”. In an ideal world I’d just make another kit that would be purely an addon to be used when pairing these kits together, but with GMK that’s just not viable. If there’s interest in adding another space to the Bonsai kit then I’ll look into it, but otherwise if both of the kits make it to MOQ hit me up after the GB and I can see about getting a 7u into your sets.
I figure, given the support for the current state of the kits and the lack of really any reason not to, it’s finally time to get this going. Planned GB open date of October 1st with the buy going for most of the month. Planned proxies of Mechboards.co.uk and zFrontier. Currently getting quotes from GMK. Planning on perhaps running this slightly differently than the last couple due to problems that have popped up with my site and the pre-order plugin.
Any chance the tree novelty could be a bit more “pointy” like the picture above? The current design looks kind of like soft serve ice cream on a trunk.
I actually prefer the current design. It’s based more off a redwood since it’s harder to make a more “traditional” looking pine tree look unique or not like a Christmas tree.
But you will most likely say that makes no sense and I kinda have to agree with that 