Experimenting with control schemes

[Baratus]

Felt like giving myself an interesting challenge and came up with an almost one-handed mouse control scheme for Doom and Doom II. It goes like this:

 

-Unbind WASD.

-Freelook turned off.

-Set MOUSE3 to move you forward.

-Set MOUSE2 to strafe.

 

It definitely made things interesting as it changed the way I played, and I started to get used to this control scheme after a while, though it made things a tiny more difficult and restricted my movement. It got me thinking about how varied people's control schemes can be.

 

Does anyone else change control schemes very often for either increased comfort or challenge? Do you stick to a single control scheme for all situations or does it differ between different games? Do you prefer WASD or ESDF? I've stuck with WASD for many years and I've barely ever experimented with my key bindings until now.

 

If you're curious, I use WASD for movement, E to Interact, Spacebar for Jump, Ctrl for Crouch, Shift for Use Item, and X and C to scroll back and forth between items.

[Jimmy]

I ESDF these days. Made the change-over because my A key kept sticking.

 

Then the S key kept sticking.

 

Then I got a new keyboard. Then I didn't switch back to WASD. :V

[MFG38]

I tried playing Hexen left-handed once - movement keys were bound to IJKL. Lasted a whole 2 minutes before switching back to my usual WASD setup.

[Grazza]

Almost any set-up will do fine if you are not bothering with strafe-50. Once you are, some thought and experimentation are needed.

 

I've been using the set-up described here for over 15 years.

mouse+keyboard, with WASD and space for "use". All pretty standard there. I use the right mouse button for strafe on, and have (more unusually) Ctrl for turn left and Alt for turn right (both only used for strafe-50). I disabled the Windows key, which would otherwise be a problem.

I've recently got a swanky new keyboard, on which Alt is a little harder to press with my thumb (there's a tendency to hit the space bar instead), but Ctrl is easier to press with my little finger. I expect I'll adapt to the former and so become less "one-way-facing" (I pretty much always strafe-run to the right and very rarely to the left). But old habits die hard.
 

[CorianderCastor]

That set-up would probably be fun with Wolf 3-D.

 

I'm always tinkering with my controls and using non-standard input devices. I think Hover Tank 3-D works quite well with a fight stick, for example. I've even tried game pad and mouse, not bad, but keyboard has more buttons. Not to mention that sometimes analog control is not what you want. Ever played Doom with a cheap flight stick? I'm not used to flight sticks, so I personally find that rather difficult. Still fun. I even have a gaming keypad, most useful as a hot key device. So naturally not great for Doom. But with default settings it makes navigating the auto map rather easy, since there's a d-pad for your thumb. I even changed the dpi button on my mouse to the pause key.

 

My common Doom set-up?

W: "weapon 1"
E: +forward
R: "weapon 2"
A: "weapon 6"
S: +left
D: +back
F: +right
G: "weapon 7"
MOUSE1: +attack
MOUSE2: +use
MOUSE3: "weapon 5"
MWHEELUP: "weapon 3"
MWHEELDOWN: "weapon 4"

In games with Z-translation I prefer to use mouse 4 and 5 for those actions. I still need to figure out how to cope with fps inventory, hmm.

 

15 hours ago, Grazza said:

Almost any set-up will do fine if you are not bothering with strafe-50. Once you are, some thought and experimentation are needed.

 

Quoted for truth.

 

I have just thought of how to mod my set-up to maybe support SR50. Either mouse thumb buttons or use a and space for turning. Depends on where +strafe is assigned really.

[Killer5]

When I want to eat and play doom for some reason I use the following:

wasd

left shift - turn left

left ctrl - turn right

space - shoot

left alt - use

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

My usual setup is pretty "standard": WASD movement, mouse turning, left click to shoot, right click to jump or where not applicable strafe.  Space to open, shift to run, alt generally not used but is crouch where that's applicable.  For Heretic/Hexen I have Z and C set for scrolling artifacts and X to use them, and prefer the Witchaven scheme for look/flight keys (where looking is pgup = up, pgdn = down, home = center and flying is ins = up, del = down, and end = drop to ground)  Makes way more sense than the left is down right is up thing that Heretic/Hexen default to, if you ask me.

 

I tried a gun-trigger joystick with Doom once (no, not the Demon Destroyer, but a more traditional stick that had a trigger-style fire button on the grip).  As I recall it was a fun-feeling novelty but I ultimately didn't stick with it because I preferred the nice precision I got in turning with a mouse instead; the stick might've had some analog input to it but not enough for a fast 180.  I also experimented with Gravis Gamepad but felt that it was decent for Wolfenstein 3-D but too much of a pain for switching weapons in Doom where that became a lot more important, since you had the pad in both hands but still had to hit keyboard numbers to pick a weapon.

 

I've also on occasion (more due to mouse issues than out of experimentation) played some with an all-keyboard scheme with WASD as usual plus turning with the arrow keys.  If I was to adopt that fully I'd probably add binds to the up and down arrows as look up/look down where applicable and maybe shift it onto the numpad to put the surrounding keys to use somehow.

 

I still wonder if the default keyboard controls were intended to be played with both hands towards the right side of the keyboard.  It makes certain of the default binds like the strafe keys and the item use and jump keys in Heretic/Hexen make a lot more sense especially when you consider the traditional keyboards that didn't have the two extra keys getting in the way between the right alt and right ctrl.  When I played for the first time and with the default controls I just used the left hand on left shift/alt/ctrl and for the space bar like I was used to for other games like Commander Keen and what have you.  I think for Hexen I originally moved jumping to A or Z or something like that, I don't really remember exactly.  A for jump and Z for crouch is something I still use for certain "traditional style" all-keyboard configs though.

[BigBoy91]

Spoiler

Here's the control scheme I've been using in PrBoom+ to try and make strafe50 easier. A little cramped, I guess, but that's how I like it. Mouselook off. I use V for crouch and Space for jump in Heretic and Strife. Can't delete bindings in PrBoom+, which I find a little strange.

[seed]

11 hours ago, NerdyButLazy said:

Can't delete bindings in PrBoom+, which I find a little strange.

 

Suppose you use 2.5.1.4 or older then. That feature was only implemented in 2.5.1.5.

[Spie812]

If you're going for fucked up control schemes, it's probably hard to go much further than this beauty:

 

[BigBoy91]

On 1/4/2019 at 11:43 AM, Agent6 said:

Suppose you use 2.5.1.4 or older then. That feature was only implemented in 2.5.1.5.

Good to hear! I'm using the latest stable release. Looks like I'll be updating soon.

EDIT: Gave it a try and it ran poorly on my machine. Gonna wait until the stable release is ready.

Edited January 8, 2019 by NerdyButLazy : Didn't want to double post