i'm getting sick of non-rebindable movement keys...

[Deleted]

it's become a trend lately, mainly in flash games, but also in other games, to make some or even all keys permanently bound to a certain button. i personally use an AZERTY keyboard, but most games default to a QWERTY keyboard. this means that when a game forces me to use WSAD, it basically becomes unplayable, because that's 3 different rows of keys I need to use. and i don't want to change my keyboard input setup to QWERTY every time i want to play those games.

a VERY recent example: the Kingdoms of Amalur demo. I get into the game, press Z to move... and the character doesn't respond. I go and check the keybindings (which as usual are somewhat deeply hidden in the menu) and i cannot find a way to rebind them. that's just sad, why include the option to change your keybindings if you don't allow to rebind the most important ones? i encounter this problem in other games, mostly flash games, but this is actually the first mainstream game i've encountered this issue.

are there any easy fixes?

[Edge-]

Sadly...not that I know of. This is one reason why I hate trashy console ports : /

[Deleted]

Azerty keyboard? Why do you use that? You can't really expect developers of small flash games to implement functions to rebind keys just because 1 out of 10k people has exotic key layout.

btw, you can rebind keys in your OS or you can get cheap qwerty keyboard.

realistically, it's 1 function that you need to add if you go smart about it. and did you know there is a QWERTY and a QWERTZ? and that some people actually prefer to use IJKL or ESDF for gaming because it gives them more options? and that there is an entire market of Asian people out there that use keyboards that don't even look like QWERTY?

and i use AZERTY because i'm Belgian. it's just like you watch FOX instead of BBC, they're aimed at different countries. and i'm not going to relearn an entire keyboard setup and lose my 200+ APM typing because some flash games don't support rebinding keys.

[Ynna]

Azerty keyboard? Why do you use that? You can't really expect developers of small flash games to implement functions to rebind keys just because 1 out of 10k people has exotic key layout.

btw, you can rebind keys in your OS or you can get cheap qwerty keyboard.

There's different keyboard around the world. Over here it's pretty hard to find a PC with an QWERTY keyboard.

OT: A simple work-around is pressing ALT + SHIFT. This changes the layout of your keyboard to QWERTY. It's not optimal, but it works.

[cherb]

realistically, it's 1 function that you need to add if you go smart about it. and did you know there is a QWERTY and a QWERTZ? and that some people actually prefer to use IJKL or ESDF for gaming because it gives them more options? and that there is an entire market of Asian people out there that use keyboards that don't even look like QWERTY?

and i use AZERTY because i'm Belgian. it's just like you watch FOX instead of BBC, they're aimed at different countries. and i'm not going to relearn an entire keyboard setup and lose my 200+ APM typing because some flash games don't support rebinding keys.

Well, just like you watch BBC instead of Fox, maybe these companies designing flash games are based in the U.S., or target markets who primarily use the standard QWERTY setup?

[Neeshka]

unless you speak a different language why would anyone ever use something other than wasd for movement ?
@op: it's unreasonable to expect flash games catering to such a small minority; most big games like cod/sc2/wow have keybinds that are fully customizable.

[ihateyouall]

Thought someone made a utility just for this purpose of remapping keys in programs that don't have key-remapping as a feature... Can't remember the name of it though.

[Athorha]

200+ APM

200 key presses a min... good job there bud

[Caiada]

All buttons should be remappable, in all games, regardless of platform, except in very rare instances where the gameplay depends on a specific setup. Two I can think of are SS and Katamari Damacy. Flash games, whatever, they don't matter, but a payed and traditional game? Should be completely remappable. It hurts gamers with disabilities, saves people from some stupid default setups, and frankly is just a huge inconvenience for everyone. Whether the game is a port or not is irrelevant. This should've been standard generations ago.

---------- Post added 2012-01-19 at 05:20 PM ----------

200 key presses a min... good job there bud

No offense meant to that guy, but that's the average end of the competitive RTS spectrum.

[Deleted]

when i mean 200 APM, i mean the speed at which i can type a normal text like this. during my high school period (2K2-2K8) we got special training in a program called typ-top as part of our business education. around 2K2, i had a measly 45 APM typing speed (which means i didn't type much faster than people who type with their index fingers). around 2K4-2K5, that had already risen to 225-250 APM (as a comparison, a justice secretary in Netherlands needs about 200 APM, and the norm in Belgium for leaving high-school is 130 for normal jobs and 150 for heavily computerized jobs).

[Mechazod]

Try using JoyToKey.

[Zeta333]

I know i dont use WASD for movement and since darkforces on DOS iv used DZXC. Always a pain to play on friends pcs.

[Deleted]

200 APM.. Woow.. O__O

I'm at about 50-60.

[even]

200 APM != 200 keyboard types on the keyboard. :>

[Deleted]

Oh, I just realized that we were talking about APM, I can do about 60 WPM.

[Rhywolver]

Somehow I knew you made this thread because you were pissed at the Kingdoms of Amalur demo. I have no idea what those guys were thinking, but hey, it's just a demo.
Wow, AZERTY keyboard. And I thought my QWERTZ keyboard is bad for some games (Z attack 1, X attack 2 for example). But that ALT + SHIFT is a good workaround.

[Deleted]

on a similar vein, the same day i tried the QUBE demo, and that was even worse: there was no option for rebinding any keys at all, and it was rigged to qwerty.

and APM is a remainder of my dutch heritage: "keystrokes per minute" is called "Aanslagen Per Minuut". most countries use words instead of single letters, but single letters is actually more reliable because words in different languages have different average length. 250 APM is about 50 WPM, depending on your language.

[Meledelion]

slightly off topic but you touched on it.

Personally I play with edsf (although bound a bit weird s is left, d is forward, f is right and E is backwards; to me it's more natural since when i'm typing my hand is on one line anyways as opposed to using e to go forward and d backwards) simply due to the fact that i can reach/bind way more keys if I move with edsf.
I simply can't grasp why you'd use wsad.

I also have an azerty board, but I'm used to typing qwerty, I've even used qwertz for a while hurray for imported german stuff
Qwerty doesn't bug me, but not being able to rebind is just horrid.