🚀 go-pugleaf

> But for the longest time, the ability to re-map
>keys /wasn't/ a standard feature.

    Yeah, doom shareware did not have normal mouselook, and I was strictly a 
keyboard-only player for some time.  It was only much later that 
circle-strafing hit like a revelation.

>It wasn't until Quake that fully-configurable key-binds started to
>become an accepted - and expected - feature.

    Descent was really a leader in this regard.  you could map anything to 
anything pretty much.

> What I
>really wanted to talk about is the oddities of my personal key-binds.

    WRT Descent, I've never heard to anything similar to my control mapping: 
I'd push the keyboard way over to the left, and have my left hand on the 
numpad.  All strafing/rolling/firing was on the numpad keys, while 
pitch/turning was on the mouse, with Forward/Backward on the mouse buttons.

>"C" is for crouch, not CTRL; that's Dark Forces influence over me
>again. "Z" for prone, when an available option; Delta Force taught me
>that. "Q" and "E" are obviously for leaning (no silly ALT-WASD
>moronicies for me; pushing two keys at once for a single action?

    Vietcong had the best crouch/prone mechanics.  I believe you could hit Z 
to cycle between crouch/prone/standing, or hit X to go prone; I forget if 
you could lean, but I think so.  The new Wolfenstein games have complicated 
leaning, as you can lean in any direction, and I don't have a solution for 
that beyond alt-wasd.  These games also have sliding, or 'crouching while 
sprinting', for which I had to forgo my usual Z=crouch for C, as using the 
pinky for Shift to sprint made tapping Z too awkward.

>Madness!). Melee combat is "TAB", a convenience I learned from Halo.

    Melee combat is Left Alt.  Always.  Well, sometimes F, but not often. 
TAB is reserved for maps/journal/etc.  Secondary inventory I'll usually try 
to map to the T or B keys to avoid having to lift my hand to use right-side 
keys.

rms