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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
by 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 agoScan 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 agoScan 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 agoI 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 agoYes, 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.