How WASD became the standard PC control scheme

[gk99]

[QUOTE=dai;50587143] but because any keyboard even hinting at being a great for gaming has to have giant red WASD caps with custom curved ridges that don't flow with anything else you do on the keyboard and LEDs and it's fucking dragging the ship down.[/QUOTE]

None of my gaming keyboards have ever had special little WASD keys? Hell, my current keyboard just cycles through all the colors in the rainbow with standard keyboard keys.

[img]http://media.bestofmicro.com/ext/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhLmJlc3RvZm1pY3JvLmNvbS9TL1ovNTIwNzM5L29yaWdpbmFsL1JhemVyLUJsYWNrV2lkb3ctQ2hyb21hLnBuZw==/r_750x450.png[/img]

This is pretty much mine except mine glows less and has more curvy edges to the keyboard itself. Plus, that one's mechanical and mine's membrane.

But style-wise, it's the same as mine and there's no glowy WASD-standard enforced.

[editline]a[/editline]

Personally, my setup is WASD, CTRL for crouch, C for prone, shift for sprint, R for reload, alt for walk, space for jump, add in any other gameplay features to the leftover keys, mouse4 for Teamspeak push-to-talk, mouse5 for gameplay push-to-talk. I don't play any games that don't work with this setup so I have 0 reason to change. The only game that it might be in any way detrimental is maybe F.E.A.R. or something where there's so many gameplay functions I'm going to need to sit and get used to things I'm going to have to change up, like the ever-so-changing flashlight button I have on a per-game basis.

[Lizzrd]

[QUOTE=matt000024;50587062]I could never do ESDF because the little thing on the F key would make my fingers feel too uneven.[/QUOTE]

That's why you use RDFG instead.

[PieClock]

I use WASD because I'm a lazy fucker that hates rebinding keys.

If I wasn't a lazy fucker ESDF makes more sense really.

[Clive]

[QUOTE=PieClock;50600158]I use WASD because I'm a lazy fucker that hates rebinding keys.

If I wasn't a lazy fucker ESDF makes more sense really.[/QUOTE]

I agree.

[Baconheart]

[QUOTE=PieClock;50600158]I use WASD because I'm a lazy fucker that hates rebinding keys.

If I wasn't a lazy fucker ESDF makes more sense really.[/QUOTE]

After trying a bunch out, I'd actually say RDFG makes the most sense from a key accessibility standpoint.

With WASD, my pinky naturally rests on shift and can hit caps or ctrl without hand movement or tab and tilde if I move my hand further forwards while doing it. This means my index finger and thumb end up doing most of the work, with the ring finger also doing some. That's less than optimal since it generally means I have to take a finger off one of my strafe keys to do stuff.
ESDF is largely the same, except now my pinky can also hit Z, A and alt easily if I need to. Better, but not perfect.
RDFG makes my pinky naturally rest on Z, at the centre of a cluster of keys including caps, A, S, shift, X and alt. This gives me the most options that I can use without hand movement and without taking a finger off any of the movement keys.

Now if only games could start including RDFG configs by default I'd probably switch over, but as it is I really don't wanna go through the hassle of rebinding every game I play.

[dai]

[QUOTE=Talishmar;50595176]ESDF sounds convenient, but instead of ctrl and shift my pinky would rest on Windows key and "<" which 90% of games don't recognize, so I don't know how that'd be worth it.[/QUOTE]

no

keep your pinky on shift and control, there's like zero stretching required

if you somehow can't reach that far, for reference with my IJKL keys (again, right hand on keyboard since I'm a lefty), consider not thinking of shift and control anymore??? Like with the IJKL setup my sprint/shift equivalent tends to be the ' key, and / is crouch. If you're DETERMINED to crunch your pinky in right next to your move keys you can easily bind to A and Z

[dirty_ape]

I grew up using the arrow keys and middle mouse button was my jump key. Even when I was top of my CS clan, I still disgusted my friends.

[mastersrp]

[QUOTE=lavacano;50598683]The video game industry only figured out leaning relatively recently, technology wise[/QUOTE]

[img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Sysshock.jpg[/img]

This game was crazy in regards to leaning and proning and all those crazy things. Try firing it up in good ol' DOSBox and see if you can figure out all the controls. There's a few more than most are accustomed to.

[KayX291]

I've actually got curious about the whole EDSF configuration and decided to try it out, kept using WSAD since my brother found out about it a long time ago....I am not going to switch back. It's so damn good.

[Barbeerian]

I've always used WSAD, never really bothered to change it but it makes sense to put it on EDSF.

However, reading about ASXC made me try it out and it feels pretty comfortable to my hand.

[Saxon]

[QUOTE=lavacano;50587501]I'm basically WSAD standard except I use one of the thumb buttons on my mouse as my "move forward" key

This config arose out of a "need" to eat food with one hand while running away from other players in Quake mods and I've stuck with it ever since[/QUOTE]

I've done this as well with the run key in World of Warcraft, I was stuffing my mouth full of food and I ran off the edge facing Magmaw and wiped the raid after it jammed.

never again

[Zes]

Standard WASD for most games with sprint on Shift and crouch on Ctrl. If the game has prone it's usually on C so I can easily reach it with my thumb.

There's a few exceptions though. Like if I'm playing old games like Doom I usually use the arrow keys with numpad 0 for shoot and right shift or Del for other functions.

Also I play racing games with the arrow keys, and weirdly I always play racing games with my right hand. It feels weirdly natural for some reason. I don't usually use my right hand for keyboard controls at all.