I’m left handed. I manipulate the mouse (trackball, actually) with my left hand. This means all default controls suck.
Most games are nice enough to include key-bind customization. This is good! A lot of games (including most AAA games) don’t extend this to menu controls, including reversing the mouse buttons so I get to pinky-click my way though the main menu.
The best ones are games that feature engines where I can alter the config files and customize my keybinds there. This usually allows me to make it comprehensive.
Some games dont what to differentiate between numpad arrows and the editing arrows (the island). Locking numlodk helps. I’ll use Autohotkey to lock down numlock, rebind the numpad enter (to differentiate it from the Return key) and to map the numlock, and scroll-lock islands to letters I can rebind.
Some companies give no fucks, and expect me to use a default controller. Note that controllers are right-handed, so I don’t like them. Again, Autohotkey solves this relatively well, or I choose not to bother with that game.
It also raises interface questions. In Thief: The Dark Project walk forward (quiet), sneak forward (very quiet) and run forward (loud) were single buttons. A lot of games make sprinting a chord to forward unnecessarily. (It makes more sense when the sprint modifier affects all directional movement, or as per the awesome button in Saints Row, The Third
I also like a designated grenade button, and will macro select grenade with fire-selected weapon to make one. I may deselect the grenade and select previous weapon in the same macro if I’m feeling fancy. In Left-4-Dead I made heal-other and toss-pills hotkeys to make them second nature.
So yeah, game controls are wierd, and I think it would serve us all to get in the habit of customizing them exactly as we like, to complain about games with rigid controls or sucky schemes, and praise games that are easy to play and don’t kill us by interface failure. (see Death by Ladder).
You should get familiar with Steam Input, works for the majority of steam games (and even non-steam if added), you can do some crazy things with it, bind hotkeys to menus, do mode shifts to have a totally different control layout if you’re holding a button, it’s honestly incredible and you can make pretty much any game playable on any controller, even M+KB only games
What the hell man? You use your mouse with a left hand? That sounds like a great way to make the whole gaming experience suck for you. I’m left handed too and I almsot started using mouse with left hand as a kid until my brother pointed out that every public computer and software are made with right handed mouse in mind so I didn:'t do thst switch and god I’m glad I didn’t. I’m using mouse with right hand just as well as I use pen with left hand
Quite the opposite. There are ambidextrous trackballs and the number-pad is better for gaming, IMO the WASD region of the main keyboard. I use th3 arrow island either to select weapons or to chord with keys for special purposes.
Interestingly they make keypads to better organize the left hand of the keyboard, but separate numberpads that include the editing islands are almost unheard of, but I generally use a mechanical keyboard for gaming anyway.
Curiously, I do use a joystick right-handed, the product of playing flight sims and space sims ( Wing Commander, X-Wing, etc.) on a buddy’s computer, but once I was using mouse and keyboard, I swapped.
I mean you make some good points, but being lefty is already so hard I cant imagine configuring every games keybindings, sounds like a lot of work :D it would be interesting to try some leftie setup but I cant really do it with my mouse because of the curvature
Yes. While this applies to most applications, it’s not consistent between games. Ubisoft games, for instance, are notorious for their menu systems failing notice a system-set button reversal. In those cases I can set the R-button for primary fire / select and the L-button for secondary (Hacker-vision in Watch Dogs 2, for instance, since I aim / use iron-sights with Numpad-5) but any in-game menus still require an unreversible left-click, which I have to either deal with or work around.
I’m left handed. I manipulate the mouse (trackball, actually) with my left hand. This means all default controls suck.
Most games are nice enough to include key-bind customization. This is good! A lot of games (including most AAA games) don’t extend this to menu controls, including reversing the mouse buttons so I get to pinky-click my way though the main menu.
The best ones are games that feature engines where I can alter the config files and customize my keybinds there. This usually allows me to make it comprehensive.
Some games dont what to differentiate between numpad arrows and the editing arrows (the island). Locking numlodk helps. I’ll use Autohotkey to lock down numlock, rebind the numpad enter (to differentiate it from the Return key) and to map the numlock, and scroll-lock islands to letters I can rebind.
Some companies give no fucks, and expect me to use a default controller. Note that controllers are right-handed, so I don’t like them. Again, Autohotkey solves this relatively well, or I choose not to bother with that game.
It also raises interface questions. In Thief: The Dark Project walk forward (quiet), sneak forward (very quiet) and run forward (loud) were single buttons. A lot of games make sprinting a chord to forward unnecessarily. (It makes more sense when the sprint modifier affects all directional movement, or as per the awesome button in Saints Row, The Third
I also like a designated grenade button, and will macro select grenade with fire-selected weapon to make one. I may deselect the grenade and select previous weapon in the same macro if I’m feeling fancy. In Left-4-Dead I made heal-other and toss-pills hotkeys to make them second nature.
So yeah, game controls are wierd, and I think it would serve us all to get in the habit of customizing them exactly as we like, to complain about games with rigid controls or sucky schemes, and praise games that are easy to play and don’t kill us by interface failure. (see Death by Ladder).
You should get familiar with Steam Input, works for the majority of steam games (and even non-steam if added), you can do some crazy things with it, bind hotkeys to menus, do mode shifts to have a totally different control layout if you’re holding a button, it’s honestly incredible and you can make pretty much any game playable on any controller, even M+KB only games
What the hell man? You use your mouse with a left hand? That sounds like a great way to make the whole gaming experience suck for you. I’m left handed too and I almsot started using mouse with left hand as a kid until my brother pointed out that every public computer and software are made with right handed mouse in mind so I didn:'t do thst switch and god I’m glad I didn’t. I’m using mouse with right hand just as well as I use pen with left hand
Quite the opposite. There are ambidextrous trackballs and the number-pad is better for gaming, IMO the WASD region of the main keyboard. I use th3 arrow island either to select weapons or to chord with keys for special purposes.
Interestingly they make keypads to better organize the left hand of the keyboard, but separate numberpads that include the editing islands are almost unheard of, but I generally use a mechanical keyboard for gaming anyway.
Curiously, I do use a joystick right-handed, the product of playing flight sims and space sims ( Wing Commander, X-Wing, etc.) on a buddy’s computer, but once I was using mouse and keyboard, I swapped.
I mean you make some good points, but being lefty is already so hard I cant imagine configuring every games keybindings, sounds like a lot of work :D it would be interesting to try some leftie setup but I cant really do it with my mouse because of the curvature
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Yes. While this applies to most applications, it’s not consistent between games. Ubisoft games, for instance, are notorious for their menu systems failing notice a system-set button reversal. In those cases I can set the R-button for primary fire / select and the L-button for secondary (Hacker-vision in Watch Dogs 2, for instance, since I aim / use iron-sights with Numpad-5) but any in-game menus still require an unreversible left-click, which I have to either deal with or work around.