WASD
July 19, 2018 6:13 AM   Subscribe

A new revelation has been sending shockwaves through the games journalism community. PC Gamer writer Wes Fenlon realizes he's been WASD-ing wrong his whole life.
posted by backseatpilot (143 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
After a few tries, I realized the natural orientation was simply shifting over to the left, and resting on A/S/D. The middle finger moves up to press W when needed.

Duh. In addition to giving your pinky easy access to both Shift and Ctrl, this also allows the thumb to rest naturally on the space bar.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:18 AM on July 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


...I guess that his pinky-on-A approach does too, but seriously. I'm as startled as anyone else that a gaming journalist is just figuring this out.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:19 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


What the hell? I can’t even....what??
posted by lazaruslong at 6:22 AM on July 19, 2018 [7 favorites]



I imagine stuff like this is far more common that most people think. People often learn in different ways and they tend to form habits. I would also think that people have different mobility needs and so this also changes up how they game and/or interact with controllers/peripherals.

I love how upset and idiosyncratic people become over things like this. I'm getting close to 40 and I honestly don't care any more. Play how you want to play. If that means you're using a crock pot to play Dark Souls, then do you my friend, do you.
posted by Fizz at 6:23 AM on July 19, 2018 [41 favorites]


I play as he does (did?). It's not that awkward, provided you rebind actions away from left ctrl.

Most of the games I played growing up were RPGs or games like Starcraft. With a solid typing background it just felt natural.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 6:24 AM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Wow, this is nuts. The suggestion that it has anything to do with touch-typing and arrow-key movement doesn't hold water, though, because all the OG WASDers also came up the same way. Some of us even learned to type on manual typewriters!

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:27 AM on July 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


left control should be pressed with the side of the palm, so you can press shift or tab with the pinky at the same time. This effectively gives you a sixth finger on the keyboard, and allows you to easily transition into shift-ctrl-key combinations.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:27 AM on July 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Plus, outside of competitive shooters any difference in performance is trivial. When your primary opponent is a computer learning to game the AI is by far the winning strategy.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 6:27 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I learned a long time ago that if the game control mappings offer a strafe left / strafe right binding on a single key as opposed to a modifier, it’s best to unbind turn left and right from A and D immediately and replace them with strafe.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:29 AM on July 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


This is like when I discovered left handed guitarists who play right handed, leaving their stronger hand on the fretboard, and suddenly wished I'd thought to learn on a left handed guitar.

Still, while I use the 'normal' WASD finger layout, I use right mouse to move forwards and w to jump, so I'm still a weirdo.
posted by opsin at 6:29 AM on July 19, 2018


Who shows people how to do this? I mean, the Wes version is the one I use whenever I play a PC game which is admittedly rarely and to me the home key thing makes sense.
posted by josher71 at 6:32 AM on July 19, 2018


left handed guitarists who play right handed

it me
posted by uncleozzy at 6:32 AM on July 19, 2018


I'm a lefty who plays with the mouse on the left of the keyboard so I remap the game controls of every game to put the directional keys on the actual arrow keys where they belong.
posted by octothorpe at 6:33 AM on July 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


> I use right mouse to move forwards

What do you map alternate fire to?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:34 AM on July 19, 2018


I think the bigger story here, spinning off the whole Cuphead thing, is that there's a movement of primarily dudebros attempting to gatekeep both gaming and gaming journalism based on how you play the twitchiest of twitch mechanics.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 6:36 AM on July 19, 2018 [13 favorites]


Remap to QWES or GTFO.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:36 AM on July 19, 2018


I have always played the same way as he did, pinky on A. But I spent much of my time playing MMOs or team-based games before voice chat was really a thing. So having my left hand already in a ready-to-type position just seemed more natural to me. I never had any trouble reaching keys I needed.
posted by xedrik at 6:42 AM on July 19, 2018


I play as he does (did?). It's not that awkward, provided you rebind actions away from left ctrl.

...and left shift. And capslock. And tab.
posted by Dysk at 6:48 AM on July 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


I've set up a gofundme and .org website to educate gamers on this affliction. You can get help. You are freaks, but you can be cured, you weird, weird people. Then we will never speak of this again.

Also Cuphead is a national treasure and will not Milkshake Duck us! They did a deal with the devil and are very sorry. You should play cuphead though, it's awesome.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:49 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


dudebros attempting to gatekeep

I kind of got a whiff of that too in some of the responses.

On the other hand, it's a little like learning some people wipe sitting up and some wipe standing down. Whichever way you do it, it seems so obvious that it's a surprise to learn that some people do it differently.

The correct, non-gatekeeping response is to have a long, tedious thread where everyone shares how they, individually, wipe wasd and to have some fun with it. Not to hound someone about wasding wrong.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:50 AM on July 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


I learned typing, to the extent that I did, on a manual typewriter in a real official touch typing class and wasd-ed with my ring finger on a.

Now I just use controllers for almost everything that isn't civ. Even if I'm using a laptop, that's in my lap, I grab a controller. For me anyhoo a controller does a better job of disappearing into my subconscious than mouse + keyboard does and I don't care about lost precision in singleplayer games.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:51 AM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I am constitutionally incapable of using WASD controls. If a game doesn't let me remap to the arrow keys, I have to abandon ship. I have tried getting used to it, but it is a very specific and permanent gap in my dexterity.

There is a game-within-a-game in Stardew Valley (an arcade game, Journey of the Prairie King) where you move with WASD and fire your weapon with the arrow keys. This is thoroughly backward to me, and I tried so hard to adjust. I just can't do it.

I'm left-handed, but I really can't do anything other than left hand on mouse, right hand on arrows.
posted by pemberkins at 6:51 AM on July 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


I am constitutionally incapable of using WASD controls. If a game doesn't let me remap to the arrow keys, I have to abandon ship. I have tried getting used to it, but it is a very specific and permanent gap in my dexterity.
[...]
I'm left-handed, but I really can't do anything other than left hand on mouse, right hand on arrows.


That makes sense to me. I'm right-handed and can't use arrow keys alongside a mouse, which seems analogous. Even if I were to get used to it, I think the contortion of having both hands crammed into the same little space at one edge of my desk would give me an injury pretty quick. Left-hand mousing and WASD would have the same problem, just at the other edge of the desk.
posted by Dysk at 6:55 AM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm left handed but it didn't occur to me to be able to use a mouse left handed in school. I don't think we were ever set up in a good way for me to move it over. Same with console game playing. Oh what could have been...
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:57 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Wait, what Cuphead thing?

A journalist who primarily covers the business end of the games industry recorded a video of himself playing Cuphead badly. The video went viral among gg folks using it to say, "see, people who write about games are not qualified to do so."
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 6:59 AM on July 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm left handed but it didn't occur to me to be able to use a mouse left handed in school.

It makes it incredibly easy to see if someone else has used my desk. Everyone moves the mouse.

Weirdly enough, I am perfectly happy mousing with either hand in most contexts - I'm just a bit clumsier with my right hand, so it's not great for gaming.
posted by pemberkins at 7:00 AM on July 19, 2018


Look, it's not *that* important as long as we're all agreed that WASD-mouse is how nature intended us to play first-person shooters, and that console controllers are shite in comparison.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:01 AM on July 19, 2018 [14 favorites]


Remap to QWES or GTFO.

I think I prefer your first option, the O key is too far from the G, T and F keys for me to comfortably use that other one.
posted by DiscountDeity at 7:10 AM on July 19, 2018 [36 favorites]


Hold onto your butts.

I put my pinky on the A key too. Why? Because I use ESDF, not WASD! ESDF puts Q, A, Z, and Left-Shift within easy reach of the left pinky, while WASD only lets the left pinky reach Tab, Caps Lock, and Left Shift. Caps Lock is useless in gaming, Tab is a rarely used key (often brings up a map), and ESDF also has access to Left Shift.

Even better, ESDF puts the raised nub of the F key underneath the left index finger, providing no-look confidence that the left hand is in the correct keyboard position.
posted by LightStruk at 7:12 AM on July 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


WAXD checking in.
posted by Hatashran at 7:13 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


The suggestion that it has anything to do with touch-typing and arrow-key movement doesn't hold water

But that's how he explains it himself.
posted by Pendragon at 7:13 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm a lefty who plays with the mouse on the left of the keyboard so I remap the game controls of every game to put the directional keys on the actual arrow keys where they belong.

Whenever I hear something about WASD I am momentarily extremely confused, because the arrow keys are so perfect. Then I remember that most people aren't left-handed.

Also, don't move my mouse. Deal with it. I have to live in your right-handed world 99% of the time, you can live in my left-handed one for the time it takes you to order Chinese food.
posted by Automocar at 7:18 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


80s kids remember IJKM games. IJKL was a huge innovation. Meanwhile the Unix world (and therefore Rogue/Nethack) gave us HJKL. Also IBM PC keyboards in the era with number pad arrows but not a dedicated set of arrow keys.

The pinky and ring finger are not fully independent in most people. It makes no sense to use both if you don't have to.
posted by Nelson at 7:20 AM on July 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


I play using my feet on the num pad and my tongue on a track ball mouse because of my background in circus performance. I’m so sick of having to deal with a world full of people who aren’t classically trained contortionists.
posted by vocivi at 7:24 AM on July 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


Wait, what Cuphead thing?

A journalist who primarily covers the business end of the games industry recorded a video of himself playing Cuphead badly. The video went viral among gg folks using it to say, "see, people who write about games are not qualified to do so."


I made a post about it back when it happened.
posted by Fizz at 7:25 AM on July 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


Left arrow, right arrow, space to fire / jump
posted by turkeybrain at 7:26 AM on July 19, 2018


Mousewheel to fire...
posted by Artw at 7:28 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


I absolutely love this because as a lifelong mouse-and-keyboard guy my brain screams at the idea of not doing the standard WASD formation, but it's also, yes, so so so arbitrary so why wouldn't people do it another way? There's literally nothing on the keyboard that tells you what keys you ought to use.

But I do have pretty underwhelming pinkies so the standard posture works well for me.

If that means you're using a crock pot to play Dark Souls, then do you my friend, do you.

No, no, you're thinking of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
posted by cortex at 7:29 AM on July 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


I play using my feet on the num pad and my tongue on a track ball mouse

Fine; what I really do is strip all the switches and rollers out of a keyboard and mouse and shove them all up my ass and play games with carefully controlled peristalsis and kegel twitches.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:29 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Some long ago game had space as "use" and right-mouse as jump, and I've had to re-map every game ever since.
posted by Cyrano at 7:32 AM on July 19, 2018


Boy, I can’t wait until we can play games with our minds and then we can accuse those who play “wrong” of thoughtcrime
posted by nubs at 7:33 AM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I guess I should mention the bit of weirdness I have in my preferred mouse/WASD control scheme: I don't actually use a mouse. I use a trackball (one of these - it was nothing like as expensive as £50(!!) when I got mine). Yes, even (in fact especially) for FPS. Things insisting on having a middle mouse button or scrollwheel where those functions can't be rebound (surprisingly common! You can rebind all your keys in mots games, but can I bind weapon up/down to the back/forward keys on my trackball instead of the wheel? Can I fuck...) is the bane of my gaming existence.

WASD only lets the left pinky reach Tab, Caps Lock, and Left Shift. Caps Lock is useless in gaming, Tab is a rarely used key (often brings up a map), and ESDF also has access to Left Shift.

Caps lock is not that uncommon for a run or crouch toggle (rather than momentary) and I note a conspicuous absence of Left Ctrl in your list - it is totally accessible with the pinky from a WASD position.
posted by Dysk at 7:34 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Butterflies!
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:34 AM on July 19, 2018


I put my pinky on the A key too. Why? Because I use ESDF, not WASD!

In the mid-90s, before things solidified (calcified?), I recall a quite sizeable minority of Quake TF players who used ESDF over WASD. I never used it, because it was too much rebinding for me to bother with, but I do find the arguments in its favour pretty compelling.

A journalist who primarily covers the business end of the games industry recorded a video of himself playing Cuphead badly. The video went viral among gg folks using it to say, "see, people who write about games are not qualified to do so."

See also: Polygon demoing Doom 2016. Though at least that non-scandal tangentially gifted us the brilliance that was Game Ogre. (All of the Game Ogre intros use clips from the "infamous" Polygon Doom Video.)

Also Cuphead is a national treasure and will not Milkshake Duck us!

Ehhhhhhhhh... borderline case, there.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:45 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


For most games I put my middle finger on W, but for the Arkham games I learned to use my ring finger, because R T Y are used as combo keys, and it's actually painful to hit W and Y at the same time otherwise.
posted by zompist at 7:48 AM on July 19, 2018


> I-Write-Essays:
"left control should be pressed with the side of the palm, so you can press shift or tab with the pinky at the same time. This effectively gives you a sixth finger on the keyboard, and allows you to easily transition into shift-ctrl-key combinations."
Have you ever considered joining Cirque du Soleil?

Seriously though - my friend uses some keys, it might just be ESDF. I tried to find a transcript of the chat but couldn't... I think his logic was it's natural with ESDF to have "E" be the default since the ring finger is longer, it will always be resting on E, easier than if you were on WASD due to how the keys are spread. I can feel the difference slightly, but not enough to unlearn WASD for me.

I'm sure some weirdo vim users probably just use their homerow keys cuz they be weird like that. But efficient.
posted by symbioid at 7:49 AM on July 19, 2018


I think the bigger story here, spinning off the whole Cuphead thing, is that there's a movement of primarily dudebros attempting to gatekeep both gaming and gaming journalism based on how you play the twitchiest of twitch mechanics.

I think that’s beyond "Dog Bites Man" territory and into "Dog Barks At Something".
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:49 AM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


This makes me think of how guitar chords work the same way. The difference between my brother's F major and mine holds like 75% of the difference between our melodic play styles.

Also, I'm interested to know how this guy would play Wolfenstein or Doom.

Edit: Oh, he goes on to investigate this. Heck, that's good journalism!
posted by es_de_bah at 7:52 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


Meh. I wired an old Atari 2600 joystick to a USB cable. If a game requires more than one button and eight directions to play, it's not worth it.
posted by hanov3r at 7:59 AM on July 19, 2018


I used to use ESDF as well, back when I played World of Warcraft, because it's hard to fit 60-70 keybinds onto the left side of the keyboard even when you make full use of all the modifier keys, but I went back to WASD after I quit. However, being able to use all the modifier keys is still critical for games like Starcraft where you use them to quickly set and modify control groups.

And in Overwatch, having finger independence on your shift ability and crouching is really important, so you can spam crouch up and down to make it harder for snipers to hit headshots on you. If you use pinky for that, you can't use your shift ability at the same time.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:00 AM on July 19, 2018


The big differentiator for me was using w or ⬆ (up arrow) as pitch down instead of pitch up in flight sims, descent, and TIE fighter.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:01 AM on July 19, 2018


Among the first PC games I played were Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 so I got stuck inverting my Y axis and it's been impossible to shake, which enrages some people. I can WASDer around just fine though.
posted by ODiV at 8:05 AM on July 19, 2018


John Scalzi recently tweeted about his, er, unorthodox control scheme in which forward and backward walking, weapon selection, and secondary weapons are all on mouse buttons, and everything else is on the numpad.

I'm really not much of a gamer, but he actually makes a pretty compelling argument for it and I'd give it a go if I had a sufficiently fancy mouse.
posted by metaBugs at 8:07 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I just tried to see which fingers i use on which keys and now everything feels wrong and I can't remember how I usually do it, thanks metafilter now I can't play games at all.
posted by The otter lady at 8:08 AM on July 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Using w or ⬆ (up arrow) as pitch down makes perfect sense to me, though. That maps to how a plane's control stick actually works - pushing forward pushes the nose down, and the plane dives. I had learned that dinking around at the Air and Space Museum (they used to have a bunch of old Link trainers for kids to 'fly' in) long before I played my first real flight sim (Hellcat Ace, by Sid 'Civilization' Meier). It's still the control scheme I expect when I fire up a flight sim, and I'll remap to that in a hot minute if I have to.
posted by hanov3r at 8:12 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Back before WASD was a standard, I played Doom with my right hand on the arrow keys, but used my _left_ hand to hit Ctrl and Space. (I also rarely used Alt/Strafe, because I didn't get it. Right and left were for turning.)
posted by SansPoint at 8:12 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


If a game requires more than one button and eight directions to play, it's not worth it.

How do you walk slowly?
posted by biffa at 8:16 AM on July 19, 2018


But does he sit or stand?
posted by Splunge at 8:18 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


What do you map alternate fire to?

Either middle mouse or the thumb button on the left side of my mouse. If there's a melee option I need quickly I'll probably have alt fire on middle mouse and melee on the thumb button, but it all depends on what is available in game to be mapped.
posted by opsin at 8:22 AM on July 19, 2018


I use right mouse to move forwards and w to jump, so I'm still a weirdo.

For a long time (since the Quake days, get off my lawn) I used the scheme of: RMB forwards*, Z/X to strafe, A to move backwards (!). This way you get C to crouch and space to jump, S to use and D to reload. Any extra game functions can be assigned to the cluster of keys around these (QWERFV). The orphaned RMB functions go to LShift or LCtrl. This also makes it somewhat less awkward to use LAlt for voice chat.

* this makes it possible to minimally play the game using one hand, which is nice

I played a bajillion hours of Left 4 Dead 2 using this setup, but I've since relented and started using the default WASD controls in other games. Recently we Got The Gang Back Together and I played for the first time in a couple years, and I still had my weird controls configured. Conundrum: Do I stick with the setup I used for a thousand hours, or reset to defaults so I can WASD?

I opted for the latter. RIP ancient muscle memory.
posted by neckro23 at 8:22 AM on July 19, 2018


ESDF is pretty clever! I may have to see if I can break my WASD habit with that sometime. But I find my fingers in WASD position (ring finger on W) even when playing Diablo, which uses 1234 and occasionally Q or T.

And in Overwatch, having finger independence on your shift ability and crouching is really important, so you can spam crouch up and down to make it harder for snipers to hit headshots on you. If you use pinky for that, you can't use your shift ability at the same time.

When I played OW, I bound mouse button 4 to the shift-stuff. Some people can't handle some control configurations; I seriously dislike gaming with mice that don't have an extra couple of buttons.
posted by Foosnark at 8:24 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


The typical fingering of WASD also allows you to use Q & E more comfortably, while still pressing one of the other keys, for games that use those as additional movement or action keys.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:24 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Oh, so one of the things I really like about having RMB as move forwards is that you can still, on keyboards that max out at 3 buttons pressed at a time, use shift, strafe and forwards, and still be able to throw another key in there if you need to. It's probably not a problem that showed up often, but there has been the odd game where something wouldn't happen and I found out I was just pressing to many keys. The other thing is that my left middle finger just gets kind of tired holding down w to move the whole time.

I've used this since back in the Quake days when my brother decided it was the way to go, I think because of the ability to move forwards and turn while drinking or something.
posted by opsin at 8:27 AM on July 19, 2018


As a touch-typist, I don't know how other people don't use ESDF, which frustrates me a lot when games make it hard to modify such things. My keyboard even has fancy keycaps on the WASD, like anybody in their right mind should actually want to ever LOOK at their keyboard. I did actually start off years ago playing a lot of games with WASD from the home row position, but there are definitely games that made it obvious that this was not how I was supposed to be doing it; I think I switched when I started playing a lot of Minecraft.

The unfortunate thing about ESDF is that it generally commits you to remapping practically every key in the game. So like, WASD puts other stuff on Q and E, but then you move those things to W and R. And then you've displaced things that were on F and R. And so on.

What seems most ridiculous to me is that even on my fancy gaming keyboard, the WASD keys don't have any kind of tactile indication on them. I could do WASD if I didn't need to look at the keyboard to do it, but I'm sticking with ESDF as long as it's the F that gets the bump.
posted by Sequence at 8:30 AM on July 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


It's about ergonomics in game journalism.
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:33 AM on July 19, 2018 [14 favorites]


When I do games with WASD controls, I shift over, because my pinky is a full knuckle shorter than my ring finger and it's a hellish reach.

I'm not sure that actually helps, since I absolutely suck at keyboard controls. (Not that I'm much better with mouse or controller movement, which is why I mostly stick to hidden object and point-and-click adventure games.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:36 AM on July 19, 2018


I have two different hand configurations dependent on the game...
WASD only (the claw)
  • A: pinky
  • S: ring
  • W: middle
  • D: index

    Ctrl key and alternate
  • A: ring
  • S/W: middle
  • D: index

  • posted by Nanukthedog at 8:41 AM on July 19, 2018


    Among the first PC games I played were Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 so I got stuck inverting my Y axis and it's been impossible to shake, which enrages some people.

    One of the cooler little innovations in recent years is games asking you to look up during the tutorial level and then setting whatever direction you move your mouse/thumbstick to the positive Y-axis. So slick that I didn't even notice this was happening until I watched a video that called it out. (Of course, since it was a video, I can't actually search for it effectively to remember what the example games were. But it was probably from Game Maker's Toolkit.)

    Personally, I played flight sims (with a fancy Thrustmaster F-16 FLCS) and FPS games about equally in the mid-late 90s, so I got used to using a standard y-axis for 1:1/first order controls (FPS mouselook) and an inverted y-axis for second-order controls (airplane pitch). Occasionally, though, a game will mess with me by putting me on an airplane or something where I'd normally use an inverted y-axis but then the maneuvering actually happens on a flat 2D plane, where standard y-axis feels more natural. Bayonetta's Space Harrier sequences threw me for a loop that way.
    posted by tobascodagama at 8:45 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    One thing that I have done more recently and it seems to only be with Blizzard games is to map more than I'd normally map to my mouse.

    I have a Razer Naga, so I have so many bindings available and for games like Diablo III and/or Destiny 2, it just makes life so much easier to click instead of using default keyboard bindings. I still use WASD for movement and mouse for aiming, but everything else gets assigned a mouse button.
    posted by Fizz at 8:54 AM on July 19, 2018


    The unfortunate thing about ESDF is that it generally commits you to remapping practically every key in the game. So like, WASD puts other stuff on Q and E, but then you move those things to W and R. And then you've displaced things that were on F and R. And so on.

    I am a proper weirdo, so I use ESDF and I use a Dvorak keyboard layout. The remap-literally-every-key ritual has become standard every time I fire up a new keyboard-heavy game. And I stopped playing PUBG because it stopped consistently recognizing my keybindings after 1.0 came out.
    posted by egregious theorem at 9:01 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


    I don't like binding things to my mouse because I find it interferes with accuracy. I noticed this after spending a lot of time playing osu! on hard and insane using mouse-only. Some of the muscles used to click the mouse buttons are the same ones used to move the mouse. Besides reducing split-second accuracy, it also added a huge amount of hand strain. So now I try to minimize the number of things bound to the mouse.
    posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:03 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


    We don't have a good desktop gaming setup, so when I played Morrowind a few years ago I remapped everything to a USB controller. Roast me fam.
    posted by muddgirl at 9:13 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Some years ago I cut off the tip of my middle finger (ProTip: keep your fingers behind the straight edge you're using the guide the knife blade), and while it was healing I had to switch to the following configuration, which felt pretty natural:

    Pinky: A
    Ring: W/S
    Middle: hanging in space
    Index: D
    posted by The Tensor at 9:21 AM on July 19, 2018


    I do the shifting my fingers to the left, leaving:

    Pinky: L-Shift, L-Control
    Ring: A
    Middle: W, S
    Index: D

    Since Quake Team Fortress I've been in the habit of mapping R-mouse to jump and Space to alt-fire -- it made rocket jumping easier for me, and it stuck.
    posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:42 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    I learned at age 35 that I'd been tying my shoelaces backwards my whole life. But you know, at least I wasn't tying left and right shoes to each other, and I'm not a shoes journalist.
    posted by sfenders at 9:44 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    I like all of these dumb small differences that 'shock the world'. Play how you play, man.

    That said, if he stands while wiping or scrunches instead of folds or unders instead of overs his toilet paper...

    a lot of our differences are about poop.
    posted by graventy at 9:57 AM on July 19, 2018


    I came to games late in life and have always been frustrated by using my left hand for WASD. I am pretty dexterous with my left and use it for the mouse all the time. But for some reason WASD defeats me. I had no idea I could get a game to use the arrow keys. I don't know how to do this but I think it will be the figurative game-changer when I figure it out.
    posted by Ber at 9:58 AM on July 19, 2018


    I use to play Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2 using the 10-key to pilot and I was fairly good at it in multiplayer. I never used a joystick for flight sim games in the 90’s because I had one of those N64 joysticks, which didn’t work for any of the games for some reason, and my dad refused to buy a different joystick.
    posted by gucci mane at 9:59 AM on July 19, 2018


    I went to typing class, but I really couldn't fit typing conventions. I just use my pointer finger on my right to type on all the righthand keyboard, and I blew all the rest of my classmates in the water on typing exams. I think it might be because I have hypermobility in my fingerjoints, so it would have been painful for my right hand to rest and take up the same space and be crowded next to my lefthand.
    posted by yueliang at 10:03 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    This is totally how I WASD too, but the only game I've played on a PC in the last 20 years is an MMO. Honestly it never even occurred to me to shift my hand.

    (I also almost always use the numbers on the main keyboard rather than number pad, even for long numbers, so I guess I'm just a touch typing purist?)
    posted by kmz at 10:07 AM on July 19, 2018


    I mean, do what you like, but my hand is folding into a painful claw just thinking about how to pinky-A WASD. I’d probably need to do something like 3WEA.
    posted by rodlymight at 10:10 AM on July 19, 2018


    I can't use just my pointers to type but my thumb and pinky are also only used for Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Tab/Space.
    posted by Definitely Not Sean Spicer at 10:11 AM on July 19, 2018


    WASD is for amateurs. Hardcore gamers use:

    y u
    h j k l
    b n
    posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 10:15 AM on July 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


    But I find my fingers in WASD position (ring finger on W) even when playing Diablo, which uses 1234 and occasionally Q or T.

    Me too! And it's always like "why am I doing that?" and I relocate my fingers up to 1234, and then five fucking minutes later I'm back at WASD again.
    posted by cortex at 10:25 AM on July 19, 2018


    ut I find my fingers in WASD position (ring finger on W) even when playing Diablo, which uses 1234 and occasionally Q or T.

    Which is why I changed all the key bindings in Diablo. I’m not reaching all the way to 1 for a potion!
    posted by nubs at 10:28 AM on July 19, 2018


    What ever happened to the Foot Mouse? Solves most of these and many foot problems!
    posted by sammyo at 10:31 AM on July 19, 2018


    I'm not a gamer but If y'all ever break a finger and get a cast on your hand and can no longer WASD, my kid and I got ya' covered. Simone Giertz rated it a cry emoji and two heart emojis.
    posted by bondcliff at 10:38 AM on July 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


    What ever happened to the Foot Mouse?

    This was one of my dad's obsessions. Well, he actually wanted a foot trackball. We did kind of set him up with one of the big logitech ones from the 90s but it filled up with schmuchtz and cat hair so fast that the experiment did not last more than a few weeks.
    posted by bonehead at 10:38 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    > Dysk:
    "I am constitutionally incapable of using WASD controls. If a game doesn't let me remap to the arrow keys, I have to abandon ship. I have tried getting used to it, but it is a very specific and permanent gap in my dexterity.
    [...]
    I'm left-handed, but I really can't do anything other than left hand on mouse, right hand on arrows.

    That makes sense to me. I'm right-handed and can't use arrow keys alongside a mouse, which seems analogous. Even if I were to get used to it, I think the contortion of having both hands crammed into the same little space at one edge of my desk would give me an injury pretty quick. Left-hand mousing and WASD would have the same problem, just at the other edge of the desk."


    Interesting. My inexpensive mechanical gaming keyboard has a function which remaps arrow keys to WASD and the inverse in hardware. Never use it, but I thought it was interesting in this context. (Okay, I HAVE used it on accident a couple of times when I was new to the keyboard and it was confusing as hell.)
    posted by Samizdata at 10:39 AM on July 19, 2018


    MetaFilter: filled up with schmuchtz and cat hair.
    posted by homunculus at 10:40 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


    > OnTheLastCastle:
    "I'm left handed but it didn't occur to me to be able to use a mouse left handed in school. I don't think we were ever set up in a good way for me to move it over. Same with console game playing. Oh what could have been..."

    I am southpaw dominant, but my entire life mice were always in the right hand spot, so I learned to do it that way.
    posted by Samizdata at 10:40 AM on July 19, 2018


    I was classically trained (Wolfenstein + DOOM) thus was practically hard-wired to use the arrow keys for everything. WASD just never made sense to me. My dexterity was higher with the right hand, and I was a mad monster on the arrow keys, including strafing 45º in any direction by mashing two keys at once. I regularly remapped WASD games to use arrow keys.

    I broke the habit eventually by picking up a 5 button mouse for games with "mouse look"; Quake II was what broke my arrow key habit permanently I think. W/S for forward/back, A/D for strafe left/right, mouse to turn and aim. Mapped the mouse side buttons to crouch and jump, mapped the wheel to switch weapons.

    These days with Minecraft I'm WASD'ing along, happily space-bar-jumping; switch to USBC means my old 5 button mouse is not recognized by the Microsoft remapping software*, but at least I can still switch tools with the mouse wheel.

    *Intellimouse 1.1A yo. I have like 4 of them. Best mouse ever, IMHO, but the IntelliPoint software refuses to recognize it when plugged into a USBC port via adapter. OS sees it fine, and identifies hardware correctly, totally confused as to why the IntelliPoint software ignores it...
    posted by caution live frogs at 10:47 AM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Ha. I use EADF with my fingers on the home keys. That leaves my ring finger free to use W and S for modifiers like run and crouch (or up and down) or whatever, which is a lot more ergonomic than having to hold your pinky on SHIFT or CTRL for long periods of time).

    This more-comfortable-than-WASD config was a side effect of playing Descent with just keyboard control (no mouse) before I played Doom. Which is also why I invert the mouse -- my introduction to FPS was flight controls.

    "But what about all those stupid games that don't let you rebind your keys?"

    For that, we have the brilliant freeware utility AutoHotKey, which makes it very easy to fully customize controls in any game. You just make a little text file that lists the rebinds you want for each game, save it as a *.ahk file, and then double click it whenever you want to use those rebinds.

    Here's my template for switching WASD keys so my left hand can be on the home row of the keyboard, which I modify with any other keys needed. Pressing e sends a w, f sends a d, etc.

    e::w
    f::d
    d::s
    w::LShift
    XButton1::NumLock

    Pause::Suspend

    Pause::Suspend toggles the rebinding and lets you quickly go back and forth between your changes and a regular keyboard for typing. ("NumLock" is a placeholder for a useful key to put on the side mouse button.)

    Install AutoHotKey. Copy that into Notepad, make the rebinds whatever you want, and save it as "WASD.ahk" or whatever you want to call it, then doubleclick that file whenever you want to use those rebinds. Put it in the same folder with your game shortcuts.
    posted by straight at 10:59 AM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Remap to QWES or GTFO.

    If your middle finger is the same length as your index and ring fingers.
    posted by straight at 11:06 AM on July 19, 2018


    This is like when I discovered left handed guitarists who play right handed, leaving their stronger hand on the fretboard, and suddenly wished I'd thought to learn on a left handed guitar.

    Yeah, don't just flip a regular guitar upside down like Michael Card or you'll have to use your pinky for plucking bass notes.
    posted by straight at 11:12 AM on July 19, 2018


    y u
    h j k l
    b n

    posted by jim in austin at 11:12 AM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Whenever I hear something about WASD I am momentarily extremely confused, because the arrow keys are so perfect. Then I remember that most people aren't left-handed.

    The number pad is even more perfect for lefties because you have a bunch more other keys handy like the right-handed players have. Including a whole bunch of things you can do with your thumb--like all the arrow keys--instead of having it trapped with only the space bar in reach.
    posted by straight at 11:18 AM on July 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


    I learned a long time ago that if the game control mappings offer a strafe left / strafe right binding on a single key as opposed to a modifier, it’s best to unbind turn left and right from A and D immediately and replace them with strafe.

    Wasn't this the original WASD keybinding when using keyboard + mouse? It was on Doom, Half-Life (and therefore Counter-Strike, etc.), and all the rest.

    I was thrown for a loop the first time I loaded a new game and it turned out A and D were suddenly for turning left and right. I think it was the MMO game that popularized this as the default. I would add: it is a stupid default. Changing them back to strafe is the second thing I do in these games; the first is inverting the Y axis.

    My old Ideazon Fang board finally died on me last year, but it was the perfect gaming companion for almost two decades. And it rightly identified the A and D keys as strafe.
    posted by linux at 11:27 AM on July 19, 2018


    > straight:
    "The number pad is even more perfect for lefties because you have a bunch more other keys handy like the right-handed players have. Including a whole bunch of things you can do with your thumb--like all the arrow keys--instead of having it trapped with only the space bar in reach."

    Or, you know, because of your small desk, you don't have a keyboard with a number pad...
    posted by Samizdata at 11:28 AM on July 19, 2018


    As a younger brother who grew up playing keyboard-only games with local multiplayer, I will always to some extent think of WASD as the crappy Mad Catz controller of PC gaming.
    posted by ckape at 11:29 AM on July 19, 2018


    I use an MMO mouse (Logitech G600) with a full, 12-button number pad along its side plus all the other mouse buttons for pretty much all games. It took a day of playing to get used to, but now all actions are just an unconscious twitch of a thumb muscle. For games with point-and-click movement like Path of Exile, I pretty much just play one handed, leaving a hand free for my rocks glass full of bourbon.
    posted by Thoughtcrime at 12:01 PM on July 19, 2018


    Foot Mouse? Solves most of these and many foot problems!

    You are Elon Musk.
    posted by sfenders at 12:04 PM on July 19, 2018


    I'm gonna say it.

    A keyboard is not, nor should it be, a gaming controller.

    I'd say it's time for PC gamers to move on to something better, but I don't know how well PC gamers actually move on to new things other than better graphics, resolutions, and framerates. After all, server browsers are still a thing, and effectively the same as they were back with QuakeSpy.

    Of course, I never did get really comfortable with WASD. I remember using a Microsoft Sidewinder Strategic Commander + mouse back when I played a lot of Quake 2 online. Then later on used it for Diablo 2. I was sad when MS dropped it and stopped updating the drivers.
    posted by evilangela at 12:07 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Then I grew up with emulators, so I'm used to right hand on arrow keys...
    and ABXY being mapped to ZXCV.

    Yes, the A button on Z. My left pinky is actually pretty strong.
    posted by Quackles at 12:32 PM on July 19, 2018


    my pinky finger is weak and incompetent. I could never trust it with base movement skills. what little power and coordination it has must be reserved for abilities with long cooldowns. each action it makes takes calculations of energy conservation and dexterity. how can people using it for WASD survive in the digital world.
    posted by nogoodverybad at 12:44 PM on July 19, 2018


    I use WASD because futzing around with the keymappings gets in the way of my shooting-guys-dressed-as-hotdogs-from-a-helicopter-gunship time.

    That being said, when I played multi-player Quake in the 90s, I used the default key bindings and kept getting killed. A friend gave me his quakerc and it was a revelation. It enabled mouselook, used z and x for strafing and the right mouse button for forward (IIRC). It completely revolutionized how I played the game. But not enough to keep me from getting killed all the time.

    (I also use a USB XBox-ish controller for driving and flying aircraft, switching between it and the mouse+keyboard for games that do both walking and driving. I have no shame.)
    posted by suetanvil at 12:46 PM on July 19, 2018


    I am just reading through this and looking at my keyboard to see how crazy or sensible I think y’all’s non-WASD schemes are and I keep on seeing the post-it on my monitor that says “WHAT IF: caps+esc=del?” and maybe it is time to dig into Karabiner’s docs and make that happen so I can do one more thing in Illustrator without moving my left hand away from the left side of the keyboard. I think it’s been at least a year since I stuck that note up there.
    posted by egypturnash at 12:50 PM on July 19, 2018


    After all, server browsers are still a thing, and effectively the same as they were back with QuakeSpy.

    Yeah, who would want a server browser when you can just let Activision decide what game options you should have and hook you up with random homophobic teenagers?
    posted by straight at 12:55 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    While it's nice to see other WASD haters in the thread, I think I'm the only one who remaps all 4 keys to the home row, turning WASD into FSAD and removing the need to move my left hand off the normal home row position. I cannot and will not play any game that uses WASD but does not allow remapping.
    posted by namewithoutwords at 12:55 PM on July 19, 2018


    I cannot and will not play any game that uses WASD but does not allow remapping.

    I promise not to harp on this, but AutoHotKey is so easy to use that missing out on a game because it doesn't allow remapping doesn't need to be a thing anymore. It's just as easy, if not easier, than remapping keys inside the game itself (easier in that you can create a default and use it for multiple games). I'm pretty sure there are equivalent solutions for Mac users.
    posted by straight at 1:03 PM on July 19, 2018


    Not the context I would expect for the phrase heretical fingering... What? I'm talking about guitar.
    posted by BrotherCaine at 1:14 PM on July 19, 2018


    A keyboard is not, nor should it be, a gaming controller.

    Yeah, something like half of an analog-stick controller would probably be ideal to use with a mouse instead of a keyboard, so long as it had lots of buttons under your fingers. It's ridiculous how most gaming controllers ask you to do multiple things with your thumbs while leaving so many of your fingers sitting idle. But of course WASD ties up three fingers doing what you could do more precisely with a single thumb on an analog stick. (And most mice don't take advantage of putting buttons under all of your fingers.)
    posted by straight at 1:14 PM on July 19, 2018


    A keyboard is not, nor should it be, a gaming controller.

    I mean, it depends on the game, right? It's absolutely the right controller for parser-based IF, obviously, or even just for games with enough bindable actions that having the whole alphabet available for mnemonic defaults substantially decreases your cognitive load. And keyboards match the performance of digital d-pads accurately enough, really.

    The one thing that a keyboard does very poorly is be an analog stick, which is certainly advantageous for a wide variety of different games, but (outside of flight simulators, perhaps, and some people insist that Dark Souls is this way and I don't feel like fighting them even though I suspect they're just being unreasonable purists about it) not by a great deal.
    posted by tobascodagama at 1:19 PM on July 19, 2018


    straight: "I promise not to harp on this, but AutoHotKey is so easy to use that missing out on a game because it doesn't allow remapping doesn't need to be a thing anymore."

    I am ashamed that I never thought of this. I freaking already use AHK to help mitigate muscle memory lapses between the mac and windows - a script to remap WASD for game playing is...well...it's happening, as soon as I'm done with work tonight.
    posted by namewithoutwords at 1:23 PM on July 19, 2018


    Cherry just needs to come out with analog MX switches and we'll be fine. One thing that controllers do very poorly is to be a mouse. You can't flick aim with a controller, or drag and drop, or many other things.
    posted by I-Write-Essays at 1:24 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    The one thing that a keyboard does very poorly is be an analog stick

    There's seldom much practical difference between being able to move in an arbitrary direction with an analog stick vs. being able to face an arbitrary direction with a mouse then move forward (or backward, or to the side).
    posted by straight at 1:24 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    oh god somebody could write a thesis about this.

    (they shouldn't)
    posted by iamkimiam at 2:29 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Cherry just needs to come out with analog MX switches and we'll be fine.

    Actually, this is a thing, albeit a very niche thing. I think the Wooting One is the only one commercially available, but all the switches on it are fully analog.

    In searching for that keyboard, I also came across somebody's custom split keyboard with thumbsticks, which is really nifty.

    However, many games will have no idea what to do with that kind of input. There are certain fairly common engines out there than can take KBM input or gamepad input but not both at the same time. (As users of the Steam Controller often discover when attempting to use it in its intended configuration.) This is gradually changing, though, I think.
    posted by tobascodagama at 2:33 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    This is why you should play with a gamepad in one hand and a mouse in the other.
    posted by Pyry at 2:40 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Legit. But, as I said, there are some engines that won't support that mode of play.
    posted by tobascodagama at 2:45 PM on July 19, 2018


    Yeah, we need games that support analog keyboards. Screw VR, it's time to focus on the things that matter!
    posted by I-Write-Essays at 3:23 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    Meanwhile the Unix world (and therefore Rogue/Nethack) gave us HJKL

    Nah, Lear Siegler gave us that abomination 'cos they were the cheapest serial terminal you could get in the mid-70s. You could buy an external numeric/cursor keypad, but it was extra, so few people did. All your keyboard purism comes from a naff plastic box that was a hit more than 40 years ago.

    Kinda like that Wooting keyboard, tho. Can you set it to do upper case if you hit the keys harder?
    posted by scruss at 3:25 PM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


    By the way, y'all that want controller remapping and are on Mac should check out ControllerMate, which lets you set up hotkeys and programmed actions and virtual keyboards and so on.
    posted by Quackles at 3:31 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    If you want to live on home row why not remap to ESDF? A lot of people play that way.
    posted by yonega at 5:23 PM on July 19, 2018


    I play nethack with hjkl rebound to arrow keys and diagonal movement via top-row number keys. Completely insane, but despite using vim all day I have never fully muscle memoried hjkl and also I like kick being on k and loot on l. WASD is a foreign country.

    Then again, my touch-typing home row is approximately qwef[space]miop. My hands come onto the keyboard from the sides, and from there I can move fingers to the touchpad and arrow keys super fast, without repositioning my hand.
    posted by joeyh at 5:33 PM on July 19, 2018


    This article has been worrying me all afternoon, because I've been playing with my 5th finger on the a key like this guy, and I tried playing with ring finger on the a for a while, and then I remembered that I play freakin' bari sax and my 5th fingers are unnaturally strong anyway.
    posted by randomkeystrike at 6:50 PM on July 19, 2018


    6 LEFT
    7 RIGHT
    9 UP
    8 DOWN
    0 FIRE

    SPACE GRENADE


    If you can't redefine keys then select Sinclair Joystick or Interface II. Simples.
    posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:54 PM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Plus, I was never a fan of QAOPM, but that's totally a thing. Similarly, ZXKM [SPC or ENT].
    posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:57 PM on July 19, 2018


    I'm really disappointed that cortex didn't hack this page so i could scroll through comments with w and s (though I'm happy to see that j and k still work!)
    posted by moonmilk at 8:15 PM on July 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


    This thread makes me so glad I use a controller.
    posted by longdaysjourney at 9:39 PM on July 19, 2018


    ok I checked again and I use index and middle interchangeably for WAS and hit D with my ring finger and my pinky is stuck out and up like a posh lady sipping tea. The pinkie I blame on an old injury but the rest is all me, baby.
    posted by The otter lady at 9:45 PM on July 19, 2018


    AHK is indeed helpful. And can be used in combination with drivers/mapping, as whatever keystrokes your frobbables* are generating will then pass through AHK before hitting the game.

    *sorry, hazardscript die hard. Lately reduced to Logitech UberOptions.

    posted by snuffleupagus at 10:26 PM on July 19, 2018


    That double keystroke capability on the wooting would be so very handy in a lot of programs.
    posted by Mitheral at 10:28 PM on July 19, 2018


    It also seems worth mentioning that some multiplayer games' anti-cheat/anti-bot mechanisms will reportedly alert on AHK.
    posted by snuffleupagus at 10:47 PM on July 19, 2018


    One of the smartest and best typists* I know doesn't use the Shift key. At all. She turns Caps Lock on and off as needed, even for a single letter.

    Why? Because as a child, nobody showed her otherwise.

    I cannot laugh or judge, though, since I type almost 85wpm using a self-taught, completely ridiculous touch-typing method that makes real typists contort in horror when they look at my hands.

    Lesson: hey, whatever works.

    * Also cutest. Hi, hon.
    posted by rokusan at 11:49 PM on July 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


    Several people did the caps lock thing in my high school typing class, especially since many of the typing exercises had multiple capitals in a row.

    It worked well enough, until we got to the symbol keys.
    posted by ckape at 1:33 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


    For most games I could never use my pinkies for anything save modifier keys. Typically, my thumbs don't get much use either, come to think of it. When they do (or when they don't), I always remap space bar whenever possible.
    posted by redrawturtle at 1:40 AM on July 20, 2018


    rokusan: I cannot laugh or judge, though, since I type almost 85wpm using a self-taught, completely ridiculous touch-typing method that makes real typists contort in horror when they look at my hands.

    As the kids would say, "IT ME".

    I've been typing on computer keyboards since the Atari 800, and I was probably 12 or 13 when we got that. I never took a typing class in school; started with hunt-and-peck, and over the course of almost 40 years just let muscle memory sink it. I can type pretty quickly without looking at the keyboard (I do tend to watch the screen to see what I've typed), at least as long as no one is watching. And I do a thing that I learned from a boss early on in my tech career (hi, Mark!) where, if someone comes to talk to me, I stare at them and keep typing without looking at the keys or my screen. I am told it's disconcerting.
    posted by hanov3r at 7:43 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


    I play nethack with hjkl rebound to arrow keys and diagonal movement via top-row number keys.

    Even thought I know the hjklyubn keys (VIM is my preferred editor for everything except Java), I do strongly prefer to use the numpad for movement in ASCII roguelikes.
    posted by tobascodagama at 8:17 AM on July 20, 2018


    checking in: I still don't have a middle mouse button...am...am I a newb? I've been playing PC games since I was 6 in '92, I swear!
    posted by es_de_bah at 3:06 PM on July 20, 2018


    honestly...I'd kinda like to know what phrase is used for folks who still think the best way to strafe is to left-pinky alt and ride the arrows, while using space to interact, and nothing for jumping.
    posted by es_de_bah at 3:09 PM on July 20, 2018


    It also seems worth mentioning that some multiplayer games' anti-cheat/anti-bot mechanisms will reportedly alert on AHK.

    I got suspended for 24hrs from the MMO DC Universe Online because I unthinkingly made some AHK macros to drill down through 3 levels of menus to do emotes (I was too dumb to just have it type out a text command). So I got flagged for submitting a bunch of keystrokes faster than humanly possible. If I had thought to put in human-scale delays, I think it wouldn't have caused a problem, but I didn't want to risk messing with it anymore.

    At the time I did some research and it looked like most online-games allow using AHK for key remapping and you'll only get in trouble if you use it to make macros that submit commands faster than a human could. AHK doesn't do the kind of memory read/write that would get it flagged automatically as a cheat program, but it's powerful enough to do all kinds of cheating with scripted macros. I kept using it in DCUO for key remapping without any problems.

    (DCUO supported key remapping but for a while did that baffling thing some games will do where a couple keys are hardcoded and can't be remapped without an external program.)
    posted by straight at 4:30 PM on July 20, 2018


    left hand mouse and hjkl as movement keys
    posted by [expletive deleted] at 4:33 PM on July 20, 2018


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