descentchampions.org

My mouse hand is completely standard -- The buttons fire weapons, the scroll wheel lays bombs, and the mouse steers. The only nonstandard thing about my mouse is that I'm a Y-flipper. Y-flippers unite!

My keyboard hand looks like this:



Why is it like that? I designed the green part of this setup back in 1998, when Deimos (hi, Deimos!) convinced me that the default keyboard configuration was holding me back. If I'd had money, I would have switched to joystick, which was what all the cool kids used. I didn't, and Deimos was destroying me just fine on mouse, and I had a mouse already, so I switched to mouse. But I wanted to make sure I would never have to change these controls again. One of the drawbacks of the default keyboard configuration is that certain moves, like sliding and turning and rolling the same direction, could be REALLY awkward, and I was starting to feel those limitations. With that fresh in mind, I figured -- one axis per finger. No limitations. Future proof.

I would have figured a setup like that would be really common, but most people find it difficult to be moving all four fingers back and forth all the time. Entropy's the only person I've ever met who did something similar. Anyway. It works for me. I play piano. I'm used to it.

The blue parts have changed a lot over the years. They used to all be over on the left. I've settled on this set in the last couple years. I like the certainty of being able to pick a specific gun rather than thinking about how many cycles away it is.

The yellow bits don't really matter that much and could go anywhere. That bomb key is probably moving because I hit it on accident a lot when I'm maneuvering in a panic. I'm starting to regret combining the burner and rearview. My initial thought was that I don't need rearview in D2, and I don't need burner in D1, so hey! But that rear view has become so essential that I actually do want it in D2. The little postage stamp window doesn't do it for me. In fact, most of the time when I hit my burner in D2, I'm trying to use my mirror. So that will probably change.

(Why are there empty keys on the left? I've scooted this whole setup right and left many times on various keyboards. Back in the day, to find somewhere the core 8 keys could all register at once. Yeah, I had one of those keyboards. I used to do weapon management with my left pinkie, and I still like having pinkie buttons open as options. I change what's in them from time to time. Bomb might go over there. Right now automap and push to talk are in that region. The current left/right position was so that my thumb could comfortably reach the three extra thumb buttons that came with this keyboard, but they turned out to be a bust. Too stiff to be practical. At some point, I'll scoot the whole affair three keys to the right so my thumb can hit the alt for burner in D2...)

Everyone's setups are so crazy and cool and technical... I'd be ashamed to post my older than dirt style! I'll just say I wish the Orb still worked correctly... Mainly cause I feel that setup was cooler and a much more entertaining explanation and post...

I use mouse & keyboard. Razer Mamba/Razer Black Widow Chroma

Keyboard:

Accelerate: F
Reverse: G
Slide Left: D
Slide Right: H
Slide Up: U
Slide Down: J
Bank Left: E
Bank Right: X
Rearview: Spacebar


Mouse:

Left Mouse: Fire Primary

Right Mouse: Fire Secondary

Scroll Up: Select Smart Missiles

Scroll Down: Select Homing Missiles

Mouse Wheel left: Drop Bombs

Mouse6: Fire Flare

Mouse7: Cycle Primary


It's a little strange of a setup, and trichording seems to be difficult, but I've trained my pinky to be pretty versatile

Ok, forward and reverse are F & G **looks at keyboard**
bank left and right are E & X **looks at keyboard again**
Does this hurt anyone else's brain? no? k

(This is my last spam to this thread, honest, sorry...)

FGDH in that setup looks very intelligently optimized for movement in a groundpounder. A better WASD, if you will. Which is pretty cool. The 3D stuff looks grafted on from there. The only odd thing about it is that he's using secondary keys off of important fingers for the two new axes, when his thumb isn't doing anything of importance.

In retrospect, I made the same mistake. If I had mine to do over again, I'd try to put an axis on my thumb and a bunch of utility buttons on my pinkie rather than the other way around. I had the foresight to build my Necrodancer controls that way, putting the four directions on my four strongest fingers (index and middle on both hands). I wish I'd done it that way with my Descent controls. Maybe it's time for a change...

Slide up/down: E/D
Slide left/right: S/F
Bank left/right: W/R
Forward/backward: Space/A
Afterburner (D2): Z
Flare: G
Rear view: Q I think (somehow harder to remember outside of game?)
Bomb: B

Primary/secondary are the main mouse buttons, and mouse does the X/Y turning. I think I flipped the Y axis so it resembles other FPS games - used to have it the other way around but slowly got used to the "regular" model.

I believe this setup was relayed to me by MD-1224 based on what he'd heard of other mousers using (this was back when I was first thinking of playing primarily mouse - 2004/2005 or somewhere around there). I didn't want to have to mess around with binding caps lock or shift, so I moved the keys one column over to make room for reverse. Used pinky for that because reversing is a relatively less common operation in Descent; the afterburner choice was a bit weird but it just worked out being easier to get used to... and my pinky finger eventually got stronger anyway.

The reason I moved to mouse was mostly because, while I used to use joystick, it got harder and harder to find a good one in the mid-2000s. I had a Saitek Cyborg Evo, which I used for MechWarrior 4, but it was stiff enough that it wore out my arm trying to play a hectic Descent game for any length of time, so I wanted a lower-energy setup I could just sort of cruise with if I didn't need to be really good for that game. Eventually, of course, I got better with mouse than I ever was with joystick, but the config was still pretty good so I stuck with it. It does have the weakness that I need to contort my fingers to bank in a dogfight, but that's probably the least bad thing to be left without. I think I heard of someone (might have been MD? Not sure) experimenting with foot pedals to overcome that, but I couldn't really be bothered going that far. If I'm later convinced I need it I might try using mouse thumb buttons for the purpose; I don't really have that finger put to good use right now (just push to talk... which can be overlapped safely).

Mark,
http://www.thingotron.com/

They're making another run of Orbotron's that allow the orb to work as USB device. I was thinking about grabbing one, but not really trying to resurrect my old orb.

@Drakona:
Someone should make you an input devices with four sliders on it for your keyboard hand. That setup should work perfectly with four analog inputs....
Hmm, about the thumb thing, how about:
ASQW on pinky for weapon selection
ED for roll
RF for up and down
TG for left and right
VB for forwards/backwards (and N for afterburner - if only the afterburner actually, well, did forwards at the same time)

I may have to give that a shot seeing as I'm rusty at the moment anyway....


On a side note: I did once learn to play using three 2-axis joysticks (one was a gamepad stuck to the desk, driving both analog sticks with the left hand. The right hand had a joystick with the shoot and cycle-weapon buttons on it. A full 6-axis-analog-control. I don't think I did multiplayer at that time, but made it through some of the single player like that. It was more an experiment than a serious attempt to use it.

I am currently looking at developing a 6DOF input device tuned for Descent.It uses both hands, one for rotation, one for translation with buttons exactly under the fingers. You never need to move your fingers from one button to another or put an axis of motion onto buttons. It's pretty much a dual-joystick setup, but one where the translation motions make sense (and you don't have to hold your hand suspended mid-air all game either)

PFunky! I have one of those adapters, and I can't get it to make the Orb game working. But it shows up as a controller when I plug it in lol

I still really want to try the SpaceOrb