Kagemaru_H

Maes said:

Try not loading a mouse driver by default with your autoxec/config.sys and then we're talking :-p

For me mouse control was optional and a curiosity, at best, because I didn't think of the WASD configuration in time, and arrows + mouse without novert = shit :-p

That's the default controls for Boom.

Also, there's really no need for "Ninja ALT skillz" for circle strafing because by default you can strafe using "," and ".", but it's very awkward. If anything, the turning and strafing should be swapped (Left/Right arrows to Strafe and </> to turn, and Autorun enabled and you have a decent control)

But because I'm so used to it, I set up WASD for movement and strafing, enabled the mouse, disabled vertical movement, constantly hold Shift to run, either LMB or CTRL to fire and either Space or RMB to open doors and hit switches.

I would set it up like this on Skulltag, but I know some WADs require Altfire, Invuse, and jumping in ZDoom/ST, so I keep my setup just the way I like it.

Kagemaru_H said:

That's the default controls for Boom.

... which were as good as "just keyboard" if you didn't load a mouse driver by default. I only tried it once or twice back in the day, to discover that it was awkward and unusable (because I tried to use arrows in the default config + mouse at the same time without novert, which sucked).

Some things are just like Counter Strike: you either get hooked, or the first time you get killed and see there is no respawning you mutter to yourself "I don't see what's the big deal with this shitty game" and move on to something else :-p

Kagemaru_H said:

Also, there's really no need for "Ninja ALT skillz" for circle strafing because by default you can strafe using "," and ".", but it's very awkward.

Self-contraddicting phrase right there.

Kagemaru_H said:

If anything, the turning and strafing should be swapped (Left/Right arrows to Strafe and </> to turn, and Autorun enabled and you have a decent control)

With time, playing with my pinky finger constantly pressed on Left Shift and alternating between normal + alt movement became second nature, and the fixed-speed turning rate also became a matter of habit. Remember, we're talking vanilla Doom here, without even the simple convenience of an on-demand autorun like Chocolate doom.

For history's sake, until 2003-2004 I still played Doom with the default keyboard controls, including finishing Absolution and Hell Revealed. However, I used WASD + mouse for all other FPS but only recently I started using the same controls for Doom. I still don't know why I kept this dichotomy...the power of constancy, I guess.

Kagemaru_H said:

But because I'm so used to it, I set up WASD for movement and strafing, enabled the mouse, disabled vertical movement, constantly hold Shift to run, either LMB or CTRL to fire and either Space or RMB to open doors and hit switches.

I'd give you some cred if you actually did this back then in 1993 or 1994, which is when I'm talking about my issues with the mouse "controls" (yeah, I really couldn't take them seriously until I first saw the WASD configuration in action, much, much later).

With DOS, even mouse support was optional and I only enabled it for a few games and applications that actually needed it/benefitted from it. For me, Doom was a game that could be played with the mouse, too, as with a joystick or gamepad, only that there was no apparent advantage in doing so with the default control mappings. Don't forget that WASD with purely directional control wasn't introduced as "standard" until what, Quake 3? even if some people here claim to have single-handedly invented it back in 1993.

DuckReconMajor said:

Maybe if you'd read what I quoted you'd see that I was just talking about moving about on The Chasm's narrow walkways.

Chasm's walkways are much easier with mouse turning than without. Gamepads are much worse for anything that requires sensitive controls and keyboard alone is clumsy.