I just learned about FRED as an alternative to WASD and it’s actually got me slightly tempted to try it

the idea is that in a game’s keybinds, you set:

E: move forward
D: move back
R: move left
F: move right

that way you only have two fingers dedicated to the movement keys, instead of 3 like with WASD. also because your fingers are more centrally located on the keyboard, you can press a lot more keys a lot more easily

with WASD the only keys that I can press while moving in any arbitrary direction using WASD, are: Tab, Caps Lock, Shift, LCtrl, Space, Alt

but with FRED I can be moving in any arbitrary direction and also press: Q, W, A, S, Z, X, 1, 2, Tab, Caps Lock, Shift, LCtrl, Space, Alt

https://www.daemonspring.com/posts/2021/11/20/erdf/

here’s an interesting (but short) article on different possible keybind schemes

@kasdeya I found this post strangely interesting for someone who hasn't gamed with a keyboard in years.

Gave me nostalgia vibes from my computer gaming as a kid - back when QAOP was the standard movement key binding (two hands, but tiny keyboard). ;)

@kasdeya

☝️Look @fred, you're famous!

@nordicnefilim woahh I just looked this up and apparently that was a thing on the ZX Spectrum! that’s so interesting. it reminds me of the keyboards that had HJKL as movement keys - which is where a lot of CLI Linux software gets that from

and I’m glad that you were interested! for some reason I’m strangely fascinated by ways to “improve efficiency” (even if it’s probably just bikeshedding at best, and throwing away perfectly good muscle memory at worst) and I like exploring weird novelty control schemes like this hehe

that’s probably why I also enjoy using Vim/Neovim and playing games like Receiver 2 and Hideous Destructor which have an unworkable number of keybinds lol

@kasdeya in my 8-bit days, I found myself at one extreme or the other. Platform games with QAOP or ZXCV and, at the other end of the scale, flight sims that mapped 2-3 functions on every single key. ;)