What controller do you use to play DOOM on PC?

[GreyGhost]

hex11 said:

You missed a great opportunity to write your own mouse driver. :-)

I was more of a hardware hacker back then, but didn't want to void the warranty on a $2700 system. :(

[hex11]

$2700 sounds like a lot, even for an A2000 (unless it had upgrades like SCSI disk, memory, accelerator...) My A500 with the obligatory clock/battery + 512K RAM expansion was well under $500 (in 1991).

The obvious ghetto hardware fix would have been to get an extension cable, splice & rewire it, and patch it back up with electrical tape.

The sweet thing about these Amiga ports is they were identical to the ones on Sega Genesis/Megadrive, so you could plug in a standard 3-button Sega gamepad and it would just work. That's how I played most arcade games (never did buy an actual joystick). And to this day, that's my favorite gamepad of them all, haven't found one yet that's as comfortable (even the Gravis stuff didn't cut it).

[Grazza]

Uh, wasn't it common knowledge by some time in late 1994 that keyboard + mouse is the best control set-up? (The smart kids worked that out earlier, of course.)

I'm always a bit bewildered when people seem to consider keyboard-only to be the "classic" controls. It's not even the default option in Doom2.exe!

[hex11]

A lot of people didn't have Internet in '94, and some didn't even use major online services (CompuServe, etc.), or even plain old BBS's. Not every computer even had a modem. Heck, despite being a heavy local BBS user, I didn't find out about this mouse+keyboard combination until I finally got a Unix shell account and started reading rec.games.computer.doom.* sometime in '95.

So for at least a whole year, I totally disregarded the mouse as a viable device, and never much bothered with the joystick option either. Why? The keyboard worked well enough. :-) It wasn't until I started playing DM with some friends over serial (and eventually Ethernet) that improving my skills was desirable.

[Mithral_Demon]

B: Keyboard and Mouse.

What makes Doom semi-easier for my weapon switching is a Logitech G600 or the one with 20 custom buttons (Namely for the side thumb buttons ranging 1-9, 0, -, =), so I can switch while strafing instead of reaching for 7 (BFG) and stopping.

[Lemonzest]

B, sometimes C if i'm in a funny mood

[myk]

hex11 said:
So for at least a whole year, I totally disregarded the mouse as a viable device, and never much bothered with the joystick option either.

I started playing DOOM in '94 and I played with the mouse till 1999, 2000 or 2001. Eventually I made some settings changes and I tried the mouse, mostly because I started downloading demos in '99 and the guys played really well compared to me, usually using the mouse. And then CSDoom was being developed, forcing me to face players with more skill (never mind lower pings). Until then, the mouse had seemed rather awkward, especially with mouse_sensitivity 1 to 9, which is all you can get without going into the CFG file and editing it to a sensitivity the game doesn't normally allow you to use.

Secondly, in the help screen the keyboard controls occupy most of the screen, with the mouse controls at the bottom, in a couple of lines and without a title. This may encourage many people not used to tinkering with settings to consider the mouse less recommended or "official". The keyboard apparently or supposedly already lets you do all the actions, so people could feel it was redundant. Getting used to the controls is not so easy for many people, so those that started without the mouse often avoided the hassle of reconfiguring.

Thirdly, in my case I hadn't played games that really relied on the mouse before DOOM. All this makes me think that, while some may have learned to tinker and change settings early on, probably adopting the mouse rather quickly, many others must have been affected by the factors I mentioned.

[RestlessRodent]

Mystery Man in 3D said:

A) Keyboard Only

When debugging ReMooD. On some interfaces, like SDL, when the mouse is grabbed, it grabs all the input which will then never pass to the Window Manager (although other interfaces that grab the mouse work fine with a Window Manager). So if the game crashes, I have to switch to a VT and kill the debugger making the session pointless.

Mystery Man in 3D said:

B) Keyboard & Mouse

Standard Doom Play.

Mystery Man in 3D said:

C) Gamepad

On ReMooD.

Mystery Man in 3D said:

D) Other

Laptop track pad, when playing on a laptop.

[scorpion]

B) Keyboard & Mouse

I started out playing Doom with keyboard only (like most people I know), and swore by it for quite a while (funny to see those demos from way back). I've been using the mouse since CSDoom.

[Steve D]

Keyboard only. Keypad for all movement except look up, down and center view, which is Q-W-E. I shoot with the "A" key. I play(ed) all FPSes with the same setup -- Alien Breed 3d and Breathless (Amiga), Marathon 2 (Mac), Quake, Quake 2, Half Life, Half Life 2, Unreal, Return To Castle Wolfenstein and Doom 3. I almost always play Doom with Risen 3D, sometimes GZDoom, and more and more rarely, JDoom.

Most FPSes are kind of easy on Normal difficulty settings, equivalent to HMP in Doom, so it's not really a problem to ditch the mouse. On occasion, I do need to use the mouse to aim up/down in the 3D games, or to make a special angled shot in Doom. When that happens, I stand my ground and use only the mouse. I usually take a few hits that way, and sometimes I get stopped.

I realize that using the mouse would make it easier to survive areas where you get mobbed from all sides. But in a way, I like to keep things as they are, to keep the difficulty level higher. It's more fun for me that way. Also, I'm not into levels where you have to keep shooting at squillions of monsters, and shifting the screen too fast with mouse movements gives me motion sickness.

Nonetheless, I always play every level on UV unless I discover I cannot beat it that way, and then I switch to HMP. I guess it comes down to this -- I can beat all the Michael Krause levels on UV, but I know better than to even try something like Grime. :D

[myk]

SteveD said:
Also, [...] shifting the screen too fast with mouse movements gives me motion sickness.

From my experience, that motion sickness is habit related. I've gotten it after changing some settings or after a longer period of not playing, but then it went away.

[The Monitor]

I use mouse and keyboard on my Dell laptop, all the time. WSAD, E uses, Space jumps, Shift walks, Ctrl crouches, Left Mouse Button fires normally, Right Button Alt-Fires, R reloads. I started out on keyboard (like most people) and that changed a few years ago when I played Half-Life, within which I learned mouselook helps a lot.

[Steve D]

myk said:

From my experience, that motion sickness is habit related. I've gotten it after changing some settings or after a longer period of not playing, but then it went away.

That could be. I know that sometimes the normal rocking motion can get to me if I haven't played in awhile.

I'm still looking into ways for using the mouse. I'll try plugging it into the left side of my keyboard, because I don't want to give up using the keypad with my right hand.

[Pirx]

keyboard + mouse.

mouse is a modded wingman gaming mouse with razer deathadder optics inside, i find that shape so comfortable (especially for fast shooters like doom) that i never really got used with anything else.

i started playing doom with keyboard only and the default controls when it came out, switched to the mouse in 1996 and stayed with it, as it's the best input method for shooters imo.

currently re-learning my old, high sens after getting mauled online for being too slow. as myk mentioned, this was disorienting at first, but it goes away, as the old reflexes kick in again.

[schwerpunk]

B. And forevermore, B.

[Phendrena]

Windstryke said:

Keyboard+mouse.

As an old-time PC gamer I just see FPS with a gamepad as weird.

I concur. 80%+ of my gaming is on my PC. I've never liked using anything else for FPS games and try as I might I just can not get to grips using a pad.

Dave

[ScoobyDooM]

B: keyboard and mouse on PC primarily but . . .

 

C: ps4 controller on MacBook Pro if I want to play in my living room on the 70” TV for big screen entertainment (bring popcorn)

 

Keyboard and mouse is more precise for me than playing with a controller which can be pretty sluggish at times and not all keyboard bindings are available either. 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

39 minutes ago, ScoobyDooM said:

B: keyboard and mouse on PC primarily but . . .

 

C: ps4 controller on MacBook Pro if I want to play in my living room on the 70” TV for big screen entertainment (bring popcorn)

 

Keyboard and mouse is more precise for me than playing with a controller which can be pretty sluggish at times and not all keyboard bindings are available either. 

You do realize this thread is eight years old, right?

[VanaheimRanger]

On 11/12/2012 at 8:26 AM, DoomUK said:

Usually B, sometimes C.

There can be no debate over whether keyboard & mouse is a better control system than a gamepad, for many games besides Doom. But sometimes it's nice to be able to slob around and not sit up straight in front of your computer (even if you're not actually sitting next to your computer, you can't use a keyboard and mouse in mid-air, unless you have four upper extremities).

I play leaned back in a recliner with the keyboard tray from my desk laid across the arm rests.  It is perfect for the lazy kb/m user.

 

Also...damn, this is quite the necro'd thread.

Edited November 18, 2020 by guitardz

[viti95]

A, with an IBM Model M

[SF.]

B.

I first played Doom about a decade and a half back through Doom 95. I did not know playing with a mouse was an option. Keyboard only was stupidly hard. I struggled to beat even the first episode on UV (or maybe I was just bad). Playing with K+M is a 100 times easier.

Edited November 19, 2020 by paturn

[bobstremglav]

Keyboard and mouse, but I beat original 3 episodes one time with just keyboard.

 

Interesting, did somebody beat DOOM 3 with JUST KEYBOARD? :D

[MemeMind]

When on Pc KB&M all the way.
When I play on mobile i use my controller because my hands arent used to mobile games.