🚀 go-pugleaf

Spalls Hurgenson  <spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>As mentioned, WASD has become the standard, with space for jump, E for
>use, etc. But everyone has their own quirks, their own additions to
>this basic scheme. 
>
>It took me a long time to switch over to WASD and, indeed,
>mouse+keyboard gaming.

I'm left handed and never used WASD for control, at least not for long.
Being able to remap the keys so I can use the number pad for control is
a must for me in games.  I don't recall having much trouble with mouse
and keyboard gaming, though I remember have to adjust to always-on mouse
look, but it didn't take long.  On the other hand, there were a couple
of early games with mouse support that I remeber being annoyed that
mouse controls were half-assed.

>Still, some old habits of my long-time deference to using the arrow
>keys still remain with me to this day. Most notably is the fact that I
>inevitably rebind "X" to my jump key. I will be the first to admit
>that the Spacebar is probably the better choice but the first FPS game
>I played that had jumping in it - Dark Forces - used "X-to-jump" and
>I've been loathe to re-learn. Similarly, the Spacebar will always be
>the "use key" for me; if it was good enough for Wolf3D and Doom, it's
>good enough for all these modern-day Doom-clones, thank-you-very-much!

If possible I try to set up the keyboard controls the way they were when
I played in Thief. (I can't remember if they were setup that way by the
game, or if I remapped them.)  I use 8/2 (on the number pad) for move
forward/back.  4/6 for turn left/right, 1/3 for side-step left/right,
7/9 for lean left/right.  0 is jump, and 5 is crouch.

Most games don't have all those controlls though, so usually 7 becomes
the action button, 9 cancel (or maybe zoom), 4/6 becomes move left/right.
Often the slash key (/) becomes melee or auto-run.  The asterisk (*)
key is often some sort of healing key.  The plus (+) key brings up the
map or some sort of menu.  Keypadl Enter is for reload.  The arrow keys
and the Insert to Page Down cluster gets mapped to pretty much any other
functionality I'd want to use with out having to take my hand off the
mouse or look down at the keyboard.

One problem with this is that its easy to run of keys.  I want all the
important keys frequently used on the keypad, as the clusters to the
left are a bit clumsy to use.  There's also no shift keys in the area,
so ghosting can be a problem if you need to hold down multiple keys
at the same time.  For that reason I often map an important function
that needs to be used at the same time as pressing a key, like sprint,
to the right mouse button. 

In practice this means that keyboard layouts can vary for me a fair bit
between games.  This usually isn't a problem, but I've learned that when
playing a game sequel to copy the controls that I had set up in original
as closely as possible.  Otherwise my muscle memory is going be reaching
for the wrong key at some critical momement.

This has given me a list of pet peeves.

* Games should, with very limitted exeptions, allow remapping of all
actions and all keys.

An acceptable exception is keep ESC bound to he main menu so that
there's always some consistent way to do things like remap keys and exit
the game regardless of how things have been remapped, but otherwise
everything should be mappable.  It annoys me when I can't rebind some
key because some arbitrary limitation of the game.  DirectInput can
distiguish between all the keys on the keyboard, but many games have
odd restrictions that they themselves impose.  Less common are games
that don't let you remap certain actions, which can be a real pain if
they're more than rarely used.

* Games should allow mapping more than one key to an action.

I like games that do this so I can keep the right handed WASD controls
the way they are.  This means that when the game says press the "R"
key, I can just press the "R" key and move on instead of having to
stop to figure out what action was bound to the "R" key so I can find
out what key I've mapped that action to.  Ideally games would change
the game text so it tells you to press the correct key, but most don't
and this doesn't help you when a post online less use to press the "R"
key to get past some problem.  I've also used the ability to map multiple
keys to an action to map both numpad 4/6 and 1/3 to move left/right in
games where there aren't seperate turn and strafe actions.

* Keyboards with non-standard layouts

Microsoft and Logitech have found various ways to mess with the layout
of keyboards in order to save space (and money). Usually by shrinking
the function keys to uselessness and/or moving around the keys in
the clusters to the left of keypad.  As a gamer I want the keys to be
full sized and were I expect them to be, and as a left handed gamer,
that especially includes all the keys on right side of the keyboard.
Unfortunately these days the only keyboards that keep the standard US
101 key layout are expensive $100 gaming keyboards and cheap low end
keyboards with various issues.

-- 
 l/  //	  Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/  http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/ 
 db  //