WASD, you're doing it wrong.

You don’t really need more for most games, but two genres in particular really benefit - MMOs and military sims. Personally, in World of Warcraft, I generally had a lot of cooldowns that I didn’t use frequently but always wanted to have close by, and clicking those meant I wasn’t using the mouse for the camera. And in PUBG/EFT/etc, you’ve got all kinds of commands for zeroing scopes, chasing walking speed, using different inventory slots.

Also personally, I find ZXC awkward to hit regardless of where my hand rests, so it’d be nice to have more space on the left to rebind those if I wanted. I’m not bothered enough by it to do anything about it - just enough to chime in when I see a forum post about it.

WHAT! I think I’ve only ever played the WASD set up?

Oops, I was thinking of the other QT3er whose name started with Kristi… @KristiGaines who was confused at what WASD was in booting up Cyberpunk 2077.

There was a frat-house style group at my uni that was a computer science house in the 90’s. They had a pretty fun nethack style game that used vi keys for commands, and I was addicted, so I’ve got those burned in. [it doesn’t hurt that I still use vi all the time as my go-to editor. fuck emacs!]

Just use a programmable keyboard. Problem solved.

40ng1o

As a leftie who’s been playing games since long before WASD was invented, I have always used the arrow keys for movement, and the numpad and other nearby keys for everything else. If it weren’t for the fact devs often don’t properly support keyboard remapping, I’d be perfectly pleased with the keyboard layout. Tho admittedly I don’t play twitch games.

Though I never use it, WASD has always seemed like an awkward kludge to me, and I’m surprised right-handers have never gotten a solution with “real” movement keys even after all these years. (But I am secretly happy they have not, since it would probably involve me losing the arrow keys and the numpad on the right side. Though I dimly remember some keyboard from the 80s where the movement keys + numpad were detachable, and could be placed either on the left or the right.)

Not if you have a Natural/split keyboard for ergo. Then you have to reach across the gap. ESDF for me (plus a Naga Hex with programmable extra thumb buttons).

Depending on the specific keyboard, RDFG and ESDF put the shift/control keys an uncomfortable distance away. I believe this is why in touch-typing classes, you were always taught to use the shift key on the side of the keyboard opposite of the hand pressing the letter/number key.

With WASD, the shift and control keys tend to fall directly under the pinky, so there is less awkward stretching. The thumb only has to curl under slightly to access alt. With shift, control, and alt modifiers, I have direct access to 36 keybinds without moving my hands away from “home” position (relative to wasd positioning), 44 if I extend just slightly to hit 5/t/g/b. Not even FFXIV requires more than that (48 with alt, but alt becomes uncomfortable for that set of keys).

While folks are free to choose whatever they like, I believe WASD became dominant for a reason.

Yeah. Doom.

Yep. My previously mentioned Moonlander is configured with a Colemak layer, a QWERTY layer, and a dedicated gaming layer with WASD and friends under my left hand and the numpad and other stuff under the right. One button and I can switch between them freely as the situation requires.

Edit: Or disconnect the right half completely and just use the left as a gamepad with a joystick on the right where that’s useful. Good for flight simming sometimes.

4e50f43097e2fde1432503e7abbf5dc1

I should have been clearer. I know what WASD is and I get that it was the default movement keys for CYBER (and most any shooter-like game now, I guess). I just happen to use the arrow keys. My problem with the interface on that game was that there were a lot of keys that couldn’t be reprogrammed --or a lot of actions I couldn’t figure out how to program.

Thus, installing some new mods helped now I am running along in that game just as well as any. I didn’t go back and look at my earlier post but yea that’s what happened. Fixed now!

I use to use AshiftZX, because that was the default in Bethesda’s FPS SkyNET.

This is why I love my Logitech G13 Gameboard. Can’t rebind keys? No problem. 3D game without mouselook? No problem. Shame they quit making it.

Forward is bound to W. Back is bound to Page Down. Left is a foot pedal under my desk. Right is the garage door opener in my car.

I’m pretty sure the OG shareware Doom ca. 1992-93(?) used the arrow keys for movement along with Shift, Ctrl, Alt, and space. Alt was strafe (hold it with side arrow), Shift was run, Ctrl was fire and space was use (open door). I may have Ctrl/space backwards. I don’t recall whether you could rebind the keys.

Not quite that extreme but my brother uses his rudder pedals for left/right and the toe brakes for leaning when he plays ARMA and other shooters that will allow him to bind em that way.

I think he just means because of Doom it emerged as the default standard, not that Doom natively started it. No one knew what circle-strafing was right at the start either!

In fact, it was probably the ‘discovery’ of the circle-strafing technique that caused the shift from arrow keys to left-hand side in general.

OG Doom didn’t even use the mouse. It was a simpler time.