Explaining driving in SL to a gamer made me feel old

[Ayashe Ninetails]

5 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

I suspect that one major reason that the WASD configuration became more widely used is that once online first person shooters started to become popular people quickly discovered that those using a mouse to aim had a considerable advantage over those using keyboard only, at which point people started to rethink using the cursor keys in favor of keys more naturally accessible to the left hand.

Looks like you are correct. There are a bunch of articles about Dennis "Thresh" Fong - the first Quake tournament winner who won with a keyboard with WASD mapping and a mouse. He reportedly swapped to that config after trying several others and found it made the controls easier. I doubt he was the first to do it, but he seems to have popularized it a little bit and it gradually caught on from there.

I can't believe gaming is old enough to have an entire history of WASD, but here we are. 😄 I'm just glad SL supports it (and rebinding in general) or I'd never be able to control myself properly!

[Brightstar7777]

Edited October 9, 2022 by Brightstar7777
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[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

I still remember the Linden guy (One that told me about SL) bringing his laptop to the club during off hours and showing me how to do things. On the walking part my man said "does she need to use WASD to move the toon around.  He said no and the arrow keys did the trick. My man then said "Looks like she just dumped your avi into an ocean!" Couple days later I signed up for SL anyway. 🤣 I think he sent me a screen shot of the "drowning" but would need to check some old hard drives.

[Bree Giffen]

I used a mouse + keyboard all the time in the past. I used them so much the letters disappeared. Switched to a trackball many years ago and while trackball + keyboard is doable it's a bit weird. I switched to an Xbox controller on the PC for gaming. Microsoft makes the Xbox and Windows 11 so the controller is plug and play and works with nearly every game I have. Second Life is the only one where I use trackball + keyboard because it uses far too many clicks to do things. 

[cunomar]

I never had a mouse or a desktop and hate touchscreen . @ is the only 2 button action I can think of that i do with 1 hand and yes i'm right handed .

Maybe the difference in preference relates to some spending most of their life outdoors work and play while others spend most of their life indoors work and play ?

[Charalyne Blackwood]

23 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

WASD really took off with the FPS and MMO crowd. I think Half-Life started the trend (don't quote me). Maybe sooner with Quake? I dunno. Late 90s, in any case.

The father of fps gaming- DooM! I've been WASD since 1993. Some people here seem to literally hate WASD and all who use it (not you Ayashe).  Use what you want for moving in SL. WASD has a good sized user base,  get a box of condoms and a ladder and get the f*** over it. 

[Charalyne Blackwood]

5 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

I used a mouse + keyboard all the time in the past. I used them so much the letters disappeared. Switched to a trackball many years ago and while trackball + keyboard is doable it's a bit weird. I switched to an Xbox controller on the PC for gaming. Microsoft makes the Xbox and Windows 11 so the controller is plug and play and works with nearly every game I have. Second Life is the only one where I use trackball + keyboard because it uses far too many clicks to do things. 

I love my trackball! 15% of the desk space used by a conventional mouse!

[Charalyne Blackwood]

On 10/9/2022 at 5:39 AM, cunomar said:

Arrows make you move , the instinctive choice to any child . WASD is not normal , not intuitive , its like using candles for car headlights .

Right, because you are the standard of perfection by which we should all set ourselves.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

24 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

The father of fps gaming- DooM! I've been WASD since 1993. 

Yup, Doom had some fancy keybinding going on there, too! I don't think I did much of that when I played it a million years ago - I honestly can't remember.

I'm still trying to train myself to stop clicking skills in every MMO I play and lrn2keybind more efficiently, but that takes so much practice gaaaaah. But WASD itself for movement feels very natural for mouse and keyboard gaming. I honestly couldn't use SL any other way. Forced "arrows to move" mapping would probably make me quit SL permanently. 😄

[Charalyne Blackwood]

Just now, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Yup, Doom had some fancy keybinding going on there, too! I don't think I did much of that when I played it a million years ago - I honestly can't remember.

I'm still trying to train myself to stop clicking skills in every MMO I play and lrn2keybind more efficiently, but that takes so much practice gaaaaah. But WASD itself for movement feels very natural for mouse and keyboard gaming. I honestly couldn't use SL any other way. Forced "arrows to move" mapping would probably make me quit SL permanently. 😄

I hear you! I'd imagine using the keyboard to move at all would result in forgetting to click on the chat box and jumping around the room. I've done it many times...

[Ayashe Ninetails]

12 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

I hear you! I'd imagine using the keyboard to move at all would result in forgetting to click on the chat box and jumping around the room. I've done it many times...

Literally me. Bumping/bouncing/hovering all over the place. 😂 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Literally me. Bumping/bouncing/hovering all over the place. 😂 

Is liek teh bumpr cars?

[Jaylinbridges]

3 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Forced "arrows to move" mapping would probably make me quit SL permanently. 😄

Forced WASD mapping would probably make me quit SL, permanently

I started with the Apple IIe in 1980, where the arrow keys were in a horizontal row at the bottom, but for games I used a joystick w/ buttons to move. Never liked WASD, because I had no interest in the shoot em up games from the 80's and 90's.  Was too busy earning a living to play computer games.  When IBM came out with their modern keyboard, I switched to  using the arrow keys instead. Being right handed, it's too late to train my brain for WASD and the surrounding keys.  I play the simple jump and run games of Paleoquest and Linden Realms in SL, where all avatar movement can be done with the arrow keys and PageUp to jump.  There is very little mouse use in those games.  Just a click at the end of each quest.  I tried using WASD and could never complete the quests.  Would take me days to just complete them.  With the arrow keys, I can finish them all in 15 mins.  Life's too short to relearn WASD for me, even if my left hand is now free to sip a drink when "gaming".

Edited October 10, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Charalyne Blackwood]

9 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Forced WASD mapping would probably make me quit SL, permanently

 

Oh please, no one is forcing WASD, but arrow keys were initially hard wired in SL, thus forcing people to use them. The keys people use to move their avatars is a personal choice, and certain people here have voiced a rather harsh loathe against WASD.

[Coffee Pancake]

3 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Oh please, no one is forcing WASD, but arrow keys were initially hard wired in SL, thus forcing people to use them. The keys people use to move their avatars is a personal choice, and certain people here have voiced a rather harsh loathe against WASD.

WASD is the expected defacto standard.

Anyone new to SL is going to instinctively reach for WASD and immediately be put off when it doesn't work.

 

[Sammy Huntsman]

I grew up with using the Arrow keys to move around. It was until 98 that WASD became default. 

[Charalyne Blackwood]

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

WASD is the expected defacto standard.

Anyone new to SL is going to instinctively reach for WASD and immediately be put off when it doesn't work.

 

My actual setup has been SZXC so I can have keys above and closer to the space bar, left shift, and left ctrl, but in SL I have it still set to the arrow keys. Sometimes I move by clicking on the movement HUD

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

My actual setup has been SZXC so I can have keys above and closer to the space bar, left shift, and left ctrl, but in SL I have it still set to the arrow keys. Sometimes I move by clicking on the movement HUD

Writes you a prescription for a boutique South-Korean mechanical keyboard and a wrist rest.

[Jaylinbridges]

9 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Anyone new to SL is going to instinctively reach for WASD and immediately be put off when it doesn't work.

Any gamers new to SL you mean.  And younger gamers too - us older farts used external joysticks and switches.  The keyboard was for sending a note to your mom.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

6 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Writes you a prescription for a boutique South-Korean mechanical keyboard and a wrist rest.

Oh goody! I have bad carpal tunnel syndrome too...

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Any gamers new to SL you mean.  And younger gamers too - us older farts used external joysticks and switches.  The keyboard was for sending a note to your mom.

Younger people are gamers and that's who we need.

Out of the box SL must expressly target and meet the expectations of that demographic, otherwise we only attract the minority where a masochistic control scheme is a key part of the experience (and they are all off playing old school runescape anyway)

[Jaylinbridges]

5 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Younger people are gamers and that's who we need.

Gamers are lousy tippers.  They need a scoreboard when using an adult bed too.

I worked for an ex-gamer, claimed he was in the top 100 in the world for some MMO games.  He started a business in SL, and was a control freak - ran the business like it was a game.  All his employees quit.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Rolig Loon]

This all reminds me of the pointless platform wars and the truly silly Pepsi/Coke ads on TV a few years ago. We each have our own preferences, for dozens of personal reasons.  There is no such thing as "intuitive", except at the personal level.  I have tried working on Apple machines -- the campus standard at one university I served back in the 90s -- and I have experimented with WASD several times, and didn't care for either of them. But that's me. On rare occasions, I have been known to change a lifetime preference when I have been convinced that there's a practical advantage to changing -- I did give up on manual transmissions a few years ago, for example, and I no longer have a land line or watch broadcast TV -- but most of my daily habits are too deeply ingrained at this point to mess with.  They are "intuitive" and no amount of forum debate is going to tell me different. 

[animats]

SL sort of supports a joystick, but it just maps to the arrow keys. No proportional control. I'd like to see game controller support.

[Coffee Pancake]

37 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Gamers are lousy tippers.  They need a scoreboard when using an adult bed too.

I worked for an ex-gamer, claimed he was in the top 100 in the world for some MMO games.  He started a business in SL, and was a control freak - ran the business like it was a game.  All his employees quit.

Stereotypes are bad.