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[baconman]

Vote for two (preferably one of each type, but it's your call, I suppose). You have 2 weeks to decide, not that you should need them by now.

 

GAME ON.

[Mipe]

*YHC (some of us have Z and Y keys swapped)

[Hangedman]

I'm super used to arrow keys and ShiftAltCtrl from old windows arcade games like Keen and Duke.

But with the advent of the windows key and weird keyboards, I now prefer ZXCASD.
WASD is good for mousing but not much else. I have seen WASD + JKL;, but it's unusual.

[s0]

Not sure if you've heard about my favorite control layout but it's called "freely configurable". It's pretty much perfect and there's literally no reason not to use it.   

[namre]

Thanks for this poll. Now i know what control keys I should using on my games.

[Core Xii]

Not sure if you've heard about my favorite control layout but it's called "freely configurable". It's pretty much perfect and there's literally no reason not to use it.   

This. No excuse for it. It's even worse when you use ZXC and they can't be reconfigured, because german keyboards are QWERTZ, i.e. they have Z and Y swapped.

Personally, I use IJKL for direction and WASD for actions. I'm surprised WASD wasn't included for actions at all.

[Μarkham]

I've played games that used ASD and SPACEBAR for actions, and it felt more comfortable than ZXC+others, as my hand could naturally have fingers on those buttons leaving my pinky free for CTRL and SHIFT buttons.  Having to use those two buttons and/or the spacebar with a ZXC control setup just feels awkward.

[Captain_404]

Not sure if you've heard about my favorite control layout but it's called "freely configurable". It's pretty much perfect and there's literally no reason not to use it.   

This. No excuse for it. It's even worse when you use ZXC and they can't be reconfigured, because german keyboards are QWERTZ, i.e. they have Z and Y swapped.

Absolutely. I'm surprised configurable controls aren't in more games, as they aren't that hard to program.

[soundofsatellites]

Not sure if you've heard about my favorite control layout but it's called "freely configurable". It's pretty much perfect and there's literally no reason not to use it.   

This. No excuse for it. It's even worse when you use ZXC and they can't be reconfigured, because german keyboards are QWERTZ, i.e. they have Z and Y swapped.

Absolutely. I'm surprised configurable controls aren't in more games, as they aren't that hard to program.

this, again. throw in controller and one switch support if you can.

[Aik]

My arrow keys don't work, so ... yeah - WASD for me.

[jakten]

I usually use ASDF for my action buttons keeping the more important buttons on D and F. I find Z and X causes my carpal tunnel to go nuts. I usually use the arrow keys though or on some occasions I will set them to OKL;. Custom button configurations are the best

[oahda]

I've never seen WASD spelled as SAWD. That's what I guess I prefer, though, but I'm right handed; any game using both the mouse and keys for steering should provide both arrows and WASD; right-handed people use WASD, and left-handed people use the arrows.

[baconman]

Being a touch-typist and arcade-player, I feel FEDS and JKL UIO make for the more natural feel to me. Arrows + Numpad is another good option I like, but it doesn't work as well on portables.

RE: Configurable controls

I wholeheartedly agree, this isn't a "how should a game be set up by default" poll, it's more about how you prefer to configure them; and how it affects your playstyle.

[Oddball]

It doesn't bother me in the slightest as long as my fingers can comfortably reach the keys. If pushed though, arrows+ZXC.

[Christian Knudsen]

I selected arrow keys for controls, but I much prefer numpad, though I don't have a desktop with a numpad anymore.

[mark]

Are we calling it (SAWD) now? I thought it was wasd?

In any case, I try to use my controller for most games that have both actions and control.

But I really do like wasd and numpad for it, but generally, xbox360 controller and xpadder

[TwilightVulpine]

Configurable controls are the way to go, like baconman said, so everyone gets happy and people with different keyboards can still play.

I'm not too fond of using Control and Alt as gaming keys because sometimes Windows starts to annoy you with the sticky keys popup. I know that the warning can be disabled, but still... Anyway, I think is ZXC is adequate most of the time, but once you need more keys, it's better to use ASD than keep going towards the right and/or adding space.

[st33d]

We've discovered an annoying issue on some keyboards with the up cursor key and the space bar. They seem to cancel each other's signal - note that we could only reproduce this on half the keyboards in the office, but that's still pretty annoying for a lot of people.

I'm generally right handed, but I play everything left handed now. Mostly because I'm so used to keeping a hand on the mouse whilst testing a game, and my ambidexterity has rewired itself to play games on the left now.

 

[NiallM]

It's arrow keys and ZXC for me.  Most importantly, in platformers, jump should be an action key, not a direction key.  Having grown up with the amiga (where this happened a lot), I have a distinct aversion to games which use up for jump.

[I_smell]

What about the literally perfect combination of WASD and MOUSE? I use it all the time.
If I have to use keys for some reason, or want to, then arrows and ASD.