🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm posting this one a bit later than I intended; for me the middle of
the month is the 15th, and here I am four days later and I still
haven't hit send yet. Well, to paraphrase Churchill, "it is not the
end of the month, it's not the middle of the month, but it may be the
end of the middle." 

So what to babble on about this month? Key-bindings, I think. Yes,
that's what I'll talk about.

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It's not something most of us give much thought to, except when it's
not an available feature (then we all scream about how the game is an
"obvious port" and suffering from "consolitis" and issue all sorts of
similar imprecations). But for the longest time, the ability to re-map
keys /wasn't/ a standard feature. Oh, it existed in the odd occasional
game, but it wasn't that common. I /still/ remember playing Lode
Runner on my old Apple and cursing its uncomfortable control scheme (I
think it used J and K for left-right, I and M for up-down, and < and >
for shooting). It was a painfully cramped cluster of keys and no, you
couldn't change them. Even in the early 90s, it still was common for
games to have fixed control schemes; just remember games like Wing
Commander or Eye of the Beholder; you used the keys the developers
coded in, and that was the only way to do it.

There were a few games that let you customize the keys, although even
then you usually only got to chose from a selection of pre-configured
options. I do vaguely remember a top-down racer (circa 1990 or
thereabouts) that gave you complete control to re-map the keys, and
being slightly angered that the developers hadn't put effort into
finding the "perfect" control scheme for the game themselves. Oh, how
things have changed. 

It wasn't until Quake that fully-configurable key-binds started to
become an accepted - and expected - feature. Customizable controls
were available in Id games as early as Wolf3D, but Quake's success
turned this oddity into a must-have for all modern games. It also
popularized the WASD control scheme.

But none of the above is what I really wanted to discuss. What I
really wanted to talk about is the oddities of my personal key-binds.

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 had, of course, experimented with it and -
indeed - was forced to use a similar scheme as early as 1992 with
Ultima Underworld, and generally hated it. What was wrong with using
the arrow keys for directional control, I wondered? Not only were
these keys obviously marked, they also sat in a little cluster all
their own; they were perfect for movement controls. It may have been
as late as 2000 before I finally made the switch, but once I finally
did it was a fairly rapid conversion. It had less to do with the keys
than with the mouse, of course; the preciseness of mouse-aiming made
relearning a bunch of new keyboard commands well worth the challenge.

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!

"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?
Madness!). Melee combat is "TAB", a convenience I learned from Halo.
"G" is for Grenades, if only because it's easier for me to remember
(also taught to me by Halo). "V" is for changing between single and
auto-fire; that's my own invention, a balance of accessibility and the
key's infrequent use. "R" for reload, "F" for flashlight, "M" for map,
all easy to remember mnemonics.  "[","]" and ENTER are for selecting
and using inventory items, an extremely /inconvenient/ placing, which
is probably why I rarely make good use of my inventory items. If there
is an option to switch between first- and third-person views, it's the
F3 key for me (thank you FarCry).

Many of these are non-standard - and in many cases, arguably
non-optimal - choices, but familiar and comfortable to me. It does
make setting up a new game always more of a chore than it ought to be,
but I since get quite upset and confused if I wang on the Spacebar in
the middle of combat and make a pathetic hop instead of opening a
door, I think it's worth the effort.

Still, it amuses me how much my earlier gaming history has influenced
my gaming habits of today.