5 ms·

Also acts as a self reinforcing thing. Like games, wasd is movement, so every other game copied that. If you try to change, people are going to be mighty confu

Also acts as a self reinforcing thing. Like games, wasd is movement, so every other game copied that. If you try to change, people are going to be mighty confused why the controls aren't "normal".

thaumasiotes 4y ago
WASD movement is an innovation. Movement was on the arrow keys before that. A wave of games that wanted you to play with the mouse and keyboard simultaneously made using the arrow keys impossible, unless you wanted to use the mouse with your left hand. If the auxiliary part of the keyboard had been to the left of the main part instead of the right, movement would most likely never have come off the arrow keys.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  PC shmups, mostly of PC-98 and MSX traditions, never stopped using arrow keys. New ones released this year still use arrow keys for movement and Shift+ZXC for action buttons. Probably because the mouse was never relevant for that genre.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  Everything is an innovation the first time it comes around.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    Not if your model of the world is "whatever people are currently doing, everything new will do it the same way".
- bluGill 4y ago
  I think WASD came from two player keyboard only games before the mouse existed. Player one was WASD (or something else), player two was the arrow keys, or something like IJKL (it has been a few decades since I played a game like this so I don't remember)
badsectoracula 4y ago
> Like games, wasd is movement, so every other game copied that. If you try to change, people are going to be mighty confused why the controls aren't "normal". Sometimes though it is for the better. A lot of games in the 80s, especially on ZX Spectrum, etc, used QAOP for movement (QA vertical, OP horizontal) for some reason. Of course the best is to have these configurable - both the Speccy games of yesteryear and modern games allow you to change the controls to your liking, so people who for some reason still prefer QAOP (is anyone still out there, i wonder) can still use that scheme in modern games.
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  A sibling to your comment suggests why QAOP doesn't work any more: many games require a keyboard and a mouse. QAOP requires two hands.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
It's also a good example of how copying a design without fully unerstanding it is a bad thing. A common complaint from the French is that games have messed up movement. Why? The French keyboard looks like this: A Z E R T Q S D F W X C Obviously, you can't use WSAD on that. As a designer, you have to understand that you're after the placement, not the labels. Even if you rely on scan codes, you're only guessing the button placement. They can be arbitrary, as long as user's key map matches. Now you're down to arrows. They have an embedded meaning: directions! You can rely on them being placed in a way that makes sense to the user, even if it's not necessarily the standard WASD positions.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Scan codes should be the main solution, not arrows. Keyboards that change the actual key placement so badly they can't be used are very very rare. Needing several buttons in addition to the movement keys is very very common. Even if you're worried about weird layouts, the biggest issue you'd see by far is keyboards that don't have arrow keys!
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    Scan codes might be the main solution, but why are arrows not a solution? If the keyboard has no way to input arrows, I'm sure it's by user's choice, who's very aware of that :) Even controllers assign buttons a meaning, rather than location.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      I already said why. Not enough adjacent keys. > Even controllers assign buttons a meaning, rather than location. Not really? There are arbitrary labels that change from controller to controller and the game displays whatever it thinks you have. Like keyboards.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  Yes, trying to guess the appropriate version of "wasd" based on either the locale or the actual keyboard layout is a design decision. But, again, if you're going to say "you can use the left part of the keyboard for directions", then you have different options, it's just probably safer to use wasd for QWERTY, qsdz for AZERTY, etc... rather than anything else.

Also acts as a self reinforcing thing. Like games, wasd is movement, so every other game copied that. If you try to change, people are going to be mighty confused why the controls aren't "normal".

thaumasiotes 4y ago

WASD movement is an innovation. Movement was on the arrow keys before that. A wave of games that wanted you to play with the mouse and keyboard simultaneously made using the arrow keys impossible, unless you wanted to use the mouse with your left hand. If the auxiliary part of the keyboard had been to the left of the main part instead of the right, movement would most likely never have come off the arrow keys.

YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
PC shmups, mostly of PC-98 and MSX traditions, never stopped using arrow keys. New ones released this year still use arrow keys for movement and Shift+ZXC for action buttons. Probably because the mouse was never relevant for that genre.
cassianoleal 4y ago
Everything is an innovation the first time it comes around.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  Not if your model of the world is "whatever people are currently doing, everything new will do it the same way".
bluGill 4y ago
I think WASD came from two player keyboard only games before the mouse existed. Player one was WASD (or something else), player two was the arrow keys, or something like IJKL (it has been a few decades since I played a game like this so I don't remember)

badsectoracula 4y ago

> Like games, wasd is movement, so every other game copied that. If you try to change, people are going to be mighty confused why the controls aren't "normal". Sometimes though it is for the better. A lot of games in the 80s, especially on ZX Spectrum, etc, used QAOP for movement (QA vertical, OP horizontal) for some reason. Of course the best is to have these configurable - both the Speccy games of yesteryear and modern games allow you to change the controls to your liking, so people who for some reason still prefer QAOP (is anyone still out there, i wonder) can still use that scheme in modern games.

rahimnathwani 4y ago
A sibling to your comment suggests why QAOP doesn't work any more: many games require a keyboard and a mouse. QAOP requires two hands.

rhn_mk1 4y ago

It's also a good example of how copying a design without fully unerstanding it is a bad thing. A common complaint from the French is that games have messed up movement. Why? The French keyboard looks like this: A Z E R T Q S D F W X C Obviously, you can't use WSAD on that. As a designer, you have to understand that you're after the placement, not the labels. Even if you rely on scan codes, you're only guessing the button placement. They can be arbitrary, as long as user's key map matches. Now you're down to arrows. They have an embedded meaning: directions! You can rely on them being placed in a way that makes sense to the user, even if it's not necessarily the standard WASD positions.

Dylan16807 4y ago
Scan codes should be the main solution, not arrows. Keyboards that change the actual key placement so badly they can't be used are very very rare. Needing several buttons in addition to the movement keys is very very common. Even if you're worried about weird layouts, the biggest issue you'd see by far is keyboards that don't have arrow keys!
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Scan codes might be the main solution, but why are arrows not a solution? If the keyboard has no way to input arrows, I'm sure it's by user's choice, who's very aware of that :) Even controllers assign buttons a meaning, rather than location.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    I already said why. Not enough adjacent keys. > Even controllers assign buttons a meaning, rather than location. Not really? There are arbitrary labels that change from controller to controller and the game displays whatever it thinks you have. Like keyboards.
phtrivier 4y ago
Yes, trying to guess the appropriate version of "wasd" based on either the locale or the actual keyboard layout is a design decision. But, again, if you're going to say "you can use the left part of the keyboard for directions", then you have different options, it's just probably safer to use wasd for QWERTY, qsdz for AZERTY, etc... rather than anything else.