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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: kurplop on Sat, 21 July 2012, 10:55:33

Title: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: kurplop on Sat, 21 July 2012, 10:55:33

Would somebody explain the reason why many keyboard enthusiasts highlight the WASD keys on their keyboards?

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: Djuzuh on Sat, 21 July 2012, 10:56:41

because most games use those to move around.

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: kurplop on Sat, 21 July 2012, 10:59:37

A big thank you from a non gamer.

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: alaricljs on Sat, 21 July 2012, 11:01:16

They are the left-handed version of the inverted-T arrow cursors used for many games.  esdf is also popular but came later when people realized more keys to the left could be handy.

edit: and that would have been posted sooner if I wasn't fighting with an over-zealous proxy at work.

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: Nutriment on Sat, 21 July 2012, 11:05:15

I don't know, I've been using ESDF since Quake and I don't think I'll be changing soon. Also, I don't have any special keycaps on them or whatever.

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: FourtyFoxes on Sat, 21 July 2012, 12:22:10

i feel like its still ultimately just for looks. i mean if you're playing a game do you ever forget where the wasd keys are and have to look down for them?
all it really seems to do is show other people that you use the keyboard for gaming.

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: All The Fire on Sun, 22 July 2012, 03:49:06

I went off WSAD a while ago and EDSF didn't really fix the problem, so I went right on over to RFDG. This got me far enough away from using shift and tab in games so as not to clash with going into the steam overlay, but no so far as to run out of buttons for my pinky before hitting the space bar, Z is now shift and I have W and E instead of tab, unfortunately ALT started causing other problems and I've now taught my pinky to be able to go between Z and X quite easily.

I also find WASD weird to say, I've always said up, down, left, right and so I've also always said WSAD, probably because it's the more common order they appear in control lists.

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: stingrae on Sun, 22 July 2012, 06:50:01

tis not fun being an alternative layout in pc gaming :( very few games take raw input. Also colemak wins here :p WARS! Well as said it actually ends up being wras on game input screens...

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: longweight on Sun, 22 July 2012, 07:41:32

I have no idea why people choose to pick them out though, I use WASD but I wouldn't ever use a different colour for them.

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: dorkvader on Sun, 22 July 2012, 16:36:51

Dvorak really fails in games that won't let you map punctuation keys (nexuiz, I'm looking at you), as you'll end up with ,aoe or .oeu (for WASD and ESDF).

I wanted to get differently coloured ,aoe or .oeu keys, for the irony of it, but I don't want to actually pay for that. :p

Title: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: Lanx on Mon, 23 July 2012, 04:55:08

i prefer ESDF, cuz i like the F-nub telling me where i'm at.

Title: Re: Re: What's the deal with the letters WASD?
Post by: TheProfosist on Mon, 23 July 2012, 05:09:03

Quote from: longweight on Sun, 22 July 2012, 07:41:32

I have no idea why people choose to pick them out though, I use WASD but I wouldn't ever use a different colour for them.

you should get some texture for them instead then wasd keyboards now have that available