Some people started talking about what controls they use when playing Keen (I assume Galaxy because Vorticon doesn't let you re-bind, although Commander Genius can let you do that I think?) and it made me wonder just how many people go with the default settings and, for those that don't, how many different control setups there are out there. I mean it's only directional keys and three buttons, how varied can it be?
Somehow when I was a lot younger I had decided to swap the fire and pogo buttons, so my layout looked like this:
- Movement: Arrow Keys
Jump: Ctrl
Pogo: Space
Fire: Alt
I couldn't say why, exactly, but I figure it had to do with playing other games. Most PC platformers only had two buttons to use aside from directional movement: jumping and firing with Ctrl and Alt, respectively. Since I played Galaxy for the most part when I was younger, I didn't have the sense from the Vorticon games, so my comfort came from other platformer setups. And, because I was so inexperienced, I didn't use pogo much anyway, so it was put on the "other" button.
When I started playing the games "for real" (like Hard saveless and eventually speedrunning) I kept this setup, since it was what I was used to. Unexpectedly it may have worked to my advantage, since it allows me to use my index finger as part of jump-related movement and helps with the precision of pogoing in general. (Trying to perform IPTs consistently seems like it'd be harder using middle/pinky fingers, anyway.) However, I found that the keys themselves were a bit bulky and tended to stress out my hand after some hours. This led to my current setup:
- Movement: Arrow Keys
Jump: Z
Pogo: V
Fire: C
The buttons fit in the same hand configuration but do so more comfortably, and I almost never have stress problems with the left hand anymore. As Plasma Captain previously mentioned, I would probably be okay with A/F/D too.
So what do all of you tend to set when you play Keen? Are defaults good enough or do you spice it up?