Why we switched to WASD | Nostalgia Nerd

we take it for granted that FPS games these days are going to conform to the control methods of WD for movement and your trusty old mouse for aiming if it was natural intuitive as life should be but it wasn't so long ago when we were all using a more conventional control system the arrow keys anyone who says they played Doom back in the day but can't master arrow keys in conjunction with the control and shift Keys is a filthy rotten liar this was our staple this was how we moved and it was well it had its limitations but at least we were all on the same page that is until one guy changed everything and you can change everything too thanks to this segment sponsor scopely and Star Trek Fleet command in this freeto play four times MMO you get to dive right into the ever expanding Star Trek universe with stunning graphics and detail recruit legendary characters assign them to iconic ships engage players around the world and expand your territory available on both desktop and mobile with a scopely account you can play wherever you want plus because Fleet command's 5year anniversary is here there are now special contests experiences and giveaways to honor the gamees Legacy install the game today and immediately immerse yourself in the Star Trek universe with a thriving community and new immersive Star Trek story in the kelin timeline plus use promo code warp speed to get a new player content pack for free and become a Starbase Commander off the bat check out my link below to get yourself immersed today but before that WD and the mouse was already a thing it had been used before and some might say to great effect this is Dark Castle on the Sega Mega Drive and it's a howling piece of utter however before it got there it was here on the Apple Mac in 1986 and the one thing the Mac definitely had was a mouse storm clouds classical music a Dark Castle you find yourself in a dark room the scene is set now all we need to do is navigate this place this is beyond any doubt the worst Sega Genesis game I have ever played not like that our protagonist Duncan can do all the usual platform Maneuvers running jumping ducking and throwing rocks at enemy faces yeah maybe not too much the last one but it's the method of control that is unusual here or unusual for the time WD is used to dictate Duncan's Direction whilst the mouse can be used to aim his arm and fire so very much like our modern-day use just in a platform game the reason the Mega Drive version was so utter Tri pants is because it tried to Port this very specific control method to a control pad how the hell was that ever going to work I have no idea and it didn't it was crap so that's great you may say but in 1986 we had a solid set of controls so what happened well Dark Castle wasn't that much of a well-known game I mean it was on the Mac for sure but reports it received to other systems weren't popular and were generally inferior given the Mac wasn't known as a gaming platform WD was left of the history books if you look at other Home computers at that time take the ZX spum for example one of the most common control layouts was to use the QA o p and space Keys wielding the full extent of the keyboard if you will on the original spectrum because the space bar was on the bottom right you'd use the N key instead here Q is up a is down o is left p is right and space is fire it's very likely you rest your fingers on these keys on your keyboard now try it it's natural and that's what what it was all about finding a configuration that felt natural so then Along Comes the IBM PCAT and its fellow compatibles and the one thing about the IBM PC at is that it has a fullsize keyboard along with numeric keypad that weird block of control keys function buttons and of course the arrow keys and here's the problem the arrow keys were never really a comfortable method of control when you rest your hand of them most of your hand is hanging off the edge in midair you have to pull your arm back off the edge of the desk you have to really work with those keys and really that's because they existed just to navigate Word documents spreadsheets and stuff like that not for you to pound to hell as you frantically move around E1 M1 the arrow keys were not a comfortable choice they were a logical choice they are directional games need direction you can see the quandry using the arrow keys with gaming has been a staple then since the' 80s even with the original IBM PC XT machines and their Model F keyboards which lacked dedicated cursor Keys the numpad still had curses using the 486 and 2 Keys which of course carried over to later keyboards when 18 machines came along numeric pad cursor presses and dedicated cursor presses became essentially interchangeable just don't talk to me about Wang keyboards I have no idea what's going on there so games like Bor war or Elite or outrun or Juke Nukem or all used cursor keys if you had a joystick and a sound card to plug one into then great otherwise the keyboard was your friend of course games towards the end of the ' 80s and early '90s started heavily using Mouse controls too but it was uncommon for a game to need Mouse control and keyboard control consistently at the same time more common was the need to execute some functions using the keyboard but with your mouse as your main control but action games were mostly keyboard so when hover tank and importantly Wolfenstein 3 came along it's stuck to the well-known formula it went a bit like this forwards backwards look left look right what about if you wanted to side step or strafe well that would usually entail holding down the ALT key in conjunction with left and right if you wanted to move faster you'd hold down shift too and if you wanted to fire then you'd use control personally I preferred the cramped style using all the keys on the right side of the board but a lot of people opted for the keys on the left whatever your preference this was standard as you'd expect its Doom was no different and really popularized this FPS control format from this point on almost every '90s FPS would rely on the same set of keys however despite myths suggesting otherwise Doom actually had mouse support from the go in fact version 1.0 of the game had it right there in the setup menu in fact Wolfenstein 3D also had mouse support too it's just that most people didn't use it the the first reason that they didn't use it especially for Wolfenstein is that many machines didn't actually come with a mouse if you didn't have Windows and lived exclusively in the realm of Doss well there wasn't much need for one the second reason is that it's familiar most people stuck with what they knew for action games that meant the keyboard it was just a bit weird to use a mouse in this manner especially pushing the mouse forward and backwards to step forward and backward it didn't feel intuitive to start with the third reason was that Doom was a do game and out of the box dos doesn't have mouse support to get support for a mouse you need to install a mouse driver upon boot or before you run the game easy enough but a mouse driver used precious conventional memory and for Doss users that stuff was vital plus and this is important have you seen the DPI on these old mice it is atrocious playing any game which require quick movement was hell unless you had a very expensive Mouse a January 1994 usernet survey by Richard Ward actually reported around 28% of users preferring Mouse controls compared to 61% using the keyboard and 11% using a joystick but this was the DI hard internet Prime Gamers from a more casual perspective I would assume it was about half of that but actually if you get down to it it was clear the mouse was the superior controller as Romero himself testifies okay so John Romero Legend can you confirm that Doom was designed to be used with a mouse absolutely even Wolfenstein was designed to be do designed to be used with a mouse Doom absolutely was designed to be used with the mouse we put strafe on the mouse the second mouse button it's it's the best way to play the game if you trying to death match somebody who's using keyboard only they're done yeah the mouse just changed everything makes it quicker makes it more Nimble everything and will beat everyone on a console if you were using a mouse and a keyboard yeah perfect thank you very much just take a look at the Doom demo Loops it's blatantly clear here that John Romero was using the mouse to record these whereas a keyboard offers a digital input and therefore a consistent speed of turning the mouse is analog which allows you to spin quickly or slowly from left to right giving you greater control it also allowed you to effortlessly strafe around enemies with a steady and constant aim on them rather than the jerky controls offered by the keyboard it's the same concept as early racing games on a keyboard board you are either turning fully or you are not turning at all steering is either on or off with analog controls such as the mouse or you know modern game pads you get a proportionate amount of control and it feels more realistic but what made things feel restrictive here was that you couldn't look up and down Doom isn't a true 3D game this world isn't true 3D it's pseudo 3D and so our abilities are limited and that's where Quake comes in but before we get to Quake it was again the Apple Macintosh that got there [Music] first in December 1994 Bungie yes the Halo Bungie released a game called marathon on the Mac featuring a full 3d World and making use of a mouse in the process featuring free look you could use the mouse to explore your world fully looking up and down and left and right the thing with marathon is it didn't include default controls to make use of this it's almost like the mouse looking control was designed to be used completely independently to the keyboard controls with doom it wasn't really an issue as you could push the mouse forward to move forward and backwards to move backwards with Marathon you'd have to use the keyboard to move and then attempt to strafe with one hand using the mouse it just wasn't simple some people opted for key configurations such as a s DC with A and S to strafe left and right and d and c to move forwards and backwards a sort of Proto WS a if you like but again being on the Mac it just didn't reach the audiences of PC or console based games the moving like a hammer she's a Miracle Man Ling is thece kissing as the W sand she's got the by the time Quake arrived in 1996 you could also Now look up and down but it wasn't really necessary Gamers had become so used to playing with the keyboard but adding look controls into the equation was just a pain I mean how would you even do that well it turns out by using the same method as strafing just holding down another button and pressing up and down but it's cumbersome and In the Heat of the action that's not what you need so you can use the mouse but this was still an alien concept and you had to enable it using the Quake console open it up type plus M look and then you can use the mouse to look around it's not even a standard option in the game's menu inste the game this was effectively the same as holding down a key if you wanted to play Quake on anything other than easy this was really the only way to do it now you might ask why it wasn't a default option and the reason is simple it's Legacy it's the old adage of sticking to what we're used to John Romero even said it himself when we released Quake I thought Mouse look was too advanced as a default so I made it an option defaulted it on a later update it wouldn't be until Quake 2 when Mouse look would become effectively default and that's when players really started upping their game especially in the online Arena services like BT yre playay allowed users to dial up to servers and engage in huge multiplayer battles you could do this with juk nuk 3D and you could do it with quake and you could do it with quake 2o and the thing that happens with when you have a lot of people playing against each other is some of them get good really good this realm this mixing pot of good players does something it causes other players to come up with ways of making themselves better of leveling up even harder and that means taking a step back looking at methods of control and thinking how can I make this better serve me that's exactly what a gentleman by the name of Dennis thresh Fong did on Monday August the 26th 199 96 The Wall Street Journal featured an article about the first professional gamer thresh short for threshold had been into gaming since the years of muds but it was Quake which really made his senses pop and thresh got good real good on the 27th of August 1996 the San Francisco Examiner reported at the start of a recent computer tournament near here fingers twitched nervously on mice and keyboards as 200 young enthusiasts from around the country waited for the marathon competition to begin suddenly there was a gasp in the hall someone glancing at the roster of entrance by the name but provoked instant fear thresh he exclaimed is he playing another asked soon the room was in Revolt with contestants refusing to play relenting only after thresh agreed to withdraw I'll challenge anyone to a death match said Jason langus a 17-year-old gamer from San Jose who attended the June tournament in Santa Clara except thresh he'll kill me blindfolded and part of a key the thresh's ability was the control setup he had created in a 2019 Vox interview he explained some people use the arrow keys which are on the right hand side of the keyboard and the mouse some people would only use a keyboard some people would use kind of uh a horizontal row so like esdf I found WD on my left hand and then using the mouse on the right hand to be the most comfortable by default the weapons you have to hit the numbers to switch weapons thresh may not not have been the first but he was undoubtedly the most notorious to land on this particular configuration whereas some may have preferred to use esdf as their inverted t or even rdfg WD had the benefit of being close enough to the shift and control keys to use your pinky close enough to the space bar to use your thumb and within easy reach of a number buttons and for most it was perfect people started copying and using wsad and the mouse as their standard key configuration thresh was becoming so well known not just in the Gaming Community but also in the media in general that people wanted to know his secrets and this was one that could be applied to almost everyone this became so well known that by the time Quake 2 did come out not only did it have Mouse look as default but you could also type thresh CFG into the console and immediately use thresh's control setup including sensitivity and speed this Fen was the breeding ground and from here it didn't take long to spread to other FPS games as default controls so when halflife came out in in 1998 using WD and mouse as default the deal was [Music] sealed halflife was such a popular game that the AR keys of old made way and WD took over of course this wasn't the end for the arrow keys other games still made use of them for years and indeed still do but their Podium place was toppled where once they were King they were now just an option just like w ASD had been in the past in a full circular pattern the arrow keys were back where they started serving spreadsheets Word documents and command lines living out their old age in peace just like they should be we still love you Aro Keys we always will thank you for your service until next time I've be Nostalgia nerd toou oh don't forget to check out Star Trek Fleet command in the description [Music] walking like a man hitting like a hammer she's a juvenile scam never was a quit tasted like a rain she's got the [Music] look

Channel: Nostalgia Nerd

Views: 280,150

Keywords: wasd

Id: OkvLHqgqkQI

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2023