The existing key-bindings are designed to work with the numpad on a standard full-sized keyboard in which the numpad keys are up, down, left, right, home, end, pg up, and pg dn when num lock is disabled. If you actually have a numpad on your laptop, make sure that num lock is off before trying to use the default bindings.
I know that some laptops also have num lock option that turns the right side of the keyboard into a psuedo-numpad. As far as I know, DoomRL's keybinding system can't distinguish between numbers typed by the row of keys above the letters and numbers typed by the numpad. So, if this is your situation, I would recommend simply leaving num lock off and binding the underlying keys to the various directions.
Regardless, if the game fails to start after changing the keybindings file, it is probably an issue of improper syntax; the game is sensitive to this and doesn't always provide good feedback. The syntax is designed for a programming language (the bindings are created by a
Lua file), so a few things may be less intuitive when approaching it from a user's perspective. If you find yourself having to debug this kind of problem on your own, try changing the original file little by little and testing it frequently so that when it fails, you know your most recent change caused the failure.
To use numbers (or other keys that are used to type non-alphabetic glyphs), you need something that looks like this:
["1"] = COMMAND_WALKSE,
["2"] = COMMAND_WALKSOUTH,
["3"] = COMMAND_WALKSW,
["4"] = COMMAND_WALKEAST,
["6"] = COMMAND_WALKWEST,
["7"] = COMMAND_WALKNE,
["8"] = COMMAND_WALKNORTH,
["9"] = COMMAND_WALKNW,
These lines need to go in the keybindings.lua file after the line that says
Keybindings = {
and before the line at the end of the file that says
}
Keep in mind that when using these as given, the QuickKey bindings should be deleted from the file so that no conflict arises.
