Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Older FPS games: mouse aim yes/no?

Full mouse aim in Doom yes/no?

  • Full mouse aim

    Votes: 39 48.1%
  • No vertical mouse movement

    Votes: 25 30.9%
  • Very old school and use only keyboard

    Votes: 15 18.5%
  • I don't play old FPS games, Doom 2016 is best

    Votes: 1 1.2%

  • Total voters
    81

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
Loaded up some Dark Forces today and played the first couple levels. There's a config setup recommended on most sites that adds up/down mouse aim and whatnot, and so does the DarkXL port. Other ports for Doom, Duke and the rest have similar options. I like to stick to locked vertical aim though, as I feel it's what the games were mostly designed for and reduces the warping effect when looking up and down.

Which setup do you use for Doom, Dark Forces, Duke 3D, etc...
 

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
Doom is a keyboard-only game for me. It was made for that and works flawlessly that way. Same thing with the Build Engine games, although those already have a lot more verticality, so using a mouse would make sense there.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,404
Location
Djibouti
Keyboard only. I'm incapable of playing Doom and Build games with the mouse - each time I try, I fumble and stumble until I give up. Must be some weird force of habit, since that's how I played them for the first time back in the day too.
 

schru

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
I always try to stick to the original control schemes, so only horizontal mouselook in Doom, keyboard keys for looking up and down in Dark Forces, full mouselook in Build games (since it was always an option in those), no mouselook mod for System Shock, hold down right-mouse button for vertical look in Quake.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
Patron
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Full. The warp effect is annoying, but it's less annoying than an enemy slightly above or below you shooting you to pieces without you being able to get him. It sounds stupid, but it feels best to play with full mouse aim and simply avoid looking up and down too much.That is, for games where you're supposed to be able to look up and down.
 
Last edited:

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Full unless the game is very definitely broken by looking up and down (not just didn't allow that originally), then at least horizontal.
If I wanted to LARP a tank I would have played a tank sim.

In System Shock 1 specifically I bind a button for quickly changing between mouselook and original control scheme for max flexibility.

Pretty much the only 3D FPP game I can can stomach without some sort of mouselook is Terra Nova: SFC, and that's only because I don't know of any mod for that.

Doom is a keyboard-only game for me. It was made for that and works flawlessly that way. Same thing with the Build Engine games, although those already have a lot more verticality, so using a mouse would make sense there.
Doom v1.8 README.TXT said:
TIP: When you're comfortable playing the game, try using the
keyboard and the mouse simultaneously. The mouse provides
fine control for aiming your weapon (allowing you to
smoothly rotate right and left) while the keyboard permits
you to activate the many useful functions of the game.
Glorious PC Master Race.
+M
 

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
Doom v1.8 README.TXT said:
TIP: When you're comfortable playing the game, try using the
keyboard and the mouse simultaneously. The mouse provides
fine control for aiming your weapon (allowing you to
smoothly rotate right and left) while the keyboard permits
you to activate the many useful functions of the game.
Glorious PC Master Race.
+M
I know it had mouse support and Romero himself prefers that. Keyboard-only was the way I and everyone I knew used to play it back in the day, and the gameplay was tighter than a nun's asshole. I never liked how movement was originally mapped to the Y axis. Same with Duke 3D and Quake.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Doom v1.8 README.TXT said:
TIP: When you're comfortable playing the game, try using the
keyboard and the mouse simultaneously. The mouse provides
fine control for aiming your weapon (allowing you to
smoothly rotate right and left) while the keyboard permits
you to activate the many useful functions of the game.
Glorious PC Master Race.
+M
I know it had mouse support and Romero himself prefers that. Keyboard-only was the way I and everyone I knew used to play it back in the day, and the gameplay was tighter than a nun's asshole. I never liked how movement was originally mapped to the Y axis. Same with Duke 3D and Quake.
Enshrining n00bness is just that.
 

janior

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Nov 9, 2015
Messages
3,615
Location
Café del Mar
the only accaptable controller to play OLDSCHOOL fps, if you dont use it, you're a pleb
Guitar_Hero_World_Tour_Guitar_Controller_PS3.png
 

schru

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
While adding vertical mouse-look to shooters that didn't originally have it might not make so much difference for the gameplay because of the vertical autoaim they had, circle-strafing in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom engine games poses a much more serious question.

Default control schemes assigned forward, backward, turn left, and turn right movements to the arrow keys, but strafing was either placed farther away, assigned to < and > keys which would be uncomfortable to use if playing with a mouse, or performed by holding down Alt or the second mouse-button, which caused the turn left, turn right, and the mouse movements to result in strafing. With such a scheme, circle-strafing was basically impossible to perform or at least very inconvenient, if the < > keys were used in combination with left and right arrows.

Those games play significantly different without circle-strafing, being harder but I'd also say less enjoyable. So the question is, did anyone play it with circle-strafing back in the day? How early did people figure out that reconfiguring the bindings to put forward and backward together with strafing keys allows for much more versatile movement?
 

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
Default control schemes assigned forward, backward, turn left, and turn right movements to the arrow keys, but strafing was either placed farther away, assigned to < and > keys which would be uncomfortable to use if playing with a mouse, or performed by holding down Alt or the second mouse-button, which caused the turn left, turn right, and the mouse movements to result in strafing. With such a scheme, circle-strafing was basically impossible to perform or at least very inconvenient, if the < > keys were used in combination with left and right arrows.

Those games play significantly different without circle-strafing, being harder but I'd also say less enjoyable. So the question is, did anyone play it with circle-strafing back in the day? How early did people figure out that reconfiguring the bindings to put forward and backward together with strafing keys allows for much more versatile movement?
There were probably countless of different control schemes people used. Here's a Quake thread from 1997.

Anyway, circle-strafing is doable with the default controls in quite many games. Firing your gun is usually mapped to the Ctrl key, and you've got two of them. With a keyboard-only setup, you could easily use the strafe keys (which in Doom would be comma and period), Right Ctrl and spacebar (used for opening doors etc.) with your left hand and the arrow keys with your right. You could replace the arrow keys with the mouse and it'd work just as well, as the mouse and the arrow keys shared the same functions.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
I'm playing the original Dark Forces through DosBox and am using a typical WASD setup. If you had a mouse back then, you could do the same. Not saying very many did of course...
 

AW8

Arcane
Joined
Mar 1, 2013
Messages
1,852
Location
North of Poland
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
This is now a Dark Forces thread (for people who couldn't play it on release because they were 3 years old).

I've always meant to play it, but the last time I tried (Steam DOSBox version), my mouse sensitivity was off the charts even on the lowest setting and I had to complete the first level by aiming with the keyboard. Reading this thread made me start it up again however, and now the mouse sensitivity works normally, no idea what was wrong the last time. I completed the first two levels but I found two problems:

First off, the game ran like ass and at first I thought there was some mouse acceleration/smoothing going on until noticed it depended on where I looked, and I realized my performance was terrible.
Secondly, enemy blaster bolts bounced off my character and returned to sender in a lethal fashion, which was quite hilarious. Turns out there is a "Super Shield" option in the game settings that is turned on by default, and essentially acts as a god mode. Very strange.
As for performance, I found that DOSBox used a limited amount of CPU cycles by default, and by editing the variable to "max" in the configuration file... WOAH! The game just made the jump to lightspeed! Silk smooth gameplay at a downright futuristic 70 frames per second cap.

I'm a big fan of Outcast, Academy and DF2 so it's fun to finally sit down and play the first one. I don't intend to add vertical aim to the game since 1) I've already had to tweak stuff and 2) I have the misguided idea of playing the game "the way the developers intended".
With that said, shooting at enemies on ledges above you sucks ASS because it feels all wrong to fire at things far above the center of the screen, and because the auto-aim upwards either doesn't work all the time or it's just me having a hard time lining up the center of the screen with the enemy.
I usually just ignore the Stormtroopers above me and try to find a stairway that will lead me to same height as them before shooting them. Which probably renders the point of "playing as developers intended" moot.

PS. Fun fact, the first time I played Dark Forces 2 I played it in a Windows XP emulator since since it didn't run on Vista. The mouse sensitivity was off the charts there as well, so I played the entire game aiming with the arrow keys like a retard. Never again.
 

schru

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
Assigning the ‘look up’ and ‘look down’ functions to something like R and C should solve the problem with aiming at enemies above or below you.

It's also worth playing with something like the Sound Canvas VA or some adequate soundfont for the music:

 

Arbiter

Scholar
Joined
Apr 22, 2020
Messages
2,457
Location
Poland
This is now a Dark Forces thread (for people who couldn't play it on release because they were 3 years old).

I'm a big fan of Outcast, Academy and DF2 so it's fun to finally sit down and play the first one. I don't intend to add vertical aim to the game since 1) I've already had to tweak stuff and 2) I have the misguided idea of playing the game "the way the developers intended".
With that said, shooting at enemies on ledges above you sucks ASS because it feels all wrong to fire at things far above the center of the screen, and because the auto-aim upwards either doesn't work all the time or it's just me having a hard time lining up the center of the screen with the enemy.
I usually just ignore the Stormtroopers above me and try to find a stairway that will lead me to same height as them before shooting them. Which probably renders the point of "playing as developers intended" moot.

If you like Outcast and Academy, there is a Dark Forces mod for the later that recreates first few levels. Highly recommended, though we will probably never see it completed.

PS. Fun fact, the first time I played Dark Forces 2 I played it in a Windows XP emulator since since it didn't run on Vista. The mouse sensitivity was off the charts there as well, so I played the entire game aiming with the arrow keys like a retard. Never again.

Did you fight lightsaber duels with arrow keys? Must have been fun.
 

AW8

Arcane
Joined
Mar 1, 2013
Messages
1,852
Location
North of Poland
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
If you like Outcast and Academy, there is a Dark Forces mod for the later that recreates first few levels. Highly recommended, though we will probably never see it completed.
I actually played this mod 10 years ago. It was super cool to play new levels and I loved the music, so it's fun to play the original thing now.
I remember it ended with a Dark Trooper boss fight that was completely broken because it just walked around without attacking. I checked the mod page (Mod DB? Can't remember) to see if the modder was still working on it, and he had apparently gotten into fights with players as I was greeted with messages where he essentially told players to go fuck themselves and that he was done with modding forever. :lol:

Did you fight lightsaber duels with arrow keys? Must have been fun.
Everything. The whole game, every lightsaber duel including the final one with Jerec. I don't remember much of that playthrough, so my brain has probably sweeped those memories away to avoid psychological damage.
 

Quatlo

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2013
Messages
941
As a kid I've even rebound my first playthrough of Duke3D for full mouselook because it felt so weird for me after playing Quake. Same thing I did in first Heretic, sure it was warping all over the place but maps were so nice to look at that I had to do it. Just kidding, I just hated the fucking gargoyles.
 

Arbiter

Scholar
Joined
Apr 22, 2020
Messages
2,457
Location
Poland
As a kid I've even rebound my first playthrough of Duke3D for full mouselook because it felt so weird for me after playing Quake. Same thing I did in first Heretic, sure it was warping all over the place but maps were so nice to look at that I had to do it. Just kidding, I just hated the fucking gargoyles.

Duke, Quake, JK, Heretic/Hexen, how does it feel ... : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsD4im7K3wg
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
I've always meant to play it, but the last time I tried (Steam DOSBox version), my mouse sensitivity was off the charts even on the lowest setting and I had to complete the first level by aiming with the keyboard. Reading this thread made me start it up again however, and now the mouse sensitivity works normally, no idea what was wrong the last time. I completed the first two levels but I found two problems:

First off, the game ran like ass and at first I thought there was some mouse acceleration/smoothing going on until noticed it depended on where I looked, and I realized my performance was terrible.
Secondly, enemy blaster bolts bounced off my character and returned to sender in a lethal fashion, which was quite hilarious. Turns out there is a "Super Shield" option in the game settings that is turned on by default, and essentially acts as a god mode. Very strange.
As for performance, I found that DOSBox used a limited amount of CPU cycles by default, and by editing the variable to "max" in the configuration file... WOAH! The game just made the jump to lightspeed! Silk smooth gameplay at a downright futuristic 70 frames per second cap.

I have the GOG version and it took me forever to figure out how to alter the controls, but there's a config app in the start menu of all places. Don't see it anywhere else. Anyway, it has mouse sensitivity options and allows you to boot the original setup program to change keybinds. It was a pretty smooth experience after that, though I did think the game was crazy easy on medium so I'll look and see if that shield thing is on.
 

Parsifarka

Arcane
Joined
Dec 31, 2014
Messages
1,022
Location
Potato field
Most classic FPS become banal once you play with mouse, like cheating. I only started playing without mouse with Redneck Rampage some three years ago, and ever since I've been convinced it's the way these games should be played as they become more challenging. Even Quake is perfectly beatable in Nightmare using the keyboard to aim up and down. I remember complaining about the impossibility to play Ion Maiden with kb only when the alpha was released and fags massively rated me autistic for some reason, but I'll maintain it's awkward to play pre-Quake 2 shooters with mouse. Romero's preference for m+kb is always noted in this sort of discussion, but his reasoning is that mouse players crush the kb ones in multiplayer, which is obvious and has no bearing on the question of how to play against the retarded AI and navigate maps which loose most of their tricky qualities (traps, corners, enemy placements...) once players can freely aim with mouse.
 

schru

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2015
Messages
1,131
Like I said, at most it is the WASD movement configuration that might make those games too easy. Using the arrow keys in combination with separate strafe keys or the mouse (for looking around and moving forward and backward) with the strafe keys just isn't the same, but it's a not a long way from the second option to figuring out that one could remap the strafe keys with forward and backward keys to have them close together.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom