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A plea to developers. Don't only use WASD.

A topic by Steampunkdemon created Dec 17, 2023 Views: 484 Replies: 14

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Steampunkdemon154 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

I'm not sure if this is the most suitable forum but I've posted here in the hopes that the most devs will see it.

I'm left handed and play (as well as develop) games on a laptop using a trackpad instead of a mouse. I try to play any interesting games I find on Itch but often come across issues with their input scheme. A lot of devs use the classic WASD for movement and mouse/trackpad to look around but don't provide alternative keys or the option to redefine them. Since I feel most comfortable using my dominant hand on the trackpad I end up with my hands crossed in an awkward, uncomfortable position and generally give up on the game. I'm sure there are other left handed laptop based players with the same issue, and also people who for whatever reasons don't want to or are unable to use WASD controls.

So after all that preamble (!) my basic plea is, please provide alternative 'left handed' controls when making your games. At least bind the arrow keys and perhaps IJKL to movement and provide 'left handed' alternatives to any other keyboard controls. For example if you have F as your action key for players using WASD perhaps also have H for people using IJKL and Shift for players using the arrow keys. Space is a good choice for a common action, like firing, as it can be easily reached with either hand. If your game needs both WASD and the IJKL/arrow keys for input then give the option to switch around what they control. For example I have a game where WASD controls movement and IJKL/arrow keys control the direction of fire but I give the player the option in the settings to switch them around.

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Snakey33153 days ago(+1)

i take note of this for my project Roguelike Heaven cos currently i just thinked in WASD keys for move the player ..... thanks for the advice

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DarkBloodbane153 days ago(+1)

My games already allow changing keys so left handed players could play my games.

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redonihunter153 days ago(+1)

For games that do not offer changing key binding, I sometimes use AHK. You can easily rebind keys with that tool. You can also bind a key to generate a mouse click.

#IfWinActive, Start of the name of the game window as seen in alt-tab
i::w
j::a
k::s
l::d
h::LShift
m::RButton
#IfWinActive

(There is a side effect, if you browse a website that has the same name as the game and you want to type on that page. Or if you play games starting with the same name and used a shorter name)

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Steampunkdemon152 days ago(+1)

Thanks for the tip. I'm Mac based but I will see if I can find a suitable alternative to AutoHotKey.

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redonihunter152 days ago

Ah. You only need the keybinding portion of ahk for that. It is a whole makro and scripting language, wich would be overkill.

On mac there might even be native support for that, but my quick googling did not tell me, if that is possible for each app or only system wide. But the general idea is of course, if the small time indie dev did not bother to implement it, there are other ways of generating the required input.

I have the "problem" that while I use wasd, I use it with left pinky on a. The internet tells me, that many people use it with pinky on left shift, wich would give me cramps. I might be able to rest the finger on capslock, but, well, resting postion is with index on f. I cannot fathom why people made it left-shift-wasd and not a-esdf. Why the position change? Can't they type with 10 fingers to begin with?

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Steampunkdemon152 days ago(+1)

I can't see a way to remap the arrow keys within MacOS but I found an app called Karabiner Elements that can do it. Of course remapping the arrow keys to WASD means they no longer function as arrow keys and so can't be used to navigate menus. In Godot navigation between UI elements is set-up by default to use the arrow keys, so that normally works in all Godot games even if the dev didn't specifically intend it to. I'm not familiar with how Unity and other game engines handle keybinds but I guess they don't have similar defaults set.

Using ESDF would make more sence for touch typists but I think many computer users aren't trained to rest their fingers on the home keys. For whatever reason WASD became popular and now we're stuck with it!

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redonihunter151 days ago

Actually, I think wasd-f makes more sense. I can reach more additional keys with the index fingers. Pinkies are shorter and less dexterous. Do people think it is better to use their 3 strong fingers for movement? Is this a domination thing for fingers, instead for hands? It should not make a difference, if you are left or right dominant. You hands do whatever your train them to. And typing with 10 fingers already uses the fingers of both hands quite equally.

Maybe it was because the devs of old thought they needed to use keys such as tab or shift. Maybe it was so that the thumb was nearer ctrl and alt.

Remapping your arrow keys should work without a 3rd party tool, if you do it system wide. There seem to be tools that can do that per app, but not all those things are free.

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Steampunkdemon151 days ago(+1)

If the Wikipedia page Arrow keys is to be believed then WASD was widely adopted after first person shooter players gravitated towards using it for movement along with mouse look. It left the spacebar accessable with their thumb and the shift and control keys within reach of their pinky. Apparently older computers had limitations on the number of alphanumeric keys that could be recognised as being pressed at the same time, so that is why modifier keys were used for some controls.

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mid151 days ago (1 edit)

That exact paragraph also doesn’t feature a single citation. I have no idea what they’re talking about. On PCs the PS/2 interface sends signals as keys are pressed and released, leaving key rollover to the operating system itself.

It’s actually USB’s standard keyboard interface that only allows 6-key rollover, because the buffer of pressed keys is stored in the keyboard, at least on the simplest setting (the boot protocol).

I don’t think I’m missing anything else, though I could be wrong.

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Steampunkdemon151 days ago(+1)

This thread from back in 2010 covers the reasons why many keyboards of the time only effectively allowed 2 key rollover:

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/6669/how-do-i-remove-the-limit-on-pc-...

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redonihunter151 days ago

Interesting history lesson.

Once again, historical reasons and cheap tech made people use and stick to the inferior solution. Pinky usage gives me cramps. I can press a and the keys above and below fine, but when I try to rest with index on d, my pinky hovers somewhere between keys or is cramping up trying to find the shift key. While not "natural" I am used to press and find keys with index on f. There is a nice bump on that key to find it while not looking.

Key bindings should be an essential and trivial part of all game engines, so devs would not have to think about it or spend time implementing it themselves. One should think. But apparantly that still is not so.

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mid151 days ago

That thread doesn’t explain anything, and again, nobody there differentiates between USB and PS/2 keyboards.

Looking it up, however, it looks like not all keyboards took advantage of PS/2’s superiority.

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Steampunkdemon151 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I think you are missing the point. It doesn't matter how many keystrokes the interface can send if the keyboard itself can only detect 2 keys being pressed at a time. The thread explains that many keyboards at that time could only detect 2 simultaneous key presses not counting modifiers. At the bottom it covers the technicalities of why that was, i.e. keyboard manufacturers going from having each key individually wired to using a grid system to cut costs and having to impliment anti-ghosting due to the grid system's limitations.

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