WASD

[Reverend]

Yeah, unless you're left handed or missing some fingers, I don't get how WASD could be uncomfortable. For FPS or even 3rd person games like Mass Effect it's always felt perfectly natural. Of course, this coming from someone who grew up using AZOP on one of these things!

I should note though, I do have an Xbox369 for Windows controller and to prefer to use it with games like Tomb Raider, Super Meat Boy and even Skyrim. It really depends on how the game is set up.

[Anduril]

Kelthaz wrote:

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You use your ring finger for the A, your middle finger for the S and W (leave it rested on the W), and your index finger for the D, and your thumb rests on the space.

Man, I was doing it all wrong all this time. No wonder it was uncomfortable! No one ever told me how!

However, I'm still firmly entrenched in my ASDF so I don't see myself changing it anytime soon.

[Geckothan]

WASD just feels natural, though I could see some merit to moving that pattern further into the middle of the keyboard (e.g. ESDF or RDFG) in certain games (ones with lots of binds like WoW).

[Yoda]

Rothschild wrote:

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Man, I was doing it all wrong all this time. No wonder it was uncomfortable! No one ever told me how!

You must not have played computer games back when the arrow keys were used by the right hand? It's the same layout and a pretty natural transition to using WASD on the left hand from there. I do know a guy who wasn't willing to ditch the arrow keys though, so now he just slides his keyboard way to the left and uses arrow keys plus the various buttons in that area: right shift/ctrl, numeric keypad, and the ins/del cluster for all his other commands.

Sounds like a royal pain having to rebind your keys for every single game you play.

[Anduril]

The first PC game I played was Wolfenstein 3D. I can't recall the keyboard configuration I used with that. I clearly remember first using ASDF way back in '98 when Half Life came out. Those were the days.

[B.J.]

^Wolfenstein was likely the arrow keys plus left shift/ctrl/alt.

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, Wolfenstein 3-D defaulted to arrow keys, Ctrl, Alt, and space (for doors/switches.)

[ThunderAeroI]

If I remember correctly you could map keys in Spear of Destiny, the follow up to Wolfenstein.

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, I believe it was Unreal that introduced WASD, though I could be wrong. It was such a brilliant yet simple change that made sense and PC gaming had never been the same since

[Sephiroth]

I just plug in a controller

[John Clark]

Owain Taggart wrote:

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Yeah, I believe it was Unreal that introduced WASD, though I could be wrong. It was such a brilliant yet simple change that made sense and PC gaming had never been the same since

For me, it was probably either Unreal 1, Quake 1 or Duke 3d that got me using WASD.

For Doom 1 & 2, I managed to scrape through using Q & A for backwards and forwards, O & P for left and right, Shift for space, M for fire. That (like Reverend) is probably a legacy from the spectrum days. It was only with those when I found I really needed to use the mouse.

[Kelthaz]

Sephiroth wrote:

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I just plug in a controller

I don't know how anyone can prefer a control stick to a mouse for aiming. It's so imprecise.

[Owain Taggart]

John Clark wrote:

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For me, it was probably either Unreal 1, Quake 1 or Duke 3d that got me using WASD.

For Doom 1 & 2, I managed to scrape through using Q & A for backwards and forwards, O & P for left and right, Shift for space, M for fire. That (like Reverend) is probably a legacy from the spectrum days. It was only with those when I found I really needed to use the mouse.

Oh, I never played much Quake, so it might have had that setup too, though I thought I remembered it still used the arrow keys and shift setup.

I still remember Unreal and thought that was one of the things it did really well.

[John Clark]

Owain Taggart wrote:

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Oh, I never played much Quake, so it might have had that setup too, though I thought I remembered it still used the arrow keys and shift setup.

I still remember Unreal and thought that was one of the things it did really well.

I'm not sure if the arrows were the default for Quake either which leads me to think either Unreal or DN3d and I just carried on from there as I played them all roughly at the same time.

DN3d has a good case for me having gone to WASD as more keys were within reach over the arrows and I seem to remember needing a lot more buttons with that one.

[Yoda]

I definitely wouldn't credit Unreal with coming up with WASD. They were one of the earlier games to have it as the default control scheme. WASD was common in the Quakeworld days but it wasn't the default. If you recall for Quake you even had to manually enable 'mouselook'.

And yeah 'plugging in a controller' is a pretty sad way to play an FPS on PC