This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.

GeekNights 070807 - FPS Key Bindings

RymRym
edited August 2007 in Everything Else
Tonight on GeekNights, we talk a bit about the FPSing setups we use. In the news, ID busts out on Steam, and Best Buy makes a small error.
Scott's Thing - Cardboard Bridge

Rym's Thing - History Bites Rap
«1

Comments

  • The episode is fucked up.
  • How so?  I'm listening to it right now.
  • It's only a piece of an episode.
  • Is it because they cut out the "special" bit, or are you having other problems? Mine's iTunesing right now, I'll get back to you.
  • Meh... Please don't do an ep like this again.

    I'm going to guess that next week you will be reviewing Mario Strykers?
  • Meh... Please don't do an ep like this again.
    Why?  Because the episode was bad, or just because you don't care about the topic?
  • I was bored to tears hearing you guys talk about FPS key bindings. The only highlight was the bit you cut out and placed on its own. Now that was good stuff!

    I did not know where the catsup thing came from. The deli next to my office puts catsup on the egg sandwiches.

    As for Doom... There used to be a dial-in service where you paid money to play Doom online. I do not remember the name of it as I only used it as a free trial. I don't see why you couldn't try to mimic that service somehow.

    Correct me if I am wrong (I have not played Doom in years) but didn't Doom use IPX/SPX or some other weird networking system? There were only a few games back then that embraced TCP/IP for the networking of multi-player action.

    I also purchased a book way back then with all sorts of softwares for making custom doom wads. Doom was always all about the multi-player. Those who think otherwise are only fooling themselves or have no friends. As for Doom not being good enough because the new games have so much more to offer, let me say that sometimes you want to play a game with less buttons and things to worry about. I enjoyed playing Doom because I could use my four button Gravis GamePad and ignore the keyboard.
  • I played Doom deathmatch with my 33.6kbps modem by dialing into my friends' PCs, or over serial cables in my house (with a null modem).
    I used to hack extensively at Doom.  I know all about the linedefs and sidedefs, the texture pegging, sector definitions, and active frames.  I liked dehacked for game-mechanics tweaking and Waded for level editing.  (Sadly, Waded was an unstable piece of crap despite having the best interface of all of them).
  • Doom did indeed use IPX for LAN play.  There have been ports, wrappers, and shells over the years that allowed IP play, and they've worked with varying degrees of success.
  • As for Doom not being good enough because the new games have so much more to offer, let me say that sometimes you want to play a game with less buttons and things to worry about. I enjoyed playing Doom because I could use my four button Gravis GamePad and ignore the keyboard.
    Serious Sam 2 is the game you want. It even runs on Linux. Also, I used to try to play Doom with a Gravis GamePad. It's unplayable compared to keyboard/mouse.
  • For some odd reason iTunes didn't pick this up, however it picked up the Special. The special was awesome. I really do enjoy your arguments. I've been putting catsup (ketchup) on my eggs since the beginning of time. When I was a kid I would eat catsup with just rice. It was one of my favorite dishes. Don't ask me why, I can't do it anymore, but for some reason it was just awesome.
  • Also, I used to try to play Doom with a Gravis GamePad. It's unplayable compared to keyboard/mouse.
    You were obviously doing it wrong then. The Gravis GamePad (four button and control pad) was made for Doom. You set one button to strafe, one to run, one to shoot and one to cycle weapons. What other buttons do you need?
  • Also, I used to try to play Doom with a Gravis GamePad. It's unplayable compared to keyboard/mouse.
    You were obviously doing it wrong then. The Gravis GamePad (four button and control pad) was made for Doom. You set one button to strafe, one to run, one to shoot and one to cycle weapons. What other buttons do you need?
    Holding a button for strafe sucks ass. Having a strafe-toggle button makes it impossible to strafe while simultaneously rotating my aim to the left or right. Losing that ability makes any fps basically unplayable.
  • The idea behind strafing is that you do not turn while shooting but instead move left and right. I don't know what you are talking about but it is not strafing!

    Essentially you get your guy to face the correct direction and hold down the strafe button. You then move in font of the doorway and fire (holding down the strafe button). This way you can move left and right infront of the doorway/opening while still sending your shots in the desired direction.

    It sounds like you are talking about locking onto a target and running circles around it the way you do in Zelda TP with the Z-lock.
  • The idea behind strafing is that you do not turn while shooting but instead move left and right. I don't know what you are talking about but it is not strafing!
    If you're not strafing and moving the reticule at the same time, you're losing.
  • edited August 2007
    There was no reticule in Doom. Please remember, my comments in this thread about strafing have been about Doom and Doom alone.
    Post edited by HMTKSteve on
  • Ok, so let's say there's an imp there. He's throwing fireballs at you. You want to keep him in front of you so you can constantly shoot him. You also don't want to get hit by his fireballs. How do you do this? You strafe left and right to dodge the fireballs using two keys on your keyboard. You simultaneously use your mouse to control your aim and shoot, so you are always hitting the imp with your bullets no matter how far right or left you move.

    Here's another situation. You are going down a hallway and there is a 90 degree turn, in other words an L. There is a chaingun guy around the corner who will shoot you. If you walk straight out into the open, then rotate 90 degrees, you will spend a lot of time in a vulnerable position before you can hit him. So you strafe, walking to the side while keeping your facing straight down the hallway. If it's a narrow hallway, or if the guy is hugging the inside wall, that's fine. But what if the guy is hugging the outside wall? You won't know where he is until you go over there. The solution is to strafe into the opening while still controlling your aim separately so that you can shoot at enemies no matter where they are in the hallway.

    These are fps fundamentals. If you aren't able to grasp concepts like this, then you have never truly played an fps.
  • RymRym
    edited August 2007
    Probably the most fundamental concept in Doom deathmatch is "circle strafing."  You have to be able to strafe, which is a movement, while simultaneously aiming, a non-moving action.  You should also be moving either forward or backward while doing both of the above.
    By having dedicated strafe keys independent of your aiming method is critical.
    Post edited by Rym on
  • I had posted a longer, and I hoped, insightful comment about this, but lost it when I got distracted by work (at work, go figure) and timed out.

    My feeling about the whole inverted up/down access thing is that a lot of it depends on the circumstances in which our expectations about certain things are formed. Being a bit older, and, I suspect, a lot more rural than Rym and Scott, my expectations about the up/down access behavior of weapons was formed while holding actual weapons rather than playing flight simulators or FPSes. When you fire a rifle from your shoulder it does not have an inverted up/down access; however, if you put the same weapon on a bi-pod or some other sort of mount/support, it suddenly does have an inverted up/down access.

    For instance in the Halo demo (never played the full game, insert long rant about Bungie sellout, long wait for game previously "almost done" for the Macintosh and vow never to buy any part of the franchise (even though, in retrospect, had I been them I probably would have taken the money too...)) my expectations are that when I am on foot the up/down access should not be inverted for aiming the carried weapon, whereas in the Warthog, firing the big mounted gun from the gunner position, I do expect the up/down access to be inverted. It's definitely not a muscle memory situation, as a mouse has a very different interface than an actual rifle, shotgun, pistol, etc. so it all seems to hearken back to the situation where my expectations were first formed.
  • Perhaps I never played FPS games to the extent you two have is why I have not developed these techniques. I did play plenty of Doom while I was stationed in Germany and we never used the keyboard back then unless we had too. I did not think that the Doom engine allowed you to move in one direction while twisting around. I only remember using the strafe button to effectively lock yourself in facing a given direction so that the control pad moved you left, right, back and forward while your body never turned.

    We did this in Deathmatch when a room was long or running towards a person while in a corridor. As long as our aiming point was ahead of us we would just move side to side shooting the entire time. Now I will have to dig out my Doom CD roms and play the game again...
  • edited August 2007
    The more I think back didn't Doom come out around 1992? When I was in Germany most of the guys who had computers made them from scratch and did not run windows. Because of this we did not own mice for our computers. Instead we looked for the best serial/game port joystick we could find for our gaming.

    When did you guys begin playing the Doom type games? Am I just a relic from the pre-mouse days?

    Note: I did not purchase computer with "windows" until 1995.
    Post edited by HMTKSteve on
  • The first computer I played Doom on was my friend's 286 which ran MS-DOS and had a two button ball mouse. The first PC that was in my house was an IBM Aptiva 486 DX4 100mhz which had PC-DOS, Windows 3.1 and OS/2 Warp. That computer also used 2-button PS/2 ball mice. The next computer, the first one I owned personally, was a Pentium 3 450mhz with a TNT2 AGP graphics card. This was where I first played truly 3d games, and it had a Logitech Wingman gaming mouse, which I still have. Three big buttons, USB and an over-sized ball.

    If anyone out there wants to learn how to control a modern FPS properly, I highly suggest you get Half-Life 1 and beat it on normal difficulty using the default control scheme. If you like that, then do Half-Life 2.
  • The funny thing is that for us "old timers" when mice came out we scoffed at them. It was not until windows 3.11 hit hard that most of us began using mice.

    When you live by the console prompt a mouse serves no purpose.
  • If you eat strange bread, drink good wine and food, and like to spice up your food . . . you're a conformist in my world. POTATOES! CHICKEN!
  • The funny thing is that for us "old timers" when mice came out we scoffed at them. It was not until windows 3.11 hit hard that most of us began using mice.

    When you live by the console prompt a mouse serves no purpose.
    Even today I use the mouse as little as possible, but it is a necessary tool that does make many computing tasks much easier. And when it comes to aiming in an fps, it is indispensable. Aiming is not a discrete input, so using a discrete input mechanism like a keyboard to control it is extremely sub-optimal. It goes both ways though. Deleting a file is a discrete input, using a non-discrete input mechanism like a mouse to perform that task is highly sub-optimal.
  • Serious Sam 2 is the game you want.
    Just so you know, Serious Sam 2 is on Gametap for anyone who uses that. It's under action or somesuch.
  • Hey Rym and Scott,

    Love you guys generally - but this bit about comparing the mouse/keyboard to the gamepads gave me the sh1ts cause there is no comparison. Nothing needs to be said. I don't know who you were trying to convince, please tell me there aren't people in the world that reckon a gamepad is theoretically better. It's definitely fun, but technically there is no comparison, mouse and keyboard wins everytime. Its like debating whether the sun rises from the east.

    And if there are people in the world that reckon the gamepad is better, then let them keep enjoying their sorry state.
  • Nothing needs to be said. I don't know who you were trying to convince, please tell me there aren't people in the world that reckon a gamepad is theoretically better. It's definitely fun, but technically there is no comparison, mouse and keyboard wins everytime. Its like debating whether the sun rises from the east.

    And if there are people in the world that reckon the gamepad is better, then let them keep enjoying their sorry state.
    Just ask any "serious" console gamer. They are all delusional.
  • This keyboard/mouse vs. gamepad argument makes me want to kick whoever decide that Halo 2 will not have cross-platform in the balls, because that would've given us some hard evidence on which format is the best. Granted there are other games that supports cross-platform play, oh well. Also granted, pitting a totally keyboard/mouse noob against a veteran gamepad player or vice versa is not the best way to see which is best.
    So far I personally do not see the use of me having the entire iD Collection, since I already have most of the "current-gen"/"modern"/how ever the hell classify a "generation" of PC games. Hopefully the idea of inputting your retail cd-key of like Doom 3 into your Steam account will come through. I may get hounded at for saying the first sentence [of this paragraph], but who cares, I'm just happy with the Commander Keen collection.
     
  • I agree with Steve. It wasn't a bad topic, you just went about 30 minutes too long on it.
Sign In or Register to comment.