My recordings are done in a full screen Command prompt with DOSKey and Novert enabled. I use the keyboard and mouse combination, and have changed my key and button configurations than once already, to tackle small issues present in previous settings. The mouse is always a standard serial two-button model, sensitivity set to 9; the "Standard Serial Mouse" driver on Windows 98 gives it some acceleration, making it good for play (and the neat thing is that it doesn't break Doom when in the Options menu.)
One of the things I've been avoiding is using any of the keys automatically reserved by Doom for the automap and chatting (otherwise there are issues when doing stuff in automap mode or during multi-player.) Till recently I had been using the following setup:
Forward: | Right mouse |
---|---|
Backward: | MACRO |
Turn Left: | A |
Turn Right: | Z |
Use: | W |
Fire: | Left mouse |
Speed on: | Space |
Strafe on: | S |
Strafe Left: | E |
Strafe Right: | D |
The "MACRO" key is on the lower left corner, beside "Control". Actually, "Control" was the key I set when using my standard keyboard, but this other cheap keyboard had that key in the way, which was bound to code 0 according to Doom. The lower left key was pressed with the left hand edge of my palm.
Since it saved me from using up fingers on back/forward movements and it used keys near the top, this older setup gave me easy access to the weapon keys. But it had two pretty big drawbacks, and thus eventually inspired the courage to switch to my current settings. The first bad thing was that the keys I was using all the time were right next to the "Q" key. At least my standard keyboard has removable keys, and I'd get rid of the key when recording longer demos. But still, removing the key all the time was bothersome and sometimes I'd forget. The other thing was that the mouse bound forward function (automatically tied to a double-click use action) would sometimes make me close doors on my face as I crept forward.
The demos recorded on the P166 (Comedian, RIP) were all done with the older setup. When I rebuilt my main computer (Demoniac) I got to work on changing it (taking advantage of a short playing hiatus.)
Looking for a better setup I noticed that for some reason on my keyboard certain combinations involving more than two keys did not work, which under certain configuration attempts made strafe50 running or even simple strafe running not possible in certain directions. I wanted these to work in any direction or sense and didn't want to enable autorun (it's what I deem a "pure" setup), so it was even harder to get something optimal. And here is my current setup:
Forward: | D |
---|---|
Backward: | X |
Turn Left: | Control |
Turn Right: | Shift |
Use: | A |
Fire: | Left mouse |
Speed on: | Space |
Strafe on: | Right mouse |
Strafe Left: | Z |
Strafe Right: | S |
In this case back/forth and left/right movements are each done by a single finger, with the index on run and the pinky for use.
Even though strafe50 running will work all four ways, on one of the strafe run directions use won't work in combination; but fortunately double-clicking the mouse functions properly in that case. All in all, this setup is within a relatively comfortable reach of the weapon and automap keys without normally lingering over the quit key.