I prefer H, J, K, and L, plus Y, U, B, and N for diagonal movement. If that sounds like the standard movement keys for nethack, that’s exactly what they are. 
Of course, in nethack, YASD (Yet Another Stupid Death) is a very common thing.
1 Like
Even that article notes they don’t know where it came from. Just how it proliferated. I distinctly recall WASD already being known before Quake. And I remember some of the other variations being initially more common. Particularly EDSF. I also remembering frustratingly remaping various games that had picked whatever I felt was the wrong one at the time. It was one of those weird things where the whole world decided at once “welp, left hands gotta go over there” and a bunch of arrow key subs popped up. Pretty quick a rough default layout got hashed out. And just exactly where that was located boiled down to the guy promoting WASD catching more attention.
1 Like
I recall before mouse being a common input method in general the games that i played did rely on the movement keys and once the mouse was more standard WASD popped up for movement, which makes more sense if your free hand is going to be using the mouse. But yeah as you noted i’m not sure why exactly WASD was picked though to me to makes sense because its the farthest away from the mouse and having that spacing between hands feels natural.
I remember a lot of text input, and yeah arrow keys before mouse controls. But mouse controls showed up fairly early once home computers had them. Not neccisarily normal in action games or early FPS games. But especially anything top down and point and click adventure games. I definitely remember anything with both mouse and keyboard controls the keys would tend to be over in that region generally for a while before WASD and the others became a thing. I also remember remapping shit like Doom (or maybe Doom II?) and shit like Duke Nukem to have the arrows over on the left when doing death match nonsense. As a righty its easy enough to quickly and accurately control movement with the left hand, but even before mice got involved it was helpful to free up your right to get at weapon select keys, fire buttons etc with your dominant hand. Particularly when games started throwing in lots of weapons, alternate fire modes, jumping and side stepping. IIRC I was using EDSF for movement, space for shoot and like N and > for strafing pretty early there. I remember Descent having some wack ass both sides of the keyboard controls if you didn’t have a joystick, don’t recall it using the mouse when it was first released.
Point being things were rather all over the place, but I was definitely shifting movement keys left somewhat often by 1995, and WASD was one of the ways that came up.
1 Like
My coworkers once pulled all the keys off my keyboard and rearranged them. They waited almost two week for me to notice. They got a big laugh out of it when I finally did, and remarked it would take me a long time to put the keys back where they belong. I just stayed a bit late one afternoon and swapped the keyboard with a computer on another floor. Took me five minutes.
At home I’ve been using a Razer stealth something or other for a few years. I like the way it feels, and it’s not too loud (stealth is a lie, let me tell you). What I really like is the app that lets me do crazy macros, good for gaming, word processing, or any little repetitive thing I might want to not actually have to do myself. There are probably better software options to do those things, but I am comfortable and happy with what I have.
You can get some great custom keycaps these days.
( Semiotic Standard - For All Commercial Trans-Stellar Utility Lifter And Heavy Element Transport Spacecraft.)
7 Likes
If 10-key is what i think it is, then it’s for NetHack and for DROD. Happy days…
I like my mechanical keyboard personally, it feels nice to type on. I feel like I can tell intuitively whether I hit a key or not, which is a problem I had with some of the bubble keyboards, where I’d be sure I’d hit the key but the letter wouldn’t appear, or I’d hit a key without realizing because it felt like nothing either way.
I haven’t noticed a difference in noisiness personally - maybe I’m just a really gentle typist or maybe it’s the switches, but it sounds basically the same to me. But then again, I’m alone in my apartment, not in a big open office, and the few times I’m on mic on discord or whatever, I’m probably going to be drawing while talking, so no one’s gotta hear it unless I have to google grackles for art reference or something.
Also wouldn’t know about how good it is or isn’t for gaming - not much of a gamer. Mine has a usb plug and I haven’t noticed an issue, which probably shows how little latency matters to my keyboard usage.
It is weird to realize that when it comes to this item I’m basically walking into the equivalent of “you’ve gotta try yoga” drama already in progress. Makes me feel defensive like “I just like tactile feedback, I swear I’m not going to recommend it!”
1 Like
I myself have switched from WASD to ASDF and find it much simpler; no need to reposition any fingers thus no getting lost.
Just find that little bump on the F key with my index finger and good to go!
1 Like
The usb has more lag thing is more one of those things for very specific, competitive twitch gaming where people will go to extremes to supposedly reduce input lag. Sourcing old CRT monitors, using high end parts to run 720p or below resolutions at hundreds and hundreds of frames per second. Often well beyond what a screen can practically display.
Many people will point out that even a good internet connection is often introducing more lag of various sorts than these things could ever compensate for. But it is a thing.
Though largely in very specific online games. Counter Strike seems like the big one on that front. And I think it mostly comes from in person tournament play where your on a much faster LAN set-up. But people like to emulate pros. Not very much different than your uncle who wont shut up about having the same golf clubs as Tiger Woods.
The biggest contributor to input lag with single player is the monitor, and the biggest problem it contributes is motion sickness at low frame rates. If its the sort of thing you really need to worry about. You are generally getting paid to worry about it (or trying).
2 Likes
That’s good to know. With a lot of stuff for gaming I often have to wonder - is this actually good for gaming as in gaming generally or is this good for a specific situation I will literally never encounter and everyone just uses “gaming” as the shorthand for that.
Actually reminds me a lot of audiophile stuff, where you’ve got a low end of garbage that sounds like garbage, a high end of solid gold whatever nonsense and then a middle area where you have to try and determine where the garbage ends and where the nonsense begins so you can shop in between and not pay more than necessary for meaningful quality. Which is tough because all the middle range stuff trying to sell itself as luxury has copy full of nonsense.
“Gaming” is the nonsense end of the spectrum for computer components and peripherals.
2 Likes
Its an awful lot like that. If you’re dicking around over whether 5 or 10 frames is worth another grand. When you’re already pushing more than a screen can make use of. Actually playing the game isn’t really what you’re on about.
2 Likes
I’ve noticed there’s a … group of gamers really obsessed with calling other folk “peasants” and frame-counting.
Playing games seems distantly secondary.
Always been more of a button-masher myself. Only tabletop really runs at a pace more to my speed.
2 Likes
Same group that thinks referring to the “pc gaming master race” is both funny and appropriate (to the point where there is now a peripheral/mechanical keyboard company by that name). “Gamer” culture such as it is, has always been an exclusionary, us vs them edifice. Back in the day it was about who was “hardcore” (us) and who was not (girls), and lame jocks vs geeks resentment. Now its substantially about how you’ve been harmed by a game reminding you that black people exist in the world.
1 Like
Lots of knowledgable folks on this topic (as always here). Maybe someone might be able to help me out? 
We have a (cheap) mechanical keyboard where one key doesn’t work 90% of the time. Remove the cap though, and the underlying switch is fine. As in, it responds readily and consistently to being pressed, emitting its valuable payload into the buffer (N, in case you’re interested).
Put the cap back on (any cap, in fact, I’ve swapped over a few) and it’s kaput again.
There’s no visible obstruction or difference in vertical travel with the cap on, i.e. it seems to be going fully all the way down. Weird one, huh?
Yeah, FPS and fighting games are some of the most toxic gamer groups out there and tend to be very exclusionary. Personally I don’t give a shit who is playing something and why as long as they’re amicable, but holy shit do i run into plenty of assholes. It’s the main reason i stopped playing with teams in Overwatch and i rarely jump on team chat, i just can’t deal with a few people ruining the game for everyone else.
I’d replace the key cap. These switches don’t trigger till the post gets pushed down almost to the bottom, and different switches have different actuation depths. So its possible for a pretty subtle problem with the cap to just barely prevent it from ticking over to actually click the switch. Something like a key cap that mounts too low, or a tab left over from molding. Some of my eBayed from the Chinese factory keycaps had a tab or two left from molding, causing one of them to hang up on it’s neighbor. I just shaved them down with a razor blade. So look for something like that first. Otherwise it sounds like a new keycap shoud fix it.
I suppose the switch could be mounted too low causing the keycap to bottom out on the case before it actuates the switch. You could probably check that by pulling a cap from elsewhere on the board and sticking it on the N post. If the key works with a different keycap you’ll know that’s the issue. How fixable a switch issue is depends on how the board is put together. Technically they’re all replaceable, but how practical it is to do so depends on how their mounted. So you could potentially replace the switch or adjust its position if the switch is the problem. But it might be easier to shave or sand down the key cap so it doesn’t bottom out before the switch does.
1 Like
I get to avoid it. People I know in real life aren’t assholes or 12. And I’m not generally into multiplayer. So these days I only run into that noise in internet comment sections or when doing research into parts and games. Also I’m a straight white American dude so noone is targeting me.
I play with friends a lot too, though being introverted there’s only so much i can do before i run out of social energy. Still i much prefer to derp around with friends when i can, usually we’re playing stuff like Golf It!, Overwatch, Risk of Rain 2, etc.
