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There was one first person game (with mouse aim, real 3d levels - no BSP) that predates ID software fake 3d games that already used WASD but in a bit of a different way. In this game you could not always run because there was also some platforming involved, so it used:: - W : run forward - A : turn left - S : walk forward - D : turn right But extended on it with strafing and shifted backwards to X: - Z : strafe left - X : walk back - C : strafe right This setup was because mouse was a rare thing in those times. It worked well without one, you didnt need backwards often when you need turning. And it would shine with a mouse as well, by just going with the fingers one row lower, turning turn into strafe and unlocking the master race mode. So a really good layout that works with and without mouse with little readjutment. You had additional supprot keys like spacebar still at hand. The only thing that differs is that you would hit W for run instead of walk. I.e. run was not on toggle on shift key. And perhaps this would be a better setup even today for games where run/walk are often toggled, because you cant do both anyway and this way you need just one key. I see that useful in CoD or CSGO to walk without making noise and instantly propel into a sprint without having to find your pinky. But I dont hink those games have a binding for "run forward", just a binding to "run". Anyway WASDZXC becomes WASD if you are sure to have the mouse, and use a toggle for run. This is the precursor to WASD, it was just ahead of its time so it needed ZXC to work. This game was first person but was not a shooter per se, even tho you could shoot. I challenge you to name the game. It is probably one of the most underrepresented games in history for it's achievements. I repeat real 3d levels before wolfenstien's BSP. With meshes for interactible in game objects (sadly not for NPCs which were still sprites - if it had them it would be basically Quake technology that predates Wolfenstien). With texturing, with lighting. That nobody could run well at its release, and it was much more complex, which is probably why it wasn't as popular :D
Yep, that got me a few times. Nowadays, we have games where I need to press the Tab key to open the inventory to apply a health boost. Which usually happens while I strafe out of the fire line of an opposing player....and right into the Windows desktop, or some other application.
I read "aren't" as "are" at first and was going to disagree, but I do agree that they're still quite useful in gaming. Most racing games and side-scrollers, especially older ones but still, I keep using them
Did you know most NES emulators use AS as "AB" by default, whoever used that setup is a monster, especially combined with 8462 for the movement, it works, though not so well in some games), but it's really weird
You mentioned mouse DPI in early PC era limitations, but not the other major issue many of us who grew up with those remember: trackball gunk. Most mice had a trackball on the bottom and hand/desk residue easily jamming up the wheels touching the ball with gunk, which caused unresponsiveness and required cleaning frequently. Optical sensor mice phasing them out over the late 90s/early 2000s was a blessing. No more trackballs jamming up with gunk while trying to aim in fast-paced deathmatch or other scenarios that require speed and precision.
I played a ton of Doom and Quake1. The first optical mice added latency, had limited maximum speeds, and were prone to skipping, so that wasn't a preference for high-level players. Within a few years they got way faster, but at first they weren't great. It was good practice to clean your mouse surface, pop the ball and clean it and the rollers. That was my pre-play ritual for a while :)
@@Sn0wZer0 Indeed. Optical mice took awhile to improve that latency they had, so at the time it was a trade-off. I recall hating having to clean gunk out so often of my old mice as a kid, even for normal non-gaming usage. I remember my first optical mouse. The dang thing had to re-calibrate the sensing apparatus if you lifted it up off the mouse pad even a little (skipping was indeed a problem as you mentioned.) A few years later and those initial issues faded away with newer models and more efficient tech. I don't miss those old limitations one bit.
@@bluejayofevil Indeed optical mice have gone from good to amazing after those early ones. Now it's a no-brainier thanks to laser/edge illumination and very high fps of the tracking camera, but I was done gaming before those came out. Now the only way people could tell that I was once a gamer is that my desktop mouse is a Razer set to high sensitivity :)
A good thing about the cramped arrow keys + shift, ctrl is that in some games you can also use WASD + J,K,L or so and have two players on the same keyboard If you have a keypad and remap the shift and ctrl keys to the keypad keys it's even better
Yup, remember days of playing emulated Tekken on one keyboard when pressing too many buttons canceled out! XD But without gamepad my layout was either WASD+JKL on one side and arrows + numpad on other, or "greedy" WASD plus numpad all for one player. Works for games that don't need a mouse.
I remember playing a couple of then-new split screen games this way. I always picked the arrow keys because I thought it's the "correct" way, as it was the default setting for many of the games back then. Problem would arise when the two of us both wanted to use the arrow keys.
Pcs I had when I was younger only recognised a few (was it 3?) Button presses at a time. Yes I also remember playing 2 player on one keyboard but often our button presses didn't work!
@@Quills64 Rather than 'cheap' keyboards, it's a problem of the traditional keyboard technology. You can most certainly find plenty higher-end keyboards that still jam. For low-to-middle range gaming keyboards, usually there are only a few keys that 'don't count' (usually WASD, maybe a few others), but for the rest there is still a limit. You need to use a fully mechanical keyboard if you want the key jamming to completely go away, and even then I believe that the lower-end still have that issue (and for mechanical keyboards, lower end is still quite pricy).
I was using arrow keys up to the release of Half Life 2, I was defending the classic arrow key movement in most multiplayer games like CS and Americas Army. What a fool I was, blind to such a better movement system.
A weird thing is I made a little game in BASIC that used WASD when I was a kid and had no idea that would became coincidently the standard for moving the main sprite. Just pure coincidence.
I was also thinking about old BASIC games during this video and I think that a reason so many used alphabet keys instead of arrows is that they're easier to check for since it's a simple string comparison instead of using needing to know the control character (K$ = "W" vs. K$ = CHR$(72) or whatnot). As a self-taught BASIC programmer who learned as I went, a lot of my early programs had design choices like that.
@@otakubullfrog1665 and there was a lot of incentive to use other keys even in games written in assembly. Because you know, the mind bogglingly stupid arrow key setup.
Being left-handed, and therefore preferring that hand for the mouse, I never switched from the arrow keys. It's far more comfortable to have my right hand on the other side of the keyboard with the arrow keys instead of cramping up to the left side.
I too am a southpaw. the problem is that a lot of modern game (one i play a lot is No Man's Sky) group other functions around WASD. I have been trying to figure out how to migrate those over to IJKL
Honestly, it might be worth giving OKL; a shot. Is it incomprehensibly cursed? Yes. Is it a decent southpaw replacement for WASD? _No, but it comes close._
arrow keys are not enough in modern games, i tend to map the numpad, except almost without fail the numpad mappings are broken on games and there are unmappable keys on the left side of the keyboard
As a left-hander I've continued to use the arrow keys for movement along with the right shift, right control, numpad and other nearby keys, as this is way more comfortable for me. One of the downsides to everyone switching to WASD is that occasionally game developers forget some people (mainly left-handed folks) still like to use the arrow keys and they prevent them being used or remapped, along with keys like enter and backspace, as they hard bind these to menus. Even some AAA games do this, and then have to patch their keymapping systems when left-handers complain. I remember seeing someone use mouse in Doom back in the day, but I myself could never get the hang of it at the time. I did switch quite early to mouselook in Quake and Duke Nukem 3D though and I absolutely dominated anyone else playing using keyboard and mouse on a LAN or Wireplay (Until they switched to mouselook). Fun times!
I always consider it poor design to not have remapping, or only very limited. Never assume you know better than the player what is best suited to them.
whilst I'm left handed I was made to use right handed mouse at school so much I got used to it, and the finer control of left hand is still useful for quick weapon switches, any of the parkour in games like warframe, and with Stewies tweaks, speed menuing the PipBoy.
@@stm7810 Most schools are like that. The earlier you can get to the kid and teach them the proper way, the more time they'll have to practice it and learn new better habits.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Descent, the first fully 3D shooter, just not just looking up and down, but movement in all directions too. It was a flying shooter, where you might find an exit on the ceiling, or a hallway entrance in the floor.
I was still stuck on using arrow keys for Quake II even in deathmatch, it was Descent II that got me to switch to M+K. As a result I'm a lifetime inverted mouse user.
If you like descent you'll probably enjoy overload, it's basically a modern version of it. It also supports vr but I wouldn't play it like that unless you've got a very strong stomach!
I worked out the mouse look function in Quake almost immediately after it was released, or even before (I assume I found out about it on usenet). I took to it immediately, but my friends weren't convinced until the first evening playing deathmatch against me. My total domination of the game that evening meant they very quickly saw the light.
I played it with mouselook right away too, but my control scheme was bizarre. I would still shoot with ctrl so I used LMB and RMB to move forwards and backwards respectively. I think it was Z and X for strafing but I am not totally sure about that.
@@PikkaBird That is a bizarre key setup. Though I think my friends went through a similar phase as they tried to adapt their Doom 2 setup to Quake. Quake was probably the first game in which I seriously played deathmatch, so I suspect I chose what seemed most obvious, which would have been arrow keys with forward/back and strafe. Can't remember why I later moved to WASD, but it was probably due to it being a default in some game with the benefits becoming quickly obvious. All this makes me feel seriously old. Quake came out over 27 years ago!
I remember using PGUP and PGDN to look up and down in Quake, and HOME to center the visual. It was cumbersome as hell, I too later shifted to the mouse.
Being left handed I found the new default WASD to be bazaar and extremely polarizing if you use a mouse left handed, I quickly found the arrow keys to be inadequate and forged my own custom layout around keypad 8456 keys, it has worked great for me, unfortunately every once in awhile their is a game with hard coded keys that are just too awkward to play...
I'm on the same boat but use 5123 instead so that my pinky and thumb land on the ENTER & 0 key comfortably. Hello Neighbor is one of those games that won't let me change things from WASD and I just can't play it with that. Sad. Also, I like to invert the look as well. I'm weird I know.
luckily you're not missing much by not being able to play Hello Neighbor. I think Lethal Company had no keybindings for a while too, which is always obnoxious. @@majorramsey3k
I remember my dad used the mouse for his left hand and keyboard on right so he could fap easier with his right hand, luckily I am left handed in that respect so it was all good in the hood.
As someone who never plays shooters, it took me until a few months ago to finally start using wasd instead of the arrow keys. The reason being that the only game I play on a regular basis resets the keybindings whenever the game is updated, and I got tired of constantly having to change them. Also, it was always quite the hassle to find good keys around the arrows to bind other frequently used keys to which would be located around wasd on the default keybindings. It took a few weeks to get used to, but now I'm kinda mad at myself for not giving in earlier, as it really made the experience a lot better.
I use ESDF whenever the option to customize keys arises. It allows for more hotkeys to be mapped to the Q,W,A,Z,R,T,F,G,X,C, and V keys as well as making it easier to reach the 1-4 keys.
Yeah this is me as well. “A” is always reload. I started using this during the Counter-Strike 1.3 days, at the time mainly because it made it easier for me to hit the number 3, which switched to your main weapon.
WASD gives you easier access to tab, shift, ctrl, and alt. It's also slightly easier to press Z, X, C with minimal repositioning. V, B, and Alt (and even C and N for some people) is pressed with your thumb. This is why WASD is far more popular.
@@Plasmacore_V ESDF is literally standard typing position. The only key that's slightly more awkward for it is `/~. Putting aside the parts that are clearly incorrect, I do appreciate the thumb tip for the folks who insist on WASDing their life. That's good info.
Another ESDF user here, adding to the pile. I learned touch typing in middle school, where you situate your hands on the "home row keys." Years later, when we finally got a computer in the home, I bought Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for it, and I was confused by the WASD layout because it was just home row but shifted left by a key. Without the internet or prior PC gaming experience to tell me otherwise, I moved every single keybind over one key to the right, and I've been doing it ever since. It just seems more sensible to me, and it was never a problem when I eventually got into MMO's, since you could easily rebind anything and would type a lot in those games too, meaning you'd never have to move your hands to type quickly from your regular playing position. Honestly, as more games are released even now in 2023, it seems that there are ever-increasing examples of modern games that *don't* let you rebind WASD, as they just assume everyone will love it and it will be perfect. Honkai Star Rail, Lethal Company, and Fortnite are just a few examples in the last year that I picked up and had various issues with an ESDF playstyle. In Lethal Company, you cannot change keybindings at all. In Fortnite, there are issues when something new in an update cannot be overwritten or rebound from E (such as re-rolling augments when that was new), which would cause it to overlap with movement. In Honkai, you can use ESDF for traversal after a recent update, but the targeting system for combat was never updated to match, so it's still locked to WASD. I could go on with more examples, but my point is that I think it says a lot about the culture behind PC gaming and how we've just come to accept WASD as the only way to play, even though we would never have WASD in the first place without forward-thinking players changing their bindings. Even when developers actually give you the option to rebind WASD... they just don't really think anyone will do it, and it's difficult for me to readjust my brain to play WASD when I'm forced. I at least appreciate everyone's contribution over the years that made it so I don't have to use the arrow keys... Yikes.
Grew up playing with arrow keys in the 90's. Took me forever to get the hang of WASD when mouse look became a thing, I used to just slide my keyboard over and use the arrows with my left hand.
I tried using wasd, and it sucks. I need to config any pc game for arrows to this day. I mean, i can play with wasd it just tires my hands and end up pressing other keys contantly.
@@EtaYoriusSame for me. I am extremely right handed and can't do much with my left hand. I have to use arrow keys for any game I play. Trying to use the WASD keys feels very awkward and unnatural for me.
@@ct6502-c7w I started out well before WASD and mouse look were mandatory, and I pretty much stopped playing FPS games when that became the only viable way of playing as I just preferred the Doom style of run and gun at breakneck speed around the maps.
I remember changing the layout from WASD to ASDF for Tribes and Half-Life because I always thought it was stupid to get hand cramps for no reason. F = Forward A = Assward S = Strafe left D = Dee other strafe Home row keys that I still live by whenever I setup a game on keyboard.
And i remember changing keymaps in late 90s/early 2000s back to arrow keys. Only later i realised WASD was infact better. But back in those days arrow keys seems the right choice because...why not?
I never did. I either remap my commands to the arrow keys (taking advantage of the keys above them as well as the numerical keys next to them) or, if the game does not allow that, I return it. The extra space around each arrow key make it easier to avoid mistakes. And you only need to push the keyboard a little to the left.
Glad you mentioned ESDF, I adopted that playing doom, and my hand is large enough that the benefits you mention about ctrl/shift etc are available to me. That and it gives so many more keys around my hand that I can easily adapt whatever game I'm playing to that combo... and I always know my fingers are on the correct keys as the nub on the f key keeps me centered...
Never in my entire life have I understood how someone said "well... I rest my hand on the farthest left keys of the keyboard... what if I move my hand EVEN FURTHER LEFT? ... PERFECT!" It literally is the *most limiting* key config scheme using the main portion of the keyboard. *Anything* to the right of WASD would give your pinky more keys to use than WASD.
What type of lunatic would use the keyboard as it was designed to be used?! Seriously, it’s very annoying that ESDF users need to change binds in every game when we have the superior setup. I can understand keeping WASD as an option or even as the default, but why is ESDF not a preset in every game?
THIS! I've mostly given up on esdf because it's annoying having to remap every game when I don't know which secondary or tertiary functions I need to keep nearby in a manner that's easy to remember, like r for reload.
@@Franimus being superior is always worth it. "oh, are you saying the default keybinding is troublesome?" is something my friends are super duper ultra fond of hearing :)
It was a reputation that was well earned. In Quake 1 he was the undisputed best player in NA. Just an extra level above everyone else in the 1996-97 range. I can't imagine refusing to play him though like the people in that story. I remember him rarely joining the popular servers the good TDM players played pick-up matches on because everyone wanted to play him and take their shot at beating the best (I certainly couldn't...he kicked my butt the few times I played against him).
I remember being rather ragey at the change to WSAD or whatever. I liked my arrows. I miss the arrows as standard. The mouse we had sucked and blowed when playing Wolf 3D, but could be done, I just wasn't co enough. I did find the mouse and arrow keys a great combination for DOOM. I just moved the keyboard along the desk so I had more space. I also miss tank controls and fixed camera. Now, you kids get offa mah lawn!
OMG I was born in 2000 and I grew up using the arrow keys in games. I've always wondered why this switch was made, but no one has really talked about it! It struck me as really weird when i started seeing more games use WASD when i got older.
2002 here and kinda same i remember playing roblox with the arrow keys and then ??? no clue how i found out about wasd honestly, considering i didn't play that many pc games outside of flash games, club penguins and roblox lol
@@SwagHyde 97' here and same. I feel like arrow keys continued up to about 2010sin some genres and recall Roblox, as well as I think Battlefront 2 both using arrow keys, with racing and strategy games being the holdouts for the control mode for a few more years into the 2010s.
I was still using it pretty late into the 2000s/early 2010s because it was always so convenient having the entire numpad right there to bind everything to. My biggest complaint about keyboard design was that they for some reason kept it on the RIGHT when once the mouse became standardised as an input device, it made way more sense to have it on the left.
I believe there are some custom mechanical keyboards with a left numpad, but it's easier to just get a keyboard without a numpad and buy a separate numpad/macropad to place wherever you want. If you use a split keyboard you can even put a numpad (or your mouse) in the gap between the halves.
I stand by arrow keys, I much prefer access to a variety of different sized buttons for certain commands, usually in Immersive Sims and RPGs. I use my mouse left-handed anyway
I can think of a couple of notable old games that come close to the modern convention: "The Way of the Exploding Fist" simulated a joystick with "S" as the centre, which is pretty close to WASD. The original Elite used two clusters of keys in space flight with the left hand using "S" and "X" for dive and climb with the various aux and fire control in the surrounding keys.
I can remember a similar layout to WASD pretty early in gaming. Telengard (1982) used the WADX layout for dungeon crawler movement. It used S for the stay command. Without that, I expect it would have been WASD.
I forgot what game it was (definitely not Telengard) but I did try one game that defaulted to WADX. And quit almost immediately because I kept messing up. That one I think S was menu or something, which was annoying because it kept popping up every time I thought I was pressing X.
Here's the question answered in 1 sentence. 3D gaming required the use of the mouse, and shifting movement to somewhere on the left side of the keyboard allowed for use of the mouse in the right hand while handling movement with the left hand.
I still prefer the arrow keys and am irritated when a game does not allow me to remap the controls (it is much worse if the game does not have the invert Y axis option though). This is due to the way my keyboard is placed and just because I am used to it. My usual controls are arrows for movement, mouse right button for jump, enter for reload, ctrl for crouch, delete for secondary fire/aim.
All games should let you remap controls. Not only is there the WASD vs ESDF vs arrows or IJKL or whatever issue, but people with other keyboard layouts (dvorak, workman, qgmlwb, etc.) need to set different letters even to hit the usual spots. Plus you can often come up with a more optimal layout than the game's defaults. I remember Terraria putting the potion keys on really far away stuff, maybe H for heal and M for mana. Understandably they were going the mnemonic route, but there were plenty of open keys over in the WASD area to put these important functions, so I would always remap them. There's also the issue that if you use a split keyboard you might have backspace on the left half instead of space, so swapping jump to backspace is a somewhat common need since you can't really use the right half of your split and the mouse at the same time. I would go as far as saying if a game doesn't let me remap the keyboard keys, either I'm gonna try to play with a controller, or just not play the game at all.
Yeah... those games end up on the trash heap for me. As a software developer, I can say there is no excuse to alias the arrow keys too, as it's just a few extra lines of code.
This new service where youtubers can get the license to big pop songs is amazing. The fact that you were able to use Your Woman and Got The Look... Unthinkable just a few years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if TikTok helped change that.
@@patrickblakethesaint Not just greedy, short-sighted and pathologically stuck in a rut of "this is how we _always_ did things." PS., thanks OP for mentioning this. I was marvelling at how brazen it was to use a Roxette track in the middle of the video, even buried behind the dialog. Then the ending credits rolled, and I was like... did this Chad really license a mainstream pop song to use in his video?? What a flex!
I remember transitioning in fases getting used to needing right hand for cam control. For a while i and many others moved our keyboards so arrow keys could be comfortably used with left hand. Then through magazines and talking about it slowly the wasd solution became what everyone used and games slowly moving to having that as default. Good times lol cant imagine playing fps with arrow keys any more but for the longest time i was so used to it i struggled moving to wasd
Even the arrow keys are new-school. Just as an example, Exile on C64 was controlled with QWPL. And in the video it was mentioned that QAOP was common on ZX Spectrum.
I also played a lot of games on the Speccy that were ZXIJ or ASIJ on the Speccy - I'd redefine the keys to ASIJ if I could. (Of course, we also had 6789 with 0 for fire, as the sterotypically idiosyncratic Sinclair version of arrow keys, and the Interface 2 joystick. Absolutely mad that I could play games set up like that.)
Peter did say the arrow keys came with the PC, which is correct. All the older micro-computers didn't have arrow keys in a sensible or consistent location, so they used all kinds of other keys or required a joystick. I mean, on the VC20 and C64 you only had down and right arrows, and had to use the function shift to get up and left. The keys were unusable for games because of that.
@@thesteelrodent1796 Absolutely. Wasn't meaning to say otherwise -- only that on some Spectrum games, the arrow keys, which were on 6789, *were* used, probably because you got Interface 2 for free, and they were absurdly awkward as a result.
CS was the game that made me switch to WASD, though not without some issues. The LAN room I used to play had all the seats set to WASD, but I was still using arrow keys at the time, so I had to set the controls to arrow keys every time I played. This annoyed the kids coming after me because they would have to reset them back to WASD, so I was not popular for that reason.
I have always sticked to the arrow keys, and I'll stick to them in the future. CTRL is "duck", INS on numpad is "jump", RSHIFT is "run". Perfection ... 😉
@@ShishakliAus You do realize the arrow keys are surrounded by 11other keys right? Also for switching weapons, the mouse I used for twitch shooters ages ago had rubber nub instead of a wheel. Need a weapon that was 2 ahead what you were using (two quick flicks up) and there it was in your hand. Same goes for back, as long as you knew your weapon order you could flick back and forth thru them quickly.
Before WASD became common, I usually used sdfx. It's a bit less awkward. the placement of w forces the middle finger to not just always extend from the rest of the finger but also pull slightly left. With sdfx, the d for forward is in line with the left and right strafe keys (s and f) so very neutral position most of the time (in fact, same as the standard typing "home position" for left hand). Yeah, the x is more offset from d than w is from s, but the amount of time spent backpedaling tends to be very low in most games. sdfx also opens up several keys for pinky controls (q,w,a, and z) which in dos-based OS days didn;t lead to some of the problems special keys like ctrl, shift caps, and alt sometimes could. But for whatever reason, sometime around 2004 or 5 I gave up on changing key assignments.
The problem with sdfx is that your fingers are different lengths. Wasd is more natural because the middle finger is longer than the other fingers and naturally wants to rest on W. Esdf is probably better than wasd but the problem is with thumb buttons. Your thumb can basically only press spacebar if you use esdf. The problem with wasd is that the pinky is only responsible for clicking 3 buttons, with esdf you can stretch the pinky and use 3 extra buttons. Esdf should probably be the default, and every keyboard should at least have a split spacebar.
@@WARnTEA Um, what? When I put my fingers onto ASD and extend my middle finger, it ends up directly on E. Aside from having to already fully extend my index finger for it to end up on D instead of X, this is what makes me hate using a normal keyboard instead of a non-tilted WASD board.
I switched to WASD because mouselook became a thing. I remember seeing footage of John Romero demonstrating Daikatana and he was using the armor keys to play.... It felt like he learned nothing from Quake.
I'm pretty sure that's the only reason. Sure, you could still use the arrow keys, but that made things scrunched up and left few options for adding additional keys. For example, things like reloading, cycling through weapons or other possibilities.
I’m glad you brought up Doom, that was the first thing I thought of when I seen the thumbnail for the video. I clearly remember using the arrow keys, ctrl to shoot, right shift to run and space to open doors. Though when Doom 2 came out, I had switched to a Gravis joypad for most games.
Omg, i had all but forgotten about Marathon. We had a couple higher powered Macs in my middle school computer lab that we installed it on and would play during lunch and free periods. Loved that game!
Me and my brother had a really custom layout in the non mouse days. For Duke3D for example we had movemend on the numblock but the + key was for 180 turns and the 0 key for kicking. then ASDC -> A: attack | S: items | D: Jump | C: crouch. It feels still today very smart. A nice resting position, and you can reach all keys around it with no hastle if you decide to add other functions to nearby keys.
I used to use the arrow keys on the num pad rather than the normal arrow keys as it felt more natural. When games became 3D and had ability for you to look up and down I would use the page up and page down keys (9 & 3). Changing over to the WASD keys felt really strange at first and took a while to get used to it, but now trying to play the old games using the arrow keys again is way too hard.
Didn't expect all that history cuz from a modern perspective it just feels obvious. My reasons for disliking arrows are the simple facts that "move with arrow because arrow" wasn't actually that logical because the image painted on the keys is arbitrary, and that move = left hand / action = right hand is the scheme for pretty much every other device in existence. So having played on arcade and Nintendo before the age of home computers, being forced to reverse that is alien to the point that I just can't play anything that uses arrows and has no option to rebind.
I grew up on Acorn computers, and all the 2D games on those machines always used Z/X for left/right on the left hand, and :/. For up and down on the right. This meant that spacebar was easily used as jump by either hand, and fire was often on the enter key. The switch to 3D made these keys untenable for sure, but I do still miss this configuration as I found it the most comfortable.
just gonna say it, 8426 on the numpad is where its at. it is more in line with a d-pad, 7913 can be used as diagonal, if you want to do the coding for more complex controls you can use a diagonal key with a straight directional key for 16 total degrees of movement, and for 3d games that allow it, you can use 5 for an analog trigger to be held with another key.
I was definitely an arrow key holdout until Duke Nukem 3D. That's when I finally switched to WASD. Then, I got into Quake 2 CTF and switched to ESDF which I still use to this day (yes...I reconfigure every game that will let me re-bind keys). It also made more sense since I am a touch typist and I found it obnoxious to offset my left hand when I switched between typing and playing. Also, the F key has the little bump on it so you can tell your hand is in the right place without having to look down. Standing around typing in Quake 2 was a quick way to get killed (VOIP wasn't really a thing back then)...if you used ESDF, you just had to jump your right hand back over to the mouse and get moving again. Makes sense in MMO's, too, where you switch between playing/typing a lot.
I remember playing with arrows and even now when I play Duke 3D I sometimes like to still play with arrows as it reminds me of being a kid. Though for a while I was using E S D F instead of WASD but the amount of games that wouldn’t let you unbind WASD just forced me to go to stick with WASD.
I was not expecting this video to start with Dark Castle! That was one of the first computer games I ever played when my friend got a Macintosh. I have fond memories of it, of course I literally had no basis for comparision at the time.
I have evolved to ESDF. Way back, when I played Quake TF2, I noticed if I move my hand one set to right, I can get 3 extra keys to left. Also using CTRL as reload makes big difference. I'm just waiting that everyone could get this idea too :D (Biggest issue is to rebind EVERY game I play)
It's far superior. You get access to more than 3 extra keys, and you don't have to shift your hand around to type normally since ESDF is where your hand rests to type normally anyway. You also have the nub on F to give tactile awareness of your hand positioning. The people with a problem with ESDF are only because they're entrenched in WASD. WASD was fine for normal Quake, but as games demanded more and more keybinds, WASD was obsoleted.
Sincere question from a DFGV'er... "I get a bit of a reach problem with shift and ctrl" Why do you still use shift and ctrl? Why not move one MORE column to the right and use RDFG and... remap those commands since now you have even MORE keys to use when you use RDFG? That way your pinky never has to reach downwards towards Ctrl and Alt *AND* has more keys to use.
10:58 System Shock came out before Marathon on September 23rd 1994 and had an ASDX movement keys by default with QWE being used for leaning. System Shock was the first to an identical WASD movement scheme within FPS, even if it played more like an operating system than a game.
I remember growing up with arrow keys for most games, but WASD was important right from the start for me in a specific context - multiplayer. WASD and IJKL were the default key-mappings for a lot of multi-player games; that, or WASD / arrow-keys. A game called _Comet Busters_ let you do four sets of keys for four players on one screen, which I tried with friends and family a few times - we did WASD, IJKL, arrow-keys, numpad number keys - but on a '90s keyboard plugged into a '90s computer, running '90s software... if you actually had four people using one keyboard it dropped a _lot_ of inputs. Which honestly just added to the entertainment value of it all - but after discovering four teenagers shouting and mashing the single keyboard of the office computer all together at the same time, my parents decided to ban that game forever. ...actually, thinking back - of all the things they ever 'banned', only a few of them truly disappeared off the hard drive and all the floppy disks. Comet Busters was one of them.
Yeah, I believe my first experience with WASD was multiplayer too. We used to play Bomberman two, three or even four on the same keyboard and it was hilarious.
The part that bugs me with really old games isn't the arrow keys. I dig those. Been using them since I was a toddler. STILL use them when playing non-shooty games. It was the Ctrl/Alt/Shift keys being used for action buttons. They're in a weird position. Whenever a game let me change that, I'd remap the action keys to like, letter keys (my goto as a kid was HJKL, cuz it was closeish to the arrows. Nowadays I use ASDF instead)
@@marsovac That's the thing. I don't use the mouse when playing platformers/2D games in general. Unless they don't give me a choice. To be fair unless it's about aiming and shooting, I find the mouse to be more trouble than it is worth.
Arrow keys are vastly superior to using letters because you can feel where they are. I thought ganes developers had just gone mad remapping movement to WASD. When I try playing their games I can't move and have to map the controls properly to the arrow keys to do anything.
I used ESDF for a time (after swapping from my own asz/mouse2 config, mouse2 was +forward), needed the extra left side for different levels of zoom binds and quick swap/shoot binds (quake1/fvf/tf, quickswap shoot was a quick alias to swap to another weapon, fire, then swap back, great for throwing a random grenade in the middle of rocket fights as an example or a quick poke with the LG throwing people off their game). Problem with it is, you need to turn your keyboard because the E key is more offset to the left to the W on most keyboards and its extremely uncomfortable/damaging to your hands. ESDF was very popular with flight sim players which is where I got the idea to try it out in Quake. There was even a game where the default was ESDF but I've long since forgotten what it was.
Yup, I use ESDF, the only downside I can think of is that the top row and middle row gets a bit more staggered, but doesn't bother me in the slightest. The access to more keybinds and the tactile feel of having the "knob" on F is really great. It's a bore to remap new games though, but worth it to me.
@@Cyhawkx ESDF is already the positioning you use for touch typing with your fingers resting on A, S, and F. Having played with ESDF since 1996, I have no idea what you're talking about with turning the keyboard and my hands are not damaged.
I never felt the need to use any other control scheme than mouse and arrow keys. It works just fine for me. Whenever a game came with WASD as default I always changed it back to arrow keys... ;-)
I think any discussion of the rise of mouselook would be incomplete without mentioning CyClones and Magic Carpet. Both of them were first-person games that used the keyboard for movement and the mouse for aiming before Marathon did. As for when I switched to WASD, it was basically when I got tired of reconfiguring every game before I played it. I still like the arrow keys (the W key is offset in the wrong direction to be comfortable and it's difficult to remember what functions are assigned to E, R, F, etc.) but it just became a pain to re-assign the keys in every game I played, particularly since I wouldn't know which functions would be needed the most when I started playing. Although, frankly, the time I finally switched to WASD also corresponds roughly to the time my time spent playing FPSs went into serious decline.
I remember System Shock in 1994 and Dark Forces 1995 allowing you to use keys to look up and down (in shocks case, also to lean) and being amazed at the difference it made in connecting to vertically designed levels. I also remember being annoyed at the club hand you'd have to wield on your keyboard to use these features. haha :)
And the fact that WASD is often hardcoded and that switching mouse buttons creates further issues, such as whether the buttons should only be switched in-game (assuming it's allowed) or they should be switched by the OS, just leads of even us lefties using WASD for better or worse.
I remember using WASD for movement in the original Wizardry which released in 1980 (I would have played it somewhat later). Edit: apparently W was forward, A and D would turn and there was no backwards.
I do still sometimes use arrow keys when asked to assign buttons to directions, but if a game defaults to WASD, I will use it. There have been a few edge cases where I have had to assign two clusters of arrow keys to control the movement of two different things, though, and it's actually surprising how many clusters of keys can be made to work as arrow keys if you start looking. There's WASD, there's the arrow keys, but IJKL also works. You can also use Home, End, Delete, and Page Down as set of arrow keys, if you don't like your hand hanging off the edge of the keyboard but are used to having your hand over that cluster. Finally, there's the Numeric Keypad, which I feel is a very overlooked option that has a lot of potential...you could easily map 8 directions on there, and map your action buttons to several nearby keys. I'm kind of surprised that one didn't take off, it seems like it would be perfect for movement. Maybe it's just that it uses too many keys for movement and everyone likes the compact layout.
There are many games that default to numb pad. Typically games with eight-way movement. Many DOS sharware games and rogue-likes, the ones that use it instead or in conjugation with vi-keys.
Another oddity - unique AFAIK: The first F1GP game by Geoff Crammond. Accelerate with A and Z (or Y if you are German), steer with , and . Shift gears with space (upshift A+space, downshift Z+space). If I were to race with keyboard these days, I would probably still map keys to this combo, if possible. (Shifting up with S and down with X works well, too.)
I am left handed and used arrow keys a lot in NFS HP2 and GTA 3 during my childhood but then I slowly started to use WASD and my reflexes improved like crazy. I was so much better in racing and missions and since then I always used WASD over arrow keys. And then I started playing Call of Duty games and Far Cry and it was settled.... WASD was the new way to play
Try pl;'. It's like wasd but for the left hand. I found it works not only much better than arrow keys, but also better than wasd because there's even more keys around that keyboard area
In late '90s I had to literally re-learn playing using WASD, because using cursor keys felt natural and mouse was a fairly fresh thing in shooters. Quake was the game that made keyboard+mouse combo a standard. And even in System Shock 2 from 1999 you had to reassign keys to WASD to be able to strafe because strafing wasn't a common thing either and moving left or right was placed in the bottom row by default.
I prefered the numpad 4862 set up back in the day I found my hand cramped more if I used the arrows. It's maybe due to fingers needing to be more naturally extended with the numpad than clutched with the arrows.
I would always, when possible, configure the side arrows as strife and would use the mouse to turn. It made for a much more agile mouvement. The up and down arrows would be for forward/backward or forward/crouch depending on the game. The shareware games like Wolfenstein3D where the first to offer configurable keys. At least it was my impression at the time.
I never stopped using the arrows, it's only a problem for certain kept combos, but far better for repetitive stress prevention because you can rest your wrists on a pad.
I use arrows and mouse. My standard control for first person games is: Mouse Move: Look Mouse Right: Primary action Mouse Left: Secondary action Arrows: Move Numpad 0: Crouch/sneak Numpad Decimal: Use Right Shift: Run Right CTRL: Jump End: Inventory
Twenty years ago I met a pro gamer and WASD is the LAST thing he would use (not common then). I won't tell you what he taught me, other than say that even the mouse is radical. I took it on (at it took a long time to retrain my brain) and ABSOLUELY SMASHED all my rivals for what was previously a mediocre player. I DESPISE WASD and shake my head at it's perverse use everywhere!
I got this keyboard with 6 macro keys to the left of the Ctrl, Shift, Tab. BY ALL THAT IS HOLY THAT IS SUCH A HORRIBLE CONCEPT. It took me less than one day to rip off those keys. I can imagine having that nightmare BETWEEN the movement and Shift. No siree, I ain't having none of that trash.
@@MauricioOsuna-et8et 🤦 let me explain why youre comparing apples to oranges. The problem with the macro buttons is in order to reach the macro buttons you have to reach over the extra wide shift caps lock tab etc. playing with ESDF the wide buttons are the ones that you would have to reach for and the extra width helps make hitting them way easier. You're probably talking about a razer black widow or Corsair K95 which are the worst offenders, not only do they make the edge keys extra extra wide they also put like a 5mm gap between them and the macro keys meaning you're looking at between 2 and 3 full keys of "dead space" between the keys that you don't have to reach over playing ESDF Also most people move the whole control cluster over one row to the right and add less used functions like target calling, weapon swap, interact, map, comms etc. for example you're no longer reaching for shift to sprint you're reaching for Z or A for sprint
@@austinftwXD Exactly, the damn Corsair K95! So it IS known for the horrible layout? Also, it's not that I ever once tried to use the macro keys, no no no, they get "in the way" being "out of the way" when I DON'T WANT TO USE THEM. I honestly have no idea what application they could have, other than giving me a full-blown panic attack. Though I can see the point of having more of the keyboard accessible with the pinky and pointer. Why not go full gigahand and use TFGH? 😂
@@MauricioOsuna-et8et 🤔 TFGH puts your hands too close together while ESDF puts your index finger on the F key with the little homerow indicator, which can be kind of handy if you lose your movement cluster.
I was honestly baffled when I saw how you used the arrow keys! I stuck with arrow keys for a long, long time, but I always used them with my left hand (with the right hand on the mouse), and that was before I learned about strafe keys from my brother. I would typically press anything to the left of the arrow keys (ctrl, shift, return, even backspace, alt, #, or /) with my pinky. Using the left hand, the num pad is quite easy to reach so that was heavily utilised as well. Very useful for accessing the higher numbered weapons or skills. A common annoyance was when a game didn't treat the numpad as a first class citizen, but then game developers to this day have a special ability of botching their HID support which should be a solved problem at this point - except if you have more than 5 mouse buttons, then abandon all hope... The main cause for me switching to WASD was changing my desk. My current desk has a slide out panel for the keyboard and mouse and it's too narrow to hold my keyboard in a natural position for using the arrow-keys. If not for that, I'd probably still be using arrow keys to this day.
I grew up with arrow keys completely oblivious to the fact WASD or other control layouts existed, to the point when I first heard out about them I was utterly confused. But so was everyone I knew IRL lol. I still continue to use the arrow keys if possible as it's what I'm most used to, but to compensate for an otherwise weird layout; despite being right-handed myself, I learned how to use the mouse left-handed. If there's any instance where I can't use arrow keys but I can still rebind, I prefer IJKL as it's close enough: I just prefer movement with my right hand. If there's any instance where I can't rebind at all... well, I'm not gonna play that game.
So much to love here. Fascinating insight into the history I never knew, banging Roxette track, and lovely little reference to Mr Robertson. Not sure why it's become trendy to hate on AVGN though.
I never used WASD. I do not like the W being askew, it feels weird. When mouselook became a thing I did my own thing using the numpad and all the neighbouring keys as support.
TBH this is why I got a nightmarish ortholinear keyboard with a wacky as hell layout, I can't stand how keys are staggered normally, even just normal typing. Because of that I actually use... SDFC of all things. There's a whole row of keys underneath that (there's no spacebar, just lots of 1u keys, one of which happens to be space)
I remeber that most games in the '80 on commodore used "A" for up "and "Z" (German "X") for down. I am not sure anymore about left and right. I think it was "O" and "P". But it were keys in the top line of the letters on the keyboard. The reason is easy: Guys with small hands can reach the space bar with the left hand thumb fine while guys with large hands can press with with the rigth hand side thumb fine.
I grew up with WASD as "the Player 2 controls". While I've mostly gotten used to their new place as the primary movement keys, there's still a bit of weirdness there that I can't totally shake.
I have no idea how you find holding QA comfortable! Also, ESDF is an amazing idea, it opens up new keys to press on the left, I wish I'd heard of that earlier!
Arrow Keys Users: "I am the best" WASD Users: "You're a relic of a bygone era." ESDF Users: _"You are weak, unoptimized, a shadow of what you could be."_ ..... RDFG Users: _>insane, borderline daemonic maniacal laughter
It would be interesting to discuss when WASD became the standard for non-FPS games as well, like it didn't come to building and strategy games until much later
A lot of 2D platformers are still expecting that you'll want to use arrow keys! I certainly prefer it that way, but obviously, WASD is better whenever you're using the mouse.
PC players: Uh I can't handle how shifted and unaligned the WASD keys. If only there was a way for the ARROW keys to be viable without giving up the mouse pointer. Laptop players: _laughs menecingly_
As games introduced things like skills and magic, I adopted a "ESDF" instead of WASD. This frees up keys to left, so I can use WQAZ and sometimes even XCV for skills and magic spells. I can still use shift for sprint and ctrl to crouch. I've even experimented with RDFG, but then I get a bit of a reach problem with shift and ctrl, but I do actually use it for some games that have lots of skills and magic spells that are mappable to keys.
I would think that RDFG would be stretching a bit far, if you really need access to all those keys though I could potentially see DXCV working but I haven't tried it myself at all. I still use WASD since I don't play many games that need that many buttons and have a mouse with 2 extra buttons if I need them for something.
Sincere question from a DFGV'er... "I get a bit of a reach problem with shift and ctrl" Why do you still use shift and ctrl? Why don't you... remap those commands since now you have even MORE keys to use when you use RDFG? I prefer FV instead of RF for fwd/back because I find Home Row to be the natural resting place instead, but that's just personal preference, there's no quantifiably better config in that regard.
The original system Shock used WAXD but did not have mouselook. It also had Q and E for leaning but for people not ready for its strange controls you could still use cursor keys. While it did not have mouselook, you were expected to use the mouse to aim the mouse cursor for world interactions and to target enemies. It was not too far from what we'd think of as standard today but back then for dos it was a very strange beast.
Quake was my first WASD / Mouse game... What a Learning curve that was, but picked it pretty quickly. I was working at an Internet Cafe at the time and we used to play LAN games when the shop was quiet or we would schedule time after shift. Then we started to advertise Tournaments for fun where Customers could come and join in for a small price. Those were Awesome days. Before then it was either ASD / ZXC or (Left)-Shift/CTRL/ALT and the Arrow keys. I don't recall ever using the keys on the Right.
Others may have switched to WASD, but I didn't. I use LCtrl, LAlt, A and Z for directional motion, with S for jump and X for crouch. I've always used this, and could never get used to WASD, as your fingers arch over the keys with that, but with my setup, your wrist rests directly on the table for extra comfort.
Another thing I remember from Quake that kind of forced top players to switch to WASD or at least some combination of keys on the main layout was that we had to use pretty complex macros for communication since network connections weren't fast enough for voice comms to be used anywhere other than LAN. So we had these multi-level keybinds that would identify things like "I'm in" or "Guarding" or "Enemy" and then a secondary set to identify Quad, Penta, Mega, and all the different rooms on DM3. It took using keybinds all around the movement keys to work.
I'm left-handed and my preferred method of movement (bearing in mind that I first touched a computer in 2011), is arrow keys on a 96% keyboard. It gives me easy access to a bunch of keys I can map my controls to.
One year, my office settled on “Descent” (maybe Descent II) for deathmatces. It offered six angles of rotation and provided for key mapping. Everyone had their own setup. If you ever sat down at someone else’s computer, you found yourself flailing about like a blind epileptic.
Since I'm left handed, I still use arrow keys. The placement of my hands are more comfortable in that position instead of using WASD, and there's generally more room for my fingers. I use the numpad if a game requires extra binding like interact keys or sprint. INS 0 makes for a great sprint button, END 1 is my interact key, and DEL . is usually my crouch button.
As someone who grew up *with* gaming (born in 1973, so I've played on every system *as* they came out. Gaming grew up as I did) I can tell you, when games started allowing rebinding, using keys on the left for the left hand became popular. But the moment mouse became *needed* because verticality was an issue, the arrow keys became extremely disused.
Omg I remember playing older games with my cousins using directional keys. I was always curious as to why it changed from that but never really second guessed it because I ended up playing on console as I got a bit older.
Doom is fully 3D, all calculations happen in a 3D space and there are X, Y and Z axis. The limitations of not being able to look up and down and not being able to build rooms on top of rooms are artificial limitations added to the engine to speed up the software render process, as there are a lot of cases it doesn't have to consider and a lot of things it doesn't have to calculate (e.g. the Z axis is ignored for collision detection of enemies or when calculating blast radius to speed up calculation but you could simply add this to the engine and nothing else would break if you do). If I tell you that you are only allowed to draw with 16 colors, your monitor is still true color, it won't become EGA just because of this artificial limitation. Doom is 3D, it just sets some rules that limit what you can do in that 3D space and ignores one dimension for certain calculations. See also th-cam.com/video/ZYGJQqhMN1U/w-d-xo.html
I actually found good success in the early WASD+mouse days using a very similar method but with the left hand on the number pad and right hand on mouse as normal. The 8456 was the WASD, the ENTER was the spacebar, the top row would be like 1234 hotkeys. I found that all those buttons being close and aligned allowed me to hit them quickly and precisely. The problem is most games didn't give me complete remapping control, so I could only do it on a few games. In the end it was just more practical to go WASD like everybody else.
What I can't believe is that there are still strategy games that use the arrow keys to move the camera. So you are supposed to move your left hand over the whole keyboard to move the camera, and move it back across once you need to hit a hotkey? Dafuq.
It wasn’t until the World Of Warcraft era that I began using this configuration, the main reason was because of how you had to start keybinding everything . This layout made that so much easier.
There was a 3d game that came out in 1992, which had WASD control along with X. That game was Ultima: Underworld. The specific controls are: W: Sprint forward. A: Turn left. D: Turn right. S: Walk forward. X: Walk backward.
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Psst, it's not "four times" it's "four X". It stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate.
There was one first person game (with mouse aim, real 3d levels - no BSP) that predates ID software fake 3d games that already used WASD but in a bit of a different way.
In this game you could not always run because there was also some platforming involved, so it used::
- W : run forward
- A : turn left
- S : walk forward
- D : turn right
But extended on it with strafing and shifted backwards to X:
- Z : strafe left
- X : walk back
- C : strafe right
This setup was because mouse was a rare thing in those times. It worked well without one, you didnt need backwards often when you need turning.
And it would shine with a mouse as well, by just going with the fingers one row lower, turning turn into strafe and unlocking the master race mode.
So a really good layout that works with and without mouse with little readjutment.
You had additional supprot keys like spacebar still at hand.
The only thing that differs is that you would hit W for run instead of walk. I.e. run was not on toggle on shift key. And perhaps this would be a better setup even today for games where run/walk are often toggled, because you cant do both anyway and this way you need just one key. I see that useful in CoD or CSGO to walk without making noise and instantly propel into a sprint without having to find your pinky. But I dont hink those games have a binding for "run forward", just a binding to "run".
Anyway WASDZXC becomes WASD if you are sure to have the mouse, and use a toggle for run. This is the precursor to WASD, it was just ahead of its time so it needed ZXC to work.
This game was first person but was not a shooter per se, even tho you could shoot.
I challenge you to name the game.
It is probably one of the most underrepresented games in history for it's achievements. I repeat real 3d levels before wolfenstien's BSP. With meshes for interactible in game objects (sadly not for NPCs which were still sprites - if it had them it would be basically Quake technology that predates Wolfenstien). With texturing, with lighting. That nobody could run well at its release, and it was much more complex, which is probably why it wasn't as popular :D
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Still enjoying your book mate!
Dude you should do ESDF instead moar good. Your hand is in its natural typing position so +1
You Gain QAZ for hot keys +1
Its good.
The default keyboard layout of Quake was such that if you pressed strafe, shoot and look down at the same time you were pressing ctrl-alt-del. Genius!
😂
Yep, that got me a few times.
Nowadays, we have games where I need to press the Tab key to open the inventory to apply a health boost. Which usually happens while I strafe out of the fire line of an opposing player....and right into the Windows desktop, or some other application.
Shift to run plus Tab to open inventory while playing anything on Steam...
@@Skenjin or shift to walk, and tab for scoreboard
In practice you’d be using Z not Delete. Z was the other default for look down.
Arrow keys aren't completely retired. They're still useful with keys like Z and X for games that don't require the mouse.
They are also used in at least one game for the translation of vehicles.
me using the top row of the numpad + Q/W/E
That _did_ evolve from arrow keys + Z/X/C
I read "aren't" as "are" at first and was going to disagree, but I do agree that they're still quite useful in gaming. Most racing games and side-scrollers, especially older ones but still, I keep using them
@@alex.g7317 …is better with a controller
Did you know most NES emulators use AS as "AB" by default, whoever used that setup is a monster, especially combined with 8462 for the movement, it works, though not so well in some games), but it's really weird
You mentioned mouse DPI in early PC era limitations, but not the other major issue many of us who grew up with those remember: trackball gunk. Most mice had a trackball on the bottom and hand/desk residue easily jamming up the wheels touching the ball with gunk, which caused unresponsiveness and required cleaning frequently.
Optical sensor mice phasing them out over the late 90s/early 2000s was a blessing. No more trackballs jamming up with gunk while trying to aim in fast-paced deathmatch or other scenarios that require speed and precision.
I played a ton of Doom and Quake1. The first optical mice added latency, had limited maximum speeds, and were prone to skipping, so that wasn't a preference for high-level players. Within a few years they got way faster, but at first they weren't great. It was good practice to clean your mouse surface, pop the ball and clean it and the rollers. That was my pre-play ritual for a while :)
@@Sn0wZer0 Indeed. Optical mice took awhile to improve that latency they had, so at the time it was a trade-off.
I recall hating having to clean gunk out so often of my old mice as a kid, even for normal non-gaming usage.
I remember my first optical mouse. The dang thing had to re-calibrate the sensing apparatus if you lifted it up off the mouse pad even a little (skipping was indeed a problem as you mentioned.) A few years later and those initial issues faded away with newer models and more efficient tech.
I don't miss those old limitations one bit.
@@bluejayofevil Indeed optical mice have gone from good to amazing after those early ones. Now it's a no-brainier thanks to laser/edge illumination and very high fps of the tracking camera, but I was done gaming before those came out. Now the only way people could tell that I was once a gamer is that my desktop mouse is a Razer set to high sensitivity :)
@@Sn0wZer0high sense certainly isn't indicative of a fps gamer lol
And as an added bonus you could shine the laser of optical mice in your friends' eyes at LAN parties.
A good thing about the cramped arrow keys + shift, ctrl is that in some games you can also use WASD + J,K,L or so and have two players on the same keyboard
If you have a keypad and remap the shift and ctrl keys to the keypad keys it's even better
Yup, remember days of playing emulated Tekken on one keyboard when pressing too many buttons canceled out! XD
But without gamepad my layout was either WASD+JKL on one side and arrows + numpad on other, or "greedy" WASD plus numpad all for one player. Works for games that don't need a mouse.
I remember playing a couple of then-new split screen games this way. I always picked the arrow keys because I thought it's the "correct" way, as it was the default setting for many of the games back then.
Problem would arise when the two of us both wanted to use the arrow keys.
Pcs I had when I was younger only recognised a few (was it 3?) Button presses at a time.
Yes I also remember playing 2 player on one keyboard but often our button presses didn't work!
yeah key jamming is still a problem on cheap keyboards, and i always thought it was the reason why WASD evolved.
@@Quills64 Rather than 'cheap' keyboards, it's a problem of the traditional keyboard technology. You can most certainly find plenty higher-end keyboards that still jam.
For low-to-middle range gaming keyboards, usually there are only a few keys that 'don't count' (usually WASD, maybe a few others), but for the rest there is still a limit.
You need to use a fully mechanical keyboard if you want the key jamming to completely go away, and even then I believe that the lower-end still have that issue (and for mechanical keyboards, lower end is still quite pricy).
I was using arrow keys up to the release of Half Life 2, I was defending the classic arrow key movement in most multiplayer games like CS and Americas Army. What a fool I was, blind to such a better movement system.
I didn't use reverse mouse until I saw MCR whilst enlisting to the Vatican City paramilitary
The Arrow keys pah! We used QAOP and space in our day
@@CricketEngland It's still a pretty good way to play simple platform games - one finger per key works well.
That is because you are a GIT.
What a fool you WASD
A weird thing is I made a little game in BASIC that used WASD when I was a kid and had no idea that would became coincidently the standard for moving the main sprite. Just pure coincidence.
Convergent evolution. 🙂
I was also thinking about old BASIC games during this video and I think that a reason so many used alphabet keys instead of arrows is that they're easier to check for since it's a simple string comparison instead of using needing to know the control character (K$ = "W" vs. K$ = CHR$(72) or whatnot). As a self-taught BASIC programmer who learned as I went, a lot of my early programs had design choices like that.
@@otakubullfrog1665 and there was a lot of incentive to use other keys even in games written in assembly. Because you know, the mind bogglingly stupid arrow key setup.
My friend told me about the new, way better control method of WASD and ESDF back in i think '92 or '93, he was a Mac gamer so he knew his stuff.
Being left-handed, and therefore preferring that hand for the mouse, I never switched from the arrow keys. It's far more comfortable to have my right hand on the other side of the keyboard with the arrow keys instead of cramping up to the left side.
Same for me. Still using the arrow keys with my right hand and controlling the mouse with the left.
I too am a southpaw. the problem is that a lot of modern game (one i play a lot is No Man's Sky) group other functions around WASD. I have been trying to figure out how to migrate those over to IJKL
Honestly, it might be worth giving OKL; a shot.
Is it incomprehensibly cursed? Yes.
Is it a decent southpaw replacement for WASD? _No, but it comes close._
same and i map functions to stuff like del end pg dwn and backspace etc
arrow keys are not enough in modern games, i tend to map the numpad, except almost without fail the numpad mappings are broken on games and there are unmappable keys on the left side of the keyboard
As a left-hander I've continued to use the arrow keys for movement along with the right shift, right control, numpad and other nearby keys, as this is way more comfortable for me.
One of the downsides to everyone switching to WASD is that occasionally game developers forget some people (mainly left-handed folks) still like to use the arrow keys and they prevent them being used or remapped, along with keys like enter and backspace, as they hard bind these to menus. Even some AAA games do this, and then have to patch their keymapping systems when left-handers complain.
I remember seeing someone use mouse in Doom back in the day, but I myself could never get the hang of it at the time.
I did switch quite early to mouselook in Quake and Duke Nukem 3D though and I absolutely dominated anyone else playing using keyboard and mouse on a LAN or Wireplay (Until they switched to mouselook). Fun times!
I always consider it poor design to not have remapping, or only very limited. Never assume you know better than the player what is best suited to them.
whilst I'm left handed I was made to use right handed mouse at school so much I got used to it, and the finer control of left hand is still useful for quick weapon switches, any of the parkour in games like warframe, and with Stewies tweaks, speed menuing the PipBoy.
@@stm7810 Most schools are like that. The earlier you can get to the kid and teach them the proper way, the more time they'll have to practice it and learn new better habits.
@@RT-qd8yl I don't think being made to use my non dominant hand for the mouse was propper.
Was looking for this comment. I do the same as a left hander
I'm surprised you didn't mention Descent, the first fully 3D shooter, just not just looking up and down, but movement in all directions too. It was a flying shooter, where you might find an exit on the ceiling, or a hallway entrance in the floor.
I was still stuck on using arrow keys for Quake II even in deathmatch, it was Descent II that got me to switch to M+K. As a result I'm a lifetime inverted mouse user.
Descent was brilliant!
If you like descent you'll probably enjoy overload, it's basically a modern version of it. It also supports vr but I wouldn't play it like that unless you've got a very strong stomach!
Because of descent, by the time we were looking around in quake, I was fully wired up for inverted mouse look.
descent was weird being able to go upside down and stuff heh
I worked out the mouse look function in Quake almost immediately after it was released, or even before (I assume I found out about it on usenet). I took to it immediately, but my friends weren't convinced until the first evening playing deathmatch against me. My total domination of the game that evening meant they very quickly saw the light.
I played it with mouselook right away too, but my control scheme was bizarre. I would still shoot with ctrl so I used LMB and RMB to move forwards and backwards respectively. I think it was Z and X for strafing but I am not totally sure about that.
@@PikkaBird That is a bizarre key setup. Though I think my friends went through a similar phase as they tried to adapt their Doom 2 setup to Quake.
Quake was probably the first game in which I seriously played deathmatch, so I suspect I chose what seemed most obvious, which would have been arrow keys with forward/back and strafe. Can't remember why I later moved to WASD, but it was probably due to it being a default in some game with the benefits becoming quickly obvious.
All this makes me feel seriously old. Quake came out over 27 years ago!
I remember using PGUP and PGDN to look up and down in Quake, and HOME to center the visual. It was cumbersome as hell, I too later shifted to the mouse.
Being left handed I found the new default WASD to be bazaar and extremely polarizing if you use a mouse left handed, I quickly found the arrow keys to be inadequate and forged my own custom layout around keypad 8456 keys, it has worked great for me, unfortunately every once in awhile their is a game with hard coded keys that are just too awkward to play...
wait i love you for this, gotta try that out
I'm on the same boat but use 5123 instead so that my pinky and thumb land on the ENTER & 0 key comfortably. Hello Neighbor is one of those games that won't let me change things from WASD and I just can't play it with that. Sad. Also, I like to invert the look as well. I'm weird I know.
luckily you're not missing much by not being able to play Hello Neighbor. I think Lethal Company had no keybindings for a while too, which is always obnoxious. @@majorramsey3k
I remember my dad used the mouse for his left hand and keyboard on right so he could fap easier with his right hand, luckily I am left handed in that respect so it was all good in the hood.
Even though I'm left handed I always used the mouse with my right hand, so this was never an issue for me
As someone who never plays shooters, it took me until a few months ago to finally start using wasd instead of the arrow keys. The reason being that the only game I play on a regular basis resets the keybindings whenever the game is updated, and I got tired of constantly having to change them. Also, it was always quite the hassle to find good keys around the arrows to bind other frequently used keys to which would be located around wasd on the default keybindings. It took a few weeks to get used to, but now I'm kinda mad at myself for not giving in earlier, as it really made the experience a lot better.
Now I'm curious what that game is...
@@Mumbamumba Must have been a game developed by a sadist.
I use ESDF whenever the option to customize keys arises.
It allows for more hotkeys to be mapped to the Q,W,A,Z,R,T,F,G,X,C, and V keys as well as making it easier to reach the 1-4 keys.
Yeah this is me as well. “A” is always reload. I started using this during the Counter-Strike 1.3 days, at the time mainly because it made it easier for me to hit the number 3, which switched to your main weapon.
@@Aiii83 I swapped over to it with cod4, though I use one of the two thumb buttons on my mouse to reload
WASD gives you easier access to tab, shift, ctrl, and alt. It's also slightly easier to press Z, X, C with minimal repositioning. V, B, and Alt (and even C and N for some people) is pressed with your thumb. This is why WASD is far more popular.
even tho i use wasd myself, esdf makes a lot of sense, left index finger on F is a default position for blind typing after all
@@Plasmacore_V ESDF is literally standard typing position. The only key that's slightly more awkward for it is `/~.
Putting aside the parts that are clearly incorrect, I do appreciate the thumb tip for the folks who insist on WASDing their life. That's good info.
Another ESDF user here, adding to the pile. I learned touch typing in middle school, where you situate your hands on the "home row keys." Years later, when we finally got a computer in the home, I bought Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for it, and I was confused by the WASD layout because it was just home row but shifted left by a key. Without the internet or prior PC gaming experience to tell me otherwise, I moved every single keybind over one key to the right, and I've been doing it ever since. It just seems more sensible to me, and it was never a problem when I eventually got into MMO's, since you could easily rebind anything and would type a lot in those games too, meaning you'd never have to move your hands to type quickly from your regular playing position.
Honestly, as more games are released even now in 2023, it seems that there are ever-increasing examples of modern games that *don't* let you rebind WASD, as they just assume everyone will love it and it will be perfect. Honkai Star Rail, Lethal Company, and Fortnite are just a few examples in the last year that I picked up and had various issues with an ESDF playstyle. In Lethal Company, you cannot change keybindings at all. In Fortnite, there are issues when something new in an update cannot be overwritten or rebound from E (such as re-rolling augments when that was new), which would cause it to overlap with movement. In Honkai, you can use ESDF for traversal after a recent update, but the targeting system for combat was never updated to match, so it's still locked to WASD.
I could go on with more examples, but my point is that I think it says a lot about the culture behind PC gaming and how we've just come to accept WASD as the only way to play, even though we would never have WASD in the first place without forward-thinking players changing their bindings. Even when developers actually give you the option to rebind WASD... they just don't really think anyone will do it, and it's difficult for me to readjust my brain to play WASD when I'm forced. I at least appreciate everyone's contribution over the years that made it so I don't have to use the arrow keys... Yikes.
Grew up playing with arrow keys in the 90's. Took me forever to get the hang of WASD when mouse look became a thing, I used to just slide my keyboard over and use the arrows with my left hand.
I tried using wasd, and it sucks. I need to config any pc game for arrows to this day. I mean, i can play with wasd it just tires my hands and end up pressing other keys contantly.
@@EtaYoriusSame for me. I am extremely right handed and can't do much with my left hand. I have to use arrow keys for any game I play. Trying to use the WASD keys feels very awkward and unnatural for me.
The Arrow keys pah! We used QAOP and space in our day
I still do slide my keyboard over :)
@@ct6502-c7w I started out well before WASD and mouse look were mandatory, and I pretty much stopped playing FPS games when that became the only viable way of playing as I just preferred the Doom style of run and gun at breakneck speed around the maps.
I remember changing the layout from WASD to ASDF for Tribes and Half-Life because I always thought it was stupid to get hand cramps for no reason.
F = Forward
A = Assward
S = Strafe left
D = Dee other strafe
Home row keys that I still live by whenever I setup a game on keyboard.
And i remember changing keymaps in late 90s/early 2000s back to arrow keys. Only later i realised WASD was infact better. But back in those days arrow keys seems the right choice because...why not?
I never did. I either remap my commands to the arrow keys (taking advantage of the keys above them as well as the numerical keys next to them) or, if the game does not allow that, I return it.
The extra space around each arrow key make it easier to avoid mistakes. And you only need to push the keyboard a little to the left.
Same except for the returning part, but only one game I've played recently didn't really allow remapping
For me a little to the left is “ a little the left of the monitor , usually behind it “ 😂
Glad you mentioned ESDF, I adopted that playing doom, and my hand is large enough that the benefits you mention about ctrl/shift etc are available to me. That and it gives so many more keys around my hand that I can easily adapt whatever game I'm playing to that combo... and I always know my fingers are on the correct keys as the nub on the f key keeps me centered...
Never in my entire life have I understood how someone said "well... I rest my hand on the farthest left keys of the keyboard... what if I move my hand EVEN FURTHER LEFT? ... PERFECT!"
It literally is the *most limiting* key config scheme using the main portion of the keyboard. *Anything* to the right of WASD would give your pinky more keys to use than WASD.
What type of lunatic would use the keyboard as it was designed to be used?!
Seriously, it’s very annoying that ESDF users need to change binds in every game when we have the superior setup. I can understand keeping WASD as an option or even as the default, but why is ESDF not a preset in every game?
THIS! I've mostly given up on esdf because it's annoying having to remap every game when I don't know which secondary or tertiary functions I need to keep nearby in a manner that's easy to remember, like r for reload.
@@Franimus being superior is always worth it.
"oh, are you saying the default keybinding is troublesome?" is something my friends are super duper ultra fond of hearing :)
@WallisHall -- Indeed, I'd be tempted to use ESDF myself if my fingers were a bit longer. As it is, WASD makes more sense for my own hand size.
Love the story about Thresh, a reputation we all wished we had
It was a reputation that was well earned. In Quake 1 he was the undisputed best player in NA. Just an extra level above everyone else in the 1996-97 range. I can't imagine refusing to play him though like the people in that story. I remember him rarely joining the popular servers the good TDM players played pick-up matches on because everyone wanted to play him and take their shot at beating the best (I certainly couldn't...he kicked my butt the few times I played against him).
I remember being rather ragey at the change to WSAD or whatever. I liked my arrows. I miss the arrows as standard. The mouse we had sucked and blowed when playing Wolf 3D, but could be done, I just wasn't co enough. I did find the mouse and arrow keys a great combination for DOOM. I just moved the keyboard along the desk so I had more space.
I also miss tank controls and fixed camera.
Now, you kids get offa mah lawn!
OMG I was born in 2000 and I grew up using the arrow keys in games. I've always wondered why this switch was made, but no one has really talked about it! It struck me as really weird when i started seeing more games use WASD when i got older.
Bro if you were born in 2000 then games where using WASD since before you could game, Half life 2 came out in 2004 when you were 4 years old lol.
@@rtmclean484 not all of us are born hardcore gamers lol
2002 here and kinda same
i remember playing roblox with the arrow keys and then ???
no clue how i found out about wasd honestly, considering i didn't play that many pc games outside of flash games, club penguins and roblox lol
@@SwagHyde 97' here and same. I feel like arrow keys continued up to about 2010sin some genres and recall Roblox, as well as I think Battlefront 2 both using arrow keys, with racing and strategy games being the holdouts for the control mode for a few more years into the 2010s.
Yeah i was born in 03, i remember a few computer games using the arrows when i was a kid
I was still using it pretty late into the 2000s/early 2010s because it was always so convenient having the entire numpad right there to bind everything to. My biggest complaint about keyboard design was that they for some reason kept it on the RIGHT when once the mouse became standardised as an input device, it made way more sense to have it on the left.
I believe there are some custom mechanical keyboards with a left numpad, but it's easier to just get a keyboard without a numpad and buy a separate numpad/macropad to place wherever you want. If you use a split keyboard you can even put a numpad (or your mouse) in the gap between the halves.
I stand by arrow keys, I much prefer access to a variety of different sized buttons for certain commands, usually in Immersive Sims and RPGs. I use my mouse left-handed anyway
Arrow keys are superior WASD can go back to the fires of hell where it was born!
I can think of a couple of notable old games that come close to the modern convention: "The Way of the Exploding Fist" simulated a joystick with "S" as the centre, which is pretty close to WASD. The original Elite used two clusters of keys in space flight with the left hand using "S" and "X" for dive and climb with the various aux and fire control in the surrounding keys.
hah, I remember that game. I played on the C64, I seem to remember using a joystick with that game.
I can remember a similar layout to WASD pretty early in gaming. Telengard (1982) used the WADX layout for dungeon crawler movement. It used S for the stay command. Without that, I expect it would have been WASD.
I forgot what game it was (definitely not Telengard) but I did try one game that defaulted to WADX. And quit almost immediately because I kept messing up. That one I think S was menu or something, which was annoying because it kept popping up every time I thought I was pressing X.
Loved telengard🎉
That sounds a bit like the numpad movement controls in a lot of roguelikes, minus the diagonals.
Here's the question answered in 1 sentence. 3D gaming required the use of the mouse, and shifting movement to somewhere on the left side of the keyboard allowed for use of the mouse in the right hand while handling movement with the left hand.
I still prefer the arrow keys and am irritated when a game does not allow me to remap the controls (it is much worse if the game does not have the invert Y axis option though). This is due to the way my keyboard is placed and just because I am used to it.
My usual controls are arrows for movement, mouse right button for jump, enter for reload, ctrl for crouch, delete for secondary fire/aim.
All games should let you remap controls. Not only is there the WASD vs ESDF vs arrows or IJKL or whatever issue, but people with other keyboard layouts (dvorak, workman, qgmlwb, etc.) need to set different letters even to hit the usual spots. Plus you can often come up with a more optimal layout than the game's defaults. I remember Terraria putting the potion keys on really far away stuff, maybe H for heal and M for mana. Understandably they were going the mnemonic route, but there were plenty of open keys over in the WASD area to put these important functions, so I would always remap them. There's also the issue that if you use a split keyboard you might have backspace on the left half instead of space, so swapping jump to backspace is a somewhat common need since you can't really use the right half of your split and the mouse at the same time.
I would go as far as saying if a game doesn't let me remap the keyboard keys, either I'm gonna try to play with a controller, or just not play the game at all.
Yeah... those games end up on the trash heap for me. As a software developer, I can say there is no excuse to alias the arrow keys too, as it's just a few extra lines of code.
Thanks for this well researched video. It corrected a couple of things I had misremembered about 90s gaming even though I was there
This new service where youtubers can get the license to big pop songs is amazing. The fact that you were able to use Your Woman and Got The Look... Unthinkable just a few years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if TikTok helped change that.
I was literally about to say the same thing!!
I hate to admit to how many shorts I've let play this past week, just because GoldenEye 64 music playing
@@HadenBlake because record labels are greedy as hell. Also, nice last name 😁!
@@patrickblakethesaint Not just greedy, short-sighted and pathologically stuck in a rut of "this is how we _always_ did things."
PS., thanks OP for mentioning this. I was marvelling at how brazen it was to use a Roxette track in the middle of the video, even buried behind the dialog. Then the ending credits rolled, and I was like... did this Chad really license a mainstream pop song to use in his video?? What a flex!
@@nickwallette6201 agreed on all fronts!
I remember transitioning in fases getting used to needing right hand for cam control.
For a while i and many others moved our keyboards so arrow keys could be comfortably used with left hand. Then through magazines and talking about it slowly the wasd solution became what everyone used and games slowly moving to having that as default.
Good times lol cant imagine playing fps with arrow keys any more but for the longest time i was so used to it i struggled moving to wasd
Even the arrow keys are new-school. Just as an example, Exile on C64 was controlled with QWPL. And in the video it was mentioned that QAOP was common on ZX Spectrum.
Yup i used that on my speccy+2
I also played a lot of games on the Speccy that were ZXIJ or ASIJ on the Speccy - I'd redefine the keys to ASIJ if I could. (Of course, we also had 6789 with 0 for fire, as the sterotypically idiosyncratic Sinclair version of arrow keys, and the Interface 2 joystick. Absolutely mad that I could play games set up like that.)
Peter did say the arrow keys came with the PC, which is correct. All the older micro-computers didn't have arrow keys in a sensible or consistent location, so they used all kinds of other keys or required a joystick. I mean, on the VC20 and C64 you only had down and right arrows, and had to use the function shift to get up and left. The keys were unusable for games because of that.
@@thesteelrodent1796 Absolutely. Wasn't meaning to say otherwise -- only that on some Spectrum games, the arrow keys, which were on 6789, *were* used, probably because you got Interface 2 for free, and they were absurdly awkward as a result.
QAZXC
CS was the game that made me switch to WASD, though not without some issues. The LAN room I used to play had all the seats set to WASD, but I was still using arrow keys at the time, so I had to set the controls to arrow keys every time I played. This annoyed the kids coming after me because they would have to reset them back to WASD, so I was not popular for that reason.
Lol, stick it to them with speedrun binds! Forward on right click and jump on mouse wheel..
I have always sticked to the arrow keys, and I'll stick to them in the future. CTRL is "duck", INS on numpad is "jump", RSHIFT is "run". Perfection ... 😉
Finally, someone speaking sense.
What's reload? Action? Drop weapon? Talk? Quick switch? Weapon 1? Weapon 2? Weapon 3? Weapon 4?
@@ShishakliAusI change the weapons with the scroll wheel on the mouse.
@@ShishakliAus You do realize the arrow keys are surrounded by 11other keys right? Also for switching weapons, the mouse I used for twitch shooters ages ago had rubber nub instead of a wheel. Need a weapon that was 2 ahead what you were using (two quick flicks up) and there it was in your hand. Same goes for back, as long as you knew your weapon order you could flick back and forth thru them quickly.
@@JGreen-le8xx Exactly.
Before WASD became common, I usually used sdfx. It's a bit less awkward. the placement of w forces the middle finger to not just always extend from the rest of the finger but also pull slightly left. With sdfx, the d for forward is in line with the left and right strafe keys (s and f) so very neutral position most of the time (in fact, same as the standard typing "home position" for left hand). Yeah, the x is more offset from d than w is from s, but the amount of time spent backpedaling tends to be very low in most games. sdfx also opens up several keys for pinky controls (q,w,a, and z) which in dos-based OS days didn;t lead to some of the problems special keys like ctrl, shift caps, and alt sometimes could. But for whatever reason, sometime around 2004 or 5 I gave up on changing key assignments.
The problem with sdfx is that your fingers are different lengths. Wasd is more natural because the middle finger is longer than the other fingers and naturally wants to rest on W. Esdf is probably better than wasd but the problem is with thumb buttons. Your thumb can basically only press spacebar if you use esdf. The problem with wasd is that the pinky is only responsible for clicking 3 buttons, with esdf you can stretch the pinky and use 3 extra buttons. Esdf should probably be the default, and every keyboard should at least have a split spacebar.
@@WARnTEA Um, what? When I put my fingers onto ASD and extend my middle finger, it ends up directly on E.
Aside from having to already fully extend my index finger for it to end up on D instead of X, this is what makes me hate using a normal keyboard instead of a non-tilted WASD board.
@@HenryLoenwind Brother, you got some weird salad fingers.
I switched to WASD because mouselook became a thing.
I remember seeing footage of John Romero demonstrating Daikatana and he was using the armor keys to play.... It felt like he learned nothing from Quake.
ever see him play Doom Eternal? it was pretty painful to watch.
I'm pretty sure that's the only reason. Sure, you could still use the arrow keys, but that made things scrunched up and left few options for adding additional keys. For example, things like reloading, cycling through weapons or other possibilities.
Romero is left-handed. He's said in the past he uses the arrow keys with his right hand and mouse with his left.
Cut John Romero some slack, he put so much effort into making us all his bitch that he didn't have time to learn a new control scheme.
I’m glad you brought up Doom, that was the first thing I thought of when I seen the thumbnail for the video. I clearly remember using the arrow keys, ctrl to shoot, right shift to run and space to open doors. Though when Doom 2 came out, I had switched to a Gravis joypad for most games.
Omg, i had all but forgotten about Marathon. We had a couple higher powered Macs in my middle school computer lab that we installed it on and would play during lunch and free periods. Loved that game!
Me and my brother had a really custom layout in the non mouse days.
For Duke3D for example we had movemend on the numblock but the + key was for 180 turns and the 0 key for kicking. then ASDC -> A: attack | S: items | D: Jump | C: crouch.
It feels still today very smart. A nice resting position, and you can reach all keys around it with no hastle if you decide to add other functions to nearby keys.
I used to use the arrow keys on the num pad rather than the normal arrow keys as it felt more natural. When games became 3D and had ability for you to look up and down I would use the page up and page down keys (9 & 3). Changing over to the WASD keys felt really strange at first and took a while to get used to it, but now trying to play the old games using the arrow keys again is way too hard.
Didn't expect all that history cuz from a modern perspective it just feels obvious. My reasons for disliking arrows are the simple facts that "move with arrow because arrow" wasn't actually that logical because the image painted on the keys is arbitrary, and that move = left hand / action = right hand is the scheme for pretty much every other device in existence. So having played on arcade and Nintendo before the age of home computers, being forced to reverse that is alien to the point that I just can't play anything that uses arrows and has no option to rebind.
I grew up on Acorn computers, and all the 2D games on those machines always used Z/X for left/right on the left hand, and :/. For up and down on the right. This meant that spacebar was easily used as jump by either hand, and fire was often on the enter key. The switch to 3D made these keys untenable for sure, but I do still miss this configuration as I found it the most comfortable.
But IIRC original Elite on the BBC used S/X//A which is actually quite a good set of keys for a 3d game
just gonna say it, 8426 on the numpad is where its at. it is more in line with a d-pad, 7913 can be used as diagonal, if you want to do the coding for more complex controls you can use a diagonal key with a straight directional key for 16 total degrees of movement, and for 3d games that allow it, you can use 5 for an analog trigger to be held with another key.
I was definitely an arrow key holdout until Duke Nukem 3D. That's when I finally switched to WASD. Then, I got into Quake 2 CTF and switched to ESDF which I still use to this day (yes...I reconfigure every game that will let me re-bind keys). It also made more sense since I am a touch typist and I found it obnoxious to offset my left hand when I switched between typing and playing. Also, the F key has the little bump on it so you can tell your hand is in the right place without having to look down. Standing around typing in Quake 2 was a quick way to get killed (VOIP wasn't really a thing back then)...if you used ESDF, you just had to jump your right hand back over to the mouse and get moving again. Makes sense in MMO's, too, where you switch between playing/typing a lot.
I remember playing with arrows and even now when I play Duke 3D I sometimes like to still play with arrows as it reminds me of being a kid. Though for a while I was using E S D F instead of WASD but the amount of games that wouldn’t let you unbind WASD just forced me to go to stick with WASD.
Forced keybindings are a bigger sin in gaming than unskippable cutscenes right between checkpoints and boss fights.
I was not expecting this video to start with Dark Castle! That was one of the first computer games I ever played when my friend got a Macintosh. I have fond memories of it, of course I literally had no basis for comparision at the time.
I have evolved to ESDF. Way back, when I played Quake TF2, I noticed if I move my hand one set to right, I can get 3 extra keys to left. Also using CTRL as reload makes big difference. I'm just waiting that everyone could get this idea too :D
(Biggest issue is to rebind EVERY game I play)
It's far superior. You get access to more than 3 extra keys, and you don't have to shift your hand around to type normally since ESDF is where your hand rests to type normally anyway. You also have the nub on F to give tactile awareness of your hand positioning. The people with a problem with ESDF are only because they're entrenched in WASD. WASD was fine for normal Quake, but as games demanded more and more keybinds, WASD was obsoleted.
Sincere question from a DFGV'er...
"I get a bit of a reach problem with shift and ctrl"
Why do you still use shift and ctrl? Why not move one MORE column to the right and use RDFG and... remap those commands since now you have even MORE keys to use when you use RDFG? That way your pinky never has to reach downwards towards Ctrl and Alt *AND* has more keys to use.
10:58 System Shock came out before Marathon on September 23rd 1994 and had an ASDX movement keys by default with QWE being used for leaning. System Shock was the first to an identical WASD movement scheme within FPS, even if it played more like an operating system than a game.
Honestly, the original System Shock is among the few games where the default controls are intuitive
I remember growing up with arrow keys for most games, but WASD was important right from the start for me in a specific context - multiplayer. WASD and IJKL were the default key-mappings for a lot of multi-player games; that, or WASD / arrow-keys. A game called _Comet Busters_ let you do four sets of keys for four players on one screen, which I tried with friends and family a few times - we did WASD, IJKL, arrow-keys, numpad number keys - but on a '90s keyboard plugged into a '90s computer, running '90s software... if you actually had four people using one keyboard it dropped a _lot_ of inputs. Which honestly just added to the entertainment value of it all - but after discovering four teenagers shouting and mashing the single keyboard of the office computer all together at the same time, my parents decided to ban that game forever.
...actually, thinking back - of all the things they ever 'banned', only a few of them truly disappeared off the hard drive and all the floppy disks. Comet Busters was one of them.
Yeah, I believe my first experience with WASD was multiplayer too. We used to play Bomberman two, three or even four on the same keyboard and it was hilarious.
4 people on one board sounds hella cramped.
The part that bugs me with really old games isn't the arrow keys. I dig those. Been using them since I was a toddler. STILL use them when playing non-shooty games.
It was the Ctrl/Alt/Shift keys being used for action buttons. They're in a weird position. Whenever a game let me change that, I'd remap the action keys to like, letter keys (my goto as a kid was HJKL, cuz it was closeish to the arrows. Nowadays I use ASDF instead)
how can you use ASDF, Arrow keys and a mouse? Have octopus hands? :D
@@marsovac That's the thing. I don't use the mouse when playing platformers/2D games in general. Unless they don't give me a choice. To be fair unless it's about aiming and shooting, I find the mouse to be more trouble than it is worth.
Arrow keys are vastly superior to using letters because you can feel where they are. I thought ganes developers had just gone mad remapping movement to WASD. When I try playing their games I can't move and have to map the controls properly to the arrow keys to do anything.
I recently found someone who uses ESDF instead of WASD. They make some good points that you have more access to keys around that config
I used ESDF for a time (after swapping from my own asz/mouse2 config, mouse2 was +forward), needed the extra left side for different levels of zoom binds and quick swap/shoot binds (quake1/fvf/tf, quickswap shoot was a quick alias to swap to another weapon, fire, then swap back, great for throwing a random grenade in the middle of rocket fights as an example or a quick poke with the LG throwing people off their game). Problem with it is, you need to turn your keyboard because the E key is more offset to the left to the W on most keyboards and its extremely uncomfortable/damaging to your hands.
ESDF was very popular with flight sim players which is where I got the idea to try it out in Quake. There was even a game where the default was ESDF but I've long since forgotten what it was.
I just do it because I learned touch typing. It's annoying how many games don't have key customization.
Yup, I use ESDF, the only downside I can think of is that the top row and middle row gets a bit more staggered, but doesn't bother me in the slightest. The access to more keybinds and the tactile feel of having the "knob" on F is really great. It's a bore to remap new games though, but worth it to me.
@@Cyhawkx ESDF is already the positioning you use for touch typing with your fingers resting on A, S, and F. Having played with ESDF since 1996, I have no idea what you're talking about with turning the keyboard and my hands are not damaged.
I never felt the need to use any other control scheme than mouse and arrow keys. It works just fine for me. Whenever a game came with WASD as default I always changed it back to arrow keys... ;-)
I think any discussion of the rise of mouselook would be incomplete without mentioning CyClones and Magic Carpet. Both of them were first-person games that used the keyboard for movement and the mouse for aiming before Marathon did.
As for when I switched to WASD, it was basically when I got tired of reconfiguring every game before I played it. I still like the arrow keys (the W key is offset in the wrong direction to be comfortable and it's difficult to remember what functions are assigned to E, R, F, etc.) but it just became a pain to re-assign the keys in every game I played, particularly since I wouldn't know which functions would be needed the most when I started playing.
Although, frankly, the time I finally switched to WASD also corresponds roughly to the time my time spent playing FPSs went into serious decline.
I remember System Shock in 1994 and Dark Forces 1995 allowing you to use keys to look up and down (in shocks case, also to lean) and being amazed at the difference it made in connecting to vertically designed levels. I also remember being annoyed at the club hand you'd have to wield on your keyboard to use these features. haha :)
There's a custom setup program you can use on Dark Forces that adds full mouselook.
With the ad -- 4X is a genre in itself, not describing multiplication. It was Originally from civilisation 2, explore expand exploit exterminate.
And the fact that WASD is often hardcoded and that switching mouse buttons creates further issues, such as whether the buttons should only be switched in-game (assuming it's allowed) or they should be switched by the OS, just leads of even us lefties using WASD for better or worse.
I remember using WASD for movement in the original Wizardry which released in 1980 (I would have played it somewhat later). Edit: apparently W was forward, A and D would turn and there was no backwards.
Still one of the best games ever made. It has used WAD since the original release.
I guess you could say that wasd had finally reached the Threshold needed to become solidified as the mainstay..
I do still sometimes use arrow keys when asked to assign buttons to directions, but if a game defaults to WASD, I will use it. There have been a few edge cases where I have had to assign two clusters of arrow keys to control the movement of two different things, though, and it's actually surprising how many clusters of keys can be made to work as arrow keys if you start looking. There's WASD, there's the arrow keys, but IJKL also works. You can also use Home, End, Delete, and Page Down as set of arrow keys, if you don't like your hand hanging off the edge of the keyboard but are used to having your hand over that cluster. Finally, there's the Numeric Keypad, which I feel is a very overlooked option that has a lot of potential...you could easily map 8 directions on there, and map your action buttons to several nearby keys. I'm kind of surprised that one didn't take off, it seems like it would be perfect for movement. Maybe it's just that it uses too many keys for movement and everyone likes the compact layout.
There are many games that default to numb pad. Typically games with eight-way movement. Many DOS sharware games and rogue-likes, the ones that use it instead or in conjugation with vi-keys.
Another oddity - unique AFAIK: The first F1GP game by Geoff Crammond. Accelerate with A and Z (or Y if you are German), steer with , and . Shift gears with space (upshift A+space, downshift Z+space). If I were to race with keyboard these days, I would probably still map keys to this combo, if possible. (Shifting up with S and down with X works well, too.)
That control setup is seared into my brain! I have no idea how many hundreds of hours I sank into F1GP and GP2 in particular
I am left handed and used arrow keys a lot in NFS HP2 and GTA 3 during my childhood but then I slowly started to use WASD and my reflexes improved like crazy. I was so much better in racing and missions and since then I always used WASD over arrow keys. And then I started playing Call of Duty games and Far Cry and it was settled.... WASD was the new way to play
Try pl;'. It's like wasd but for the left hand. I found it works not only much better than arrow keys, but also better than wasd because there's even more keys around that keyboard area
In late '90s I had to literally re-learn playing using WASD, because using cursor keys felt natural and mouse was a fairly fresh thing in shooters. Quake was the game that made keyboard+mouse combo a standard. And even in System Shock 2 from 1999 you had to reassign keys to WASD to be able to strafe because strafing wasn't a common thing either and moving left or right was placed in the bottom row by default.
I prefered the numpad 4862 set up back in the day I found my hand cramped more if I used the arrows. It's maybe due to fingers needing to be more naturally extended with the numpad than clutched with the arrows.
I always found the arrow keys to be rather awkwardly positioned in general. Like the designers didn't expect anybody to use them regularly.
I would always, when possible, configure the side arrows as strife and would use the mouse to turn. It made for a much more agile mouvement. The up and down arrows would be for forward/backward or forward/crouch depending on the game. The shareware games like Wolfenstein3D where the first to offer configurable keys. At least it was my impression at the time.
I never stopped using the arrows, it's only a problem for certain kept combos, but far better for repetitive stress prevention because you can rest your wrists on a pad.
Yes WASD is a broken control scheme absolutely pointless. Arrow keys for life
I use arrows and mouse.
My standard control for first person games is:
Mouse Move: Look
Mouse Right: Primary action
Mouse Left: Secondary action
Arrows: Move
Numpad 0: Crouch/sneak
Numpad Decimal: Use
Right Shift: Run
Right CTRL: Jump
End: Inventory
Left handers need not apply. Cursors FTW!
Devs who make WASD only games should get in the sea
Twenty years ago I met a pro gamer and WASD is the LAST thing he would use (not common then). I won't tell you what he taught me, other than say that even the mouse is radical. I took it on (at it took a long time to retrain my brain) and ABSOLUELY SMASHED all my rivals for what was previously a mediocre player. I DESPISE WASD and shake my head at it's perverse use everywhere!
The real question is why haven't we all adopted HJKL yet?
Chaotic evil
WASD is only used for first person shooters. Platformers are usually played with arrow-keys.
It's so unfortunate WASD became the gaming cluster over ESDF, that extra row of keys to the left of your hand is a real game changer
I got this keyboard with 6 macro keys to the left of the Ctrl, Shift, Tab. BY ALL THAT IS HOLY THAT IS SUCH A HORRIBLE CONCEPT. It took me less than one day to rip off those keys.
I can imagine having that nightmare BETWEEN the movement and Shift. No siree, I ain't having none of that trash.
@@MauricioOsuna-et8et 🤦 let me explain why youre comparing apples to oranges.
The problem with the macro buttons is in order to reach the macro buttons you have to reach over the extra wide shift caps lock tab etc. playing with ESDF the wide buttons are the ones that you would have to reach for and the extra width helps make hitting them way easier.
You're probably talking about a razer black widow or Corsair K95 which are the worst offenders, not only do they make the edge keys extra extra wide they also put like a 5mm gap between them and the macro keys meaning you're looking at between 2 and 3 full keys of "dead space" between the keys that you don't have to reach over playing ESDF
Also most people move the whole control cluster over one row to the right and add less used functions like target calling, weapon swap, interact, map, comms etc. for example you're no longer reaching for shift to sprint you're reaching for Z or A for sprint
@@austinftwXD Exactly, the damn Corsair K95! So it IS known for the horrible layout?
Also, it's not that I ever once tried to use the macro keys, no no no, they get "in the way" being "out of the way" when I DON'T WANT TO USE THEM. I honestly have no idea what application they could have, other than giving me a full-blown panic attack.
Though I can see the point of having more of the keyboard accessible with the pinky and pointer. Why not go full gigahand and use TFGH? 😂
@@MauricioOsuna-et8et 🤔 TFGH puts your hands too close together while ESDF puts your index finger on the F key with the little homerow indicator, which can be kind of handy if you lose your movement cluster.
I was honestly baffled when I saw how you used the arrow keys!
I stuck with arrow keys for a long, long time, but I always used them with my left hand (with the right hand on the mouse), and that was before I learned about strafe keys from my brother.
I would typically press anything to the left of the arrow keys (ctrl, shift, return, even backspace, alt, #, or /) with my pinky. Using the left hand, the num pad is quite easy to reach so that was heavily utilised as well. Very useful for accessing the higher numbered weapons or skills.
A common annoyance was when a game didn't treat the numpad as a first class citizen, but then game developers to this day have a special ability of botching their HID support which should be a solved problem at this point - except if you have more than 5 mouse buttons, then abandon all hope...
The main cause for me switching to WASD was changing my desk. My current desk has a slide out panel for the keyboard and mouse and it's too narrow to hold my keyboard in a natural position for using the arrow-keys. If not for that, I'd probably still be using arrow keys to this day.
I grew up with arrow keys completely oblivious to the fact WASD or other control layouts existed, to the point when I first heard out about them I was utterly confused. But so was everyone I knew IRL lol. I still continue to use the arrow keys if possible as it's what I'm most used to, but to compensate for an otherwise weird layout; despite being right-handed myself, I learned how to use the mouse left-handed. If there's any instance where I can't use arrow keys but I can still rebind, I prefer IJKL as it's close enough: I just prefer movement with my right hand. If there's any instance where I can't rebind at all... well, I'm not gonna play that game.
So much to love here. Fascinating insight into the history I never knew, banging Roxette track, and lovely little reference to Mr Robertson. Not sure why it's become trendy to hate on AVGN though.
I never used WASD. I do not like the W being askew, it feels weird. When mouselook became a thing I did my own thing using the numpad and all the neighbouring keys as support.
TBH this is why I got a nightmarish ortholinear keyboard with a wacky as hell layout, I can't stand how keys are staggered normally, even just normal typing. Because of that I actually use... SDFC of all things. There's a whole row of keys underneath that (there's no spacebar, just lots of 1u keys, one of which happens to be space)
I remeber that most games in the '80 on commodore used "A" for up "and "Z" (German "X") for down. I am not sure anymore about left and right. I think it was "O" and "P". But it were keys in the top line of the letters on the keyboard. The reason is easy: Guys with small hands can reach the space bar with the left hand thumb fine while guys with large hands can press with with the rigth hand side thumb fine.
I grew up with WASD as "the Player 2 controls". While I've mostly gotten used to their new place as the primary movement keys, there's still a bit of weirdness there that I can't totally shake.
I have no idea how you find holding QA comfortable! Also, ESDF is an amazing idea, it opens up new keys to press on the left, I wish I'd heard of that earlier!
Arrow Keys Users: "I am the best"
WASD Users: "You're a relic of a bygone era."
ESDF Users: _"You are weak, unoptimized, a shadow of what you could be."_
.....
RDFG Users: _>insane, borderline daemonic maniacal laughter
Um, ok...
IJKL begs to differ!
Numpad users: I AM GOD
@@oxoboo lmao! We know whats right.
Keyboard players:
"I paid for a whole keyboard, I'm going to USE the whole keyboard."
Aztec on the Apple II was the first time I played with WASD. Made playing Dark Castle and FPS games easier later on.
It would be interesting to discuss when WASD became the standard for non-FPS games as well, like it didn't come to building and strategy games until much later
A lot of 2D platformers are still expecting that you'll want to use arrow keys! I certainly prefer it that way, but obviously, WASD is better whenever you're using the mouse.
PC players: Uh I can't handle how shifted and unaligned the WASD keys. If only there was a way for the ARROW keys to be viable without giving up the mouse pointer.
Laptop players: _laughs menecingly_
As games introduced things like skills and magic, I adopted a "ESDF" instead of WASD. This frees up keys to left, so I can use WQAZ and sometimes even XCV for skills and magic spells. I can still use shift for sprint and ctrl to crouch. I've even experimented with RDFG, but then I get a bit of a reach problem with shift and ctrl, but I do actually use it for some games that have lots of skills and magic spells that are mappable to keys.
I would think that RDFG would be stretching a bit far, if you really need access to all those keys though I could potentially see DXCV working but I haven't tried it myself at all. I still use WASD since I don't play many games that need that many buttons and have a mouse with 2 extra buttons if I need them for something.
Sincere question from a DFGV'er...
"I get a bit of a reach problem with shift and ctrl"
Why do you still use shift and ctrl? Why don't you... remap those commands since now you have even MORE keys to use when you use RDFG?
I prefer FV instead of RF for fwd/back because I find Home Row to be the natural resting place instead, but that's just personal preference, there's no quantifiably better config in that regard.
The original system Shock used WAXD but did not have mouselook. It also had Q and E for leaning but for people not ready for its strange controls you could still use cursor keys. While it did not have mouselook, you were expected to use the mouse to aim the mouse cursor for world interactions and to target enemies. It was not too far from what we'd think of as standard today but back then for dos it was a very strange beast.
Are you sure it was WAXD? Was not it SAXD (Or ASDX)? - cos SXAD is what I use to this day and I believe I got it from System Shock.
This episode was pure nostalgia for me, from the games to She's Got the Look by Roxette.
Quake was my first WASD / Mouse game... What a Learning curve that was, but picked it pretty quickly. I was working at an Internet Cafe at the time and we used to play LAN games when the shop was quiet or we would schedule time after shift. Then we started to advertise Tournaments for fun where Customers could come and join in for a small price. Those were Awesome days. Before then it was either ASD / ZXC or (Left)-Shift/CTRL/ALT and the Arrow keys. I don't recall ever using the keys on the Right.
Others may have switched to WASD, but I didn't. I use LCtrl, LAlt, A and Z for directional motion, with S for jump and X for crouch. I've always used this, and could never get used to WASD, as your fingers arch over the keys with that, but with my setup, your wrist rests directly on the table for extra comfort.
Another thing I remember from Quake that kind of forced top players to switch to WASD or at least some combination of keys on the main layout was that we had to use pretty complex macros for communication since network connections weren't fast enough for voice comms to be used anywhere other than LAN. So we had these multi-level keybinds that would identify things like "I'm in" or "Guarding" or "Enemy" and then a secondary set to identify Quad, Penta, Mega, and all the different rooms on DM3. It took using keybinds all around the movement keys to work.
I'm left-handed and my preferred method of movement (bearing in mind that I first touched a computer in 2011), is arrow keys on a 96% keyboard. It gives me easy access to a bunch of keys I can map my controls to.
One year, my office settled on “Descent” (maybe Descent II) for deathmatces. It offered six angles of rotation and provided for key mapping. Everyone had their own setup. If you ever sat down at someone else’s computer, you found yourself flailing about like a blind epileptic.
Since I'm left handed, I still use arrow keys. The placement of my hands are more comfortable in that position instead of using WASD, and there's generally more room for my fingers. I use the numpad if a game requires extra binding like interact keys or sprint. INS 0 makes for a great sprint button, END 1 is my interact key, and DEL . is usually my crouch button.
As someone who grew up *with* gaming (born in 1973, so I've played on every system *as* they came out. Gaming grew up as I did) I can tell you, when games started allowing rebinding, using keys on the left for the left hand became popular.
But the moment mouse became *needed* because verticality was an issue, the arrow keys became extremely disused.
Omg I remember playing older games with my cousins using directional keys. I was always curious as to why it changed from that but never really second guessed it because I ended up playing on console as I got a bit older.
Doom is fully 3D, all calculations happen in a 3D space and there are X, Y and Z axis. The limitations of not being able to look up and down and not being able to build rooms on top of rooms are artificial limitations added to the engine to speed up the software render process, as there are a lot of cases it doesn't have to consider and a lot of things it doesn't have to calculate (e.g. the Z axis is ignored for collision detection of enemies or when calculating blast radius to speed up calculation but you could simply add this to the engine and nothing else would break if you do). If I tell you that you are only allowed to draw with 16 colors, your monitor is still true color, it won't become EGA just because of this artificial limitation. Doom is 3D, it just sets some rules that limit what you can do in that 3D space and ignores one dimension for certain calculations. See also th-cam.com/video/ZYGJQqhMN1U/w-d-xo.html
I actually found good success in the early WASD+mouse days using a very similar method but with the left hand on the number pad and right hand on mouse as normal. The 8456 was the WASD, the ENTER was the spacebar, the top row would be like 1234 hotkeys. I found that all those buttons being close and aligned allowed me to hit them quickly and precisely. The problem is most games didn't give me complete remapping control, so I could only do it on a few games. In the end it was just more practical to go WASD like everybody else.
What I can't believe is that there are still strategy games that use the arrow keys to move the camera. So you are supposed to move your left hand over the whole keyboard to move the camera, and move it back across once you need to hit a hotkey? Dafuq.
As a lefty I do like a righty being inconvenienced by their handedness. 😂
When i was 5/6 i used the QAOP To play zx spectrum+2 games, space bar to fire. Used to be the way to play most games if no joystick.
It wasn’t until the World Of Warcraft era that I began using this configuration, the main reason was because of how you had to start keybinding everything . This layout made that so much easier.
There was a 3d game that came out in 1992, which had WASD control along with X. That game was Ultima: Underworld. The specific controls are:
W: Sprint forward.
A: Turn left.
D: Turn right.
S: Walk forward.
X: Walk backward.