f13.net

My old Z fang died, and it's the last of the 'stand-alone' USB keyboards.  For years, I've used to to use WASD keys and be a left handed mouser.  Oh well.

So instead, I'm going to convert to using a mouse with my right hand.  My question is, what fingers  on my left hand do I use for the keyboard?   Do you right handed people really use their pinkie finger for the 'A'?

A: Ring-finger
W/S: Middle-finger
D: Index-finger

Eh? For WASD I've always used ringfinger on A, middle on W/S, and index for D.

You can't remap and just use lp;'? Hell, depending on the keyboard layout you could have the numberpad conveniently right next to your right hand if you use that setup with a left-handed mouse.

Well, I'm a Leftie that nontheless uses the mouse with the right hand. I didn't even know for a long time Lefties do it the other way round.

Aaanyway, I use the ring finger on the A as well, giving my pinkie finger unobstructed access to the LSHIFT and CTRL keys.

Battlefield 3 has continued the trend of games not actually letting you remap all the keys, and when you do map them, some will magically revert back.  :DICE:

I'm pretty much where Tebonas is on the left/right scenario.

I'm a leftie. I mouse with the left hand when I'm working, mouse with the right hand when I'm playing. Works fine.

Lefty who uses the mouse on the right, ring finger goes on A.

I can't decide if I'm surprised we have so many lefties here. I only write left-handed so I guess that makes me a just little insane.

I am extremely left-handed and have always used my right hand to mouse.  It is like driving a stick shift- you learn to use the machine as it is set up, I guess.

Another lefty, checking in.

Although, I think the vast majority of us are not left handed, but rather mixed dominance. I've always thought that I was probably supposed to be left handed, but teachers/coaches/parents corrupted me into doing most of my not-so-fine motor skills (Golf, throwing things, etc) with my right hand. I drew my line in the sand when it comes to fine motor skills (writing, throwing darts, fencing) with my left hand.

To the original question, I mouse with my right and wasd with my left. I have tried mousing with my left hand, but it is not for me.

....

Holy Shit, there are people who use the ring finger instead of pinky for A?  I didn't even know such a thing existed or was even possible.

Though I am correct handed, unlike a lot of people here aparently, so maybe thats part of it.  Still.....I'm trying it out right now and can't even fathom how to function.

Just to be clear, we're talking about using WASD for playing FPS-type games here, not touch typing.  Obviously for typing, pinky goes on A.

For WASD, ring finger goes on A, middle goes on W/S, index goes on D.  Pinky handles Ctrl (crouch), thumb handles spacebar (jump).  Right hand shoots things.

What makes you think there's a higher proportion of left-handers here than anywhere else? This thread is the perfect example of a biased, self-selected sample. I'm a right-hander (mostly - doing laboratory cell culture and surgery made me highly ambidextrous) so I don't have anything else to contribute here apart from this observation :)

Lefty AND color blind?

 :mob:

 :why_so_serious:

As long as I can remember, I've removed the caps lock key from my keyboards, it's my pinky rest spot. Now I also remove the windows keys.

Pinky does tab/shift/ctrl, thumb does space/alt.

Yes, I'm practically disabled.  :why_so_serious:

Whether statistically true or not, the perceived predisposition of lefties in regards to increased intelligence and mental illnesses.

Another lefty but I can't mouse left-handed with any sort of precision. I will say, though, that remapping everything to PL;' is probably not too practical since some things don't let you change and for the ones that do it's a pain to have to remap a bunch of keys before you can find out what they do. It's the main reason I stopped bothering with Dvorak when in Windows.

Heh, I was thinking the exact same in reverse.

Even when I type now I find that my rest position for my left hand has my pinky hanging out snuggled up to the shift/capslock key and left thumb is the only one that hits the spacebar.  Anecdotally, I taught a technology class for 5 years and one of our goals was for kids to be able to type 35 wpm by the time they left eighth grade. I started off being a big stickler for having fingers on the proper keys, but came around to the viewpoint that once a kid can type without thinking about it, it doesn't really matter what their method is as long as it works for them.

I'm a righty, but WASD is crazy talk.  ESDF 4 life yo.

I'm a lefty. I use the mouse with my left hand, but I have the buttons configured for a right hander. This means that I left click with my middle finger and right click with my index finger.

In CoH, I used the numpad for movement with my right hand. In SWTOR, I use the arrow keys, which also served me well in LOTRO.

I have no idea what I'd do if I had a gaming mouse or KB right now, because they might make my obviously oddly-wired brain melt.

I'm a lefty, but I've always used the mouse right handed, even when I'm drawing with it.  The only real interface problems I have are on things like the Nintendo DS where there's a stylus, because it feels weird as hell to hold that in my right hand yet games often assume I will.

This is a highly sinister thread.
(dohohohoho)

And I taught myself to use the mouse left-handed in a training course when the 'helpful' tutor saw me writing and went "Oh, you're left-handed? Let me switch everything around for you". And then promptly went back to using my right hand after finishing the course.

While ESDF gives you access to more keys for pinky action, I am too lazy to change key bindings anymore.

This is what I do when I mouse left handed, but when I mouse right handed I left click with the index finger.   

Saitek Cyborg 3D and AutoHotkeys, only way to go.  Everything under the thumb, where it belongs.

--Dave (I use it left-handed, which is why the Cyborg is the only way to go.  Lefties could use any joystick)

If you can't pick almost any arbitrary spot on the keyboard and find enough nearby buttons to run, say, a Mechwarrior game you're clearly not trying hard enough.

Got me.

For 90% of my gaming I've used the same n52 Speedpad for whats gotta be at least 8 years.

I have never heard of anyone using pinky for A. What finger do you use to press shift and ctrl with?

Pinky.

I was a touch typist for too many years before keyboard gaming had any kind of twitch element to it. Can't break the habit of A = pinky, shift = pinky. I could do ESDF but I'm so used to WASD that it's hard to make my brain think that way.

So Day 1 of gaming as a right hander in BF2.

Aiming with the mouse is not as bad as I thought.  The real challenge I'm having is training my brain to use the keyboard correctly.  Using my pinky it press Shift and Controls are particularly challenging.

There's a couple of options to replace the Fang if you don't want to swap to right-handed usage - the Logitech G13 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126050) is probably the best of what's currently out there.  There's also the Razer Nostromo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823114015), but I don't care for the buttons on it.

EDIT:  There's also this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826246002), which looks a lot like the Fang.

What Khaldun said. I use my pinky, just like I do for all the other keyboard activities I do outside of gaming.  Its easy and natural.  With this other method you guys use, access to the R, T, G, B, and V keys are much more restricted, which would get on my nerves.

Only thing I usually do is, if the key board is an ergonomic one where the ctrl button is really far away, remap the crouch key to C or Z to make it a bit easier (if they actually put crouch on ctrl, many put it on c to begin with).  If ctrl not something I'm hitting constantly for the game, then I don't even bother remapping that.  Other than that I can hit shift easily, and there are no other keys over there you ever need to hit usually (though tab is easy as well if need be).  Then I have easier access to a much larger range of keys.

Also, you know, it feels way the hell more natural since thats the position you type in all day long as well....

Musician dexterity ftw.

Ditto.  :heart:

AND you could also just put it on the right, and mouse on the left.

I too am surprised at the number of people using ring finger on the A key, I use pinky. I've got to keep my index finger on the F key because of the little bump tactile thingy there, otherwise I'd need to keep looking down at the keyboard. I even used superglue to put little bump tactile thingies on the 4 and 7 keys so that I don't have to look up there to input digits, ehrm.. numbers, works great.

I will actually switch the mouse from one side of the keyboard to the other depending on which side of my body hurts more at the time. Being non-handed, neither right or left handed though definitely not ambidextrous, does have advantages; I've gotten really good at catching things I inadvertantly knock over. Also "non standard" color vision too boot, not colorblind, more like "ooh colors" vision, so pretty much normal for F13 I guess.

Same; putting the pinky on A results in some uncomfortable arrangement with two fingers hovering over WS in space where only one can really fit, unless i put the middle finger on D which leaves me with one finger on generally useless F and forces some gymnastics to reach 1 & 2. Just not optimal.

..... just about every game I've played since half life (that uses WSAD) has made pretty heavy use of F, and increasingly all of the keys around it.  That's what I don't get about this approach.  You are literally making it harder and more awkward to press up to 5 other keys (most of which are used in most modern FPS games I've played), all so you have easier access to 1 key (ctrl).  Seems very non optimal.

No, you're just weird.

The problem with pinky-on-A is it means that you have to use your pinky and ring finger simultaneously, which is very difficult - try curling your pinky without bending your ring finger as well and you'll see the issue; the pinky and ring finger are connected in a way that the other fingers are not (yes this is a simplification). Compounding it is the fact that you're now trying to rest your pinky and ring fingers in different rows of the keyboard - as opposed to what happens when you put your middle finger on W, your ring finger on A, and your pinky on shift - they're all in a nice line then, and because your index finger is able to move more independently of your middle finger, it can rest on D easily.

Pinky on A is simply a much harder way to do it for anyone with a normally-functioning hand.   :-P

Yah, I don't want to rely on my pinky. It's a weak digit.  Plus, with playing a lot of LoL,  I use QWE as ability activation constantly.  R/F are not something I need to spam, but still easily reachable.

Unless you are like me - a 40 year old that's used a computer for his job every day for 15 years - and never learned to touch type.

Personally, I can barely use my left pinky for any thing at all, yet alone reliably pressing a key.

I use my pinky a fair amount when typing but using it for game control is not really the same thing at all.

EDIT: Another thing to do is, just let your hand completely relax - notice there's probably a natural curl where the pinky is lower than the ring finger, and the ring finger and index finger are both a little lower than the middle finger. If you then extend your fingers slightly they pretty much land in exactly the pattern of shift-A-W-D on a standard keyboard (depending on your hand size to some degree of course). Forcing them into another configuration is going to be very difficult for most people. This is why you do all those picking exercises as a guitarist or scales as a pianist, it takes a lot of exercise/training to get the hand muscles to obey when you force them into an unnatural position.

I mostly play MMOs which don't make real use of F and the nearby keys, but they do make regular use of numeric row... which (the 1, 2 & 3 keys especially) is much harder to reach with the pinky on A, and even tricker when you want to use combinations like alt+digits, or shift or ctrl with these.

That said, this is from perspective of right-handed person. Someone left-handed likely finds it easier to use any finger of their primary hand, even the pinky. But it's still hard to imagine it'd outweight the general inconvenience.

I actually hold my hand in a different position when gaming and my pinky is half the size of my other fingers.  It is difficult to use it on q/z and no other keys are really freed up for use that way, so I'd rather stick with my ring-finger on A method for gaming.

(A small pinky gives me a lot of difficulty on blue notes for the guitar games, too.)

I have a dextrous pinky, it can do scales and chords all on its own out there. But I wouldn't use it when  could use the ring finger, because the main triad is so much more reliable and strong.

Silly Lantyssa, bend the ring finger for the blue notes.

Well, I've been using the curved ergonomic keyboards at home and at work for a long long time now, so perhaps that helps explain it.   When I let my hands perfectly relax and curl, the pinky lands squarely on A.

So I guess you guys also need to get a real keyboard and stop using ones that are twisting your hands into a giant carpel tunnel mess.  :awesome_for_real:

Well, that still doesn't solve the issue that you're driving with your ring finger, which is just freaking weird.

Pinky - Shift and Ctrl
Ring - A, Tab, Q, 1, `, Z
Middle - W, S, 1, 2, 3, X
Index - D, E, R, F, 3, 4, 5, C
Thumb - Space, Alt

That's how I roll

Driving?  Not sure what you mean by that, but why is it weird?

This is just rather interesting to me.  You wield computers by sticking your index fingers on the F and J key.  That's the method by which you interface with a PC and do everything on it (unless your from some dirty euro country with a different key layout.  Seriously, fuck you France and your ass backward stupid AZERTY format on everything).  When I was first confronted with WASD, it never even occurred to me that you would change that just because you were playing a game.  I tried it and it instantly worked fine using the keyboard in its normal way, so I just assumed it was designed so people can comfortably use the keyboard like they do for every single other program on the PC.

It is weird because W is the button you press the most when you're WASDing, and because so much other crap gets pulled along inside your hand when you use your ring finger. Your non-standard keyboard probably reduces the issues, but try it on a regular keyboard sometime, the ring finger non-independence combined with the contortion that you have to put your hand through to have your ring finger constantly pressing W while you use your pinky on A and middle finger on D is really uncomfortable.

Basically you're NOT using it like you use a keyboard all day otherwise; the rest position for the ring finger when touch typing is S, not W. Leaving it up on W all the time is very different. You're also never pressing two buttons at the same time (barring Shift/Ctrl - which I should point out you most likely use your pinky for just like we do) when operating a keyboard outside a gaming context, for the most part.

... crap. Now I'm tempted to e-bay a spare. These work blind so much better than a keyboard in addition to being ambidextrous.

May just be the keyboard then.  When I let my hands relax and naturally rest, my ring finger rests at the very top of S and it brushes against W.  It takes only the slightest adjustment upward to press solidly on W.  Also my index and ring finger are the only things that pull each other (both seem to pull each other the same amount).  My pinky and index can hit everything I want without budging the others.

Fascinating for everybody I'm sure!

Seriously, I married a very defective man.

I'm a rightie, ring finger on A, blah blah.

I'm a lefty who has been forced from time to time to use WASD, World of tanks didn't have key mapping at the start. Index finger on A.

Wonder how a left handed/reverse keyboard would sell...

Ergos totally mess me up. I like having the uniform rectangular layout because unless I'm typing in words, I mostly use my left hand for all keyboard duties. I can use out to 6/y/h/b without taking my ring off W, so it works for me (and I have wicked stubby fingers). And having the removed caps lock for a home point for my pinky gains me more accuracy than I'd gain in getting an extra row of keys moving over.

As far as twisting hands goes...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iacZDoXaVQ  :awesome_for_real:

Lefty who uses mouse with the right. For the longest time I would remap to WASD to WQSE.

This thread.

Lefty mouse with right

Left-hander that has trained myself to use the mouse with my right hand.  I'm also in the ring-finger-on-the-A-key group.  I hit shift or control with my pinky.  It's the Z key that usually causes issues for me.