3 ms·

This may surprise you, but there are people who speak more than one language in the world, and the keyboards on their PCs are set up for only one of them.

by rodgerd 12y ago

babuskov 12y ago
Most of the people I know (myself included) who speak multiple languages have multiple keyboard settings installed in their OS. The problem is that game API's often map keys to hardware keys and not to the characters that OS sends them. Still, every serious game (be it indie or not) should allow you to rebind the keys. Unless it's a quick-hack project there is no excuse to skip on that. I don't buy the "every second counts" argument at all. If you can't spare time to implement the key binding inside the game, let the user edit a config file or something similar.
- bluerobotcat 12y ago
  I'm curious. Might it be that the multiple languages you're thinking of use different alphabets? I ask because that's (in a way) a much simpler situation to deal with. If you're dealing with different alphabets then you will notice from the first keypress if you need to change the keyboard layout. In contrast, when switching between AZERTY and QWERTY, you might not notice that you're using the wrong keyboard layout until you have finished typing two sentences with three silly typos. A similar problem occurs on mobile operating systems if you use the same layout for different languages but have autocorrect turn off. You might finish two sentences and notice the spellchecker 'corrected' five words. This is because there is no visual indication as to what language your keyboard is set to (on iPhone the language is displayed only for about two seconds after you switch keyboards).
  - babuskov 12y ago
    I'm using US English and Serbian (Latin) keyboard all the time. The difference is that US one has W,Q,X and Y, and the Serbian one has Š,Č,Ć,Đ and Ž. Except for Z and Y all other characters have the same position (QUERTY vs QUERTZ). I'm also using Hungarian which is also Latin and has Ő,Ú,É,Á and Ű. The other keys are the same. Since I have three quite similar layouts, I always have to be careful which one is currently active. And I'm also using Serbian Cyrillic which is completely different alphabeth.
    - bluerobotcat 12y ago
      Interesting. In Belgium we use a version of AZERTY that's optimized for Dutch and French. Naturally, it works great for English too. That is one reason why the notion of switching keyboard layouts when switching between languages with the same alphabet struck me as odd. Nowadays I use an Apple US-QWERTY keyboard. It can be annoying when I need to enter diacritics, but it's great for programming. I never switch between keyboard layouts.
      - babuskov 12y ago
        Typing characters like [, ], /, \ with Serbian Latin keyboard requires using Alt or Shift key. I'm used to that (for about 2 years now), but many of my programmer friends still use US keyboard while programming and switch to Serbian layout for the other uses. If you switch between programming and something else often, it can become a PITA to switch the layout all the time.
sliverstorm 12y ago
That smug self-righteousness doesn't suit you. I suggest you try on something slightly more humble. The question is not 'do they exist'. The question is, 'how many'? More specifically, how many are in the target market? It is unrealistic to expect shoestring-budget indie games to cater to every person on the planet.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  Anything intended as more than a 5 minute gimmick should have configurable controls anyway IMHO. That, to me, settles this debate right there, at least when it comes to games. Yeah, it would be nice for browsers to recognize the keyboard, but no wait, that's still not really useful, because then you still need to be able configure your keys, and once you have that, browser recognition of the keyboard layout would just make it possible to set a smart default config - which would be cool, don't get me wrong, but I wonder if this is really that big of a "pain point" right now.
- clarry 12y ago
  How many hours does it take to make a game? Now how many hours does it take to implement a basic usability feat such as rebindable keys? I agree that if you're spending a week or two to mash up a shitty excuse for game, then the fifteen to thirty minutes to make keys rebindable might be prohibitive. I hope this is not indicative of indie games' quality today, but if it is, then the people in this thread are right to criticize these games for it. I'm pretty sure though that most real (indie or not) games aren't slapped together in a week. No, you're spending hundreds of hours at a minimum on design, code, assets, testing, marketing, all that. Even if you needed a few hours to make the keys bindable (unlikely unless your code was horrible spaghetti to begin with), it's still going to be far below 1% (bullshit figure) of total development time. I can assure you that more than 1% of people would find it a useful feature. In Europe alone you have a few hundred million people who are almost guaranteed to have a keyboard layout different from US-QWERTY. As far as games go, we're in the same market even if English isn't our native language. Even in the English speaking Americas you have people who happen to use a layout other than QWERTY. And you have people who use e.g. split ergonomic keyboards (with or without QWERTY), on which some bindings are just unusable. For example, the Kinesis Advantage Pro is contoured such that the fingers sit naturally in the home position. Index finger on F. In this position, ESDF is very usable. WASD is completely unusable. Even on a contourless split keyboard some bindings need to be changed because it's hard to reach for the other side of the split (the other hand is using the mouse). Then you have some left-handed people who use the mouse with their left hand... And whatever happened to user preference, God forbid? You can have a perfectly normal keyboard and a standard US-QWERTY layout, and you can still find that you would prefer to play the game with different bindings. Really, bindability is basic usability and it's not hard to implement. It wasn't a problem in the 90s, not even for small indie shops. Yes, a few developers forgot or neglected to do it, usually out of ignorance. But they never gave these bullshit excuses about time and money and oooh every second counts...

This may surprise you, but there are people who speak more than one language in the world, and the keyboards on their PCs are set up for only one of them.

by rodgerd 12y ago

This may surprise you, but there are people who speak more than one language in the world, and the keyboards on their PCs are set up for only one of them.

babuskov 12y ago

Most of the people I know (myself included) who speak multiple languages have multiple keyboard settings installed in their OS. The problem is that game API's often map keys to hardware keys and not to the characters that OS sends them. Still, every serious game (be it indie or not) should allow you to rebind the keys. Unless it's a quick-hack project there is no excuse to skip on that. I don't buy the "every second counts" argument at all. If you can't spare time to implement the key binding inside the game, let the user edit a config file or something similar.

bluerobotcat 12y ago
I'm curious. Might it be that the multiple languages you're thinking of use different alphabets? I ask because that's (in a way) a much simpler situation to deal with. If you're dealing with different alphabets then you will notice from the first keypress if you need to change the keyboard layout. In contrast, when switching between AZERTY and QWERTY, you might not notice that you're using the wrong keyboard layout until you have finished typing two sentences with three silly typos. A similar problem occurs on mobile operating systems if you use the same layout for different languages but have autocorrect turn off. You might finish two sentences and notice the spellchecker 'corrected' five words. This is because there is no visual indication as to what language your keyboard is set to (on iPhone the language is displayed only for about two seconds after you switch keyboards).
- babuskov 12y ago
  I'm using US English and Serbian (Latin) keyboard all the time. The difference is that US one has W,Q,X and Y, and the Serbian one has Š,Č,Ć,Đ and Ž. Except for Z and Y all other characters have the same position (QUERTY vs QUERTZ). I'm also using Hungarian which is also Latin and has Ő,Ú,É,Á and Ű. The other keys are the same. Since I have three quite similar layouts, I always have to be careful which one is currently active. And I'm also using Serbian Cyrillic which is completely different alphabeth.
  - bluerobotcat 12y ago
    Interesting. In Belgium we use a version of AZERTY that's optimized for Dutch and French. Naturally, it works great for English too. That is one reason why the notion of switching keyboard layouts when switching between languages with the same alphabet struck me as odd. Nowadays I use an Apple US-QWERTY keyboard. It can be annoying when I need to enter diacritics, but it's great for programming. I never switch between keyboard layouts.
    - babuskov 12y ago
      Typing characters like [, ], /, \ with Serbian Latin keyboard requires using Alt or Shift key. I'm used to that (for about 2 years now), but many of my programmer friends still use US keyboard while programming and switch to Serbian layout for the other uses. If you switch between programming and something else often, it can become a PITA to switch the layout all the time.

sliverstorm 12y ago

That smug self-righteousness doesn't suit you. I suggest you try on something slightly more humble. The question is not 'do they exist'. The question is, 'how many'? More specifically, how many are in the target market? It is unrealistic to expect shoestring-budget indie games to cater to every person on the planet.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
Anything intended as more than a 5 minute gimmick should have configurable controls anyway IMHO. That, to me, settles this debate right there, at least when it comes to games. Yeah, it would be nice for browsers to recognize the keyboard, but no wait, that's still not really useful, because then you still need to be able configure your keys, and once you have that, browser recognition of the keyboard layout would just make it possible to set a smart default config - which would be cool, don't get me wrong, but I wonder if this is really that big of a "pain point" right now.
clarry 12y ago
How many hours does it take to make a game? Now how many hours does it take to implement a basic usability feat such as rebindable keys? I agree that if you're spending a week or two to mash up a shitty excuse for game, then the fifteen to thirty minutes to make keys rebindable might be prohibitive. I hope this is not indicative of indie games' quality today, but if it is, then the people in this thread are right to criticize these games for it. I'm pretty sure though that most real (indie or not) games aren't slapped together in a week. No, you're spending hundreds of hours at a minimum on design, code, assets, testing, marketing, all that. Even if you needed a few hours to make the keys bindable (unlikely unless your code was horrible spaghetti to begin with), it's still going to be far below 1% (bullshit figure) of total development time. I can assure you that more than 1% of people would find it a useful feature. In Europe alone you have a few hundred million people who are almost guaranteed to have a keyboard layout different from US-QWERTY. As far as games go, we're in the same market even if English isn't our native language. Even in the English speaking Americas you have people who happen to use a layout other than QWERTY. And you have people who use e.g. split ergonomic keyboards (with or without QWERTY), on which some bindings are just unusable. For example, the Kinesis Advantage Pro is contoured such that the fingers sit naturally in the home position. Index finger on F. In this position, ESDF is very usable. WASD is completely unusable. Even on a contourless split keyboard some bindings need to be changed because it's hard to reach for the other side of the split (the other hand is using the mouse). Then you have some left-handed people who use the mouse with their left hand... And whatever happened to user preference, God forbid? You can have a perfectly normal keyboard and a standard US-QWERTY layout, and you can still find that you would prefer to play the game with different bindings. Really, bindability is basic usability and it's not hard to implement. It wasn't a problem in the 90s, not even for small indie shops. Yes, a few developers forgot or neglected to do it, usually out of ignorance. But they never gave these bullshit excuses about time and money and oooh every second counts...