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Heh....i'm either incredibly stupid or just don't care but i still use just the mouse and arrow keys to date and i've been playing ss forever. I got used to it and that was it. I scarecely knew of half of these shortcuts.
Preface: a lot of people don't seem to know the keyboard controls for Shock1 - it's not uncommon to run across shocklings (both here and elsewhere) who have no idea that you can strafe, or that SZXC can be used to move, or that your implants can be activated with the number keys. I know of at least one person who played the first four decks with nothing but the mouse and the arrow keys because they didn't know about any other controls!
Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be anything like this in the FAQ, walkthrough, Guide to Sin, or anything else that I can find.
Thus, in the interests of hopefully preventing more people from going insane, I've done some experimentation and written up this list. Bear in mind that since I don't have the manual, I can't be sure that it's complete....but it's certainly complete enough to play with.
SYSTEM SHOCK KEYBOARD REFERENCE
1. Movement and Posture
2. MFD Control
3. Cyberware Control
4. Miscellanous
5. Cyberspace
[ 1 MOVEMENT AND POSTURE ]
Since you must use the mouse, you only have one hand available for keyboard control; this should render the arrow keys or keypad impossible to play with, but there's mouse equivalents for every keyboard command.
S [KP8] [UP] -- Move Forward
X [KP2] [DOWN] -- Move Backward
Z [KP1] -- Move Left
C [KP3] -- Move Right
[SHIFT] -- Run
[SPACE] -- Jump
A [KP4] [LEFT] -- Yaw Left
D [KP6] [RGHT] -- Yaw Right
[KP7] -- Yaw Left While Running Forward
[KP9] -- Yaw Right While Running Forward
Q -- Lean Left
W -- Cancel Lean
E -- Lean Right
R -- Pitch Up
F -- Center View
V -- Pitch Down
T -- Stand
G -- Crouch
B -- Prone
[ 2 MFD CONTROL ]
[BACKSPACE] -- Hide all MFDs
[PGUP] -- Center MFD: select next mode
[PGDN] -- Center MFD: select previous mode
Left MFD Controls
[F1] -- Weapon
[F2] -- Item
[F3] -- Automap
[F4] -- Target
[F5] -- Data
Right MFD Controls
[F6] -- Weapon
[F7] -- Item
[F8] -- Automap
[F9] -- Target
[F10] -- Data
[ 3 CYBERWARE CONTROL ]
Note that 1-5 correspond to the cyberware icons along the left side of the HUD, and 6-0 to the ones along the right.
1 -- Biological Systems Monitor
2 -- HUD Control (toggles fullscreen)
3 -- Sensaround Multi-View System
4 -- Light
5 -- Shield
6 -- Infravision
7 -- Navigation and Mapping Unit (toggles compass)
8 -- Multimedia Reader
9 -- Boost
0 -- Jumpjets
[ 4 MISCELLANEOUS ]
[TAB] -- Next Weapon
[SHIFT]+[TAB] -- Previous Weapon
[ENTER] -- Fire (KP_ENTER does nothing, though)
P [PAUSE] -- Pause
[ALT]+H -- Toggle in-game help
? -- abbreviated list of keyboard commands
[ALT]+V -- Toggle fullscreen (as [2])
[CTRL]+H -- change HUD color scheme
[ESC] -- In-game Menu
[CTRL]+S -- Save Menu
[CTRL]+L -- Load Menu
[ALT]+X -- Exit (works in main menu as well)
[F11] -- Increase Gamma
[F12] -- Decrease Gamma
[ 5 CYBERSPACE ]
W [KP8] -- Pitch Up
X [KP2] -- Pitch Down
A -- Yaw Left
[KP4] -- Yaw Left (very slowly)
D -- Yaw Right
[KP6] -- Yaw Left (very slowly)
[KP7] -- Pitch Up + Yaw Left
[KP9] -- Pitch Up + Yaw Right
[KP1] -- Pitch Down + Yaw Left
[KP3] -- Pitch Down + Yaw Right
Q C -- Roll CCW
E Z -- Roll CW
S [KP5] -- Accelerate
[TAB] -- Switch between DRILL and PULSER software
[ENTER] -- "Fire" software
Last edited by ToxicFrog; 30th Oct 2005 at 16:59.
Heh....i'm either incredibly stupid or just don't care but i still use just the mouse and arrow keys to date and i've been playing ss forever. I got used to it and that was it. I scarecely knew of half of these shortcuts.
RocketShock is a site for System Shock fans and those interested in rockets/rocketry.
http://rocketshock.atspace.com/index.html
Well, it's a known fact that right-handed people who use mouse + arrow keys have... issues.
U may very well be right but i've actually found a comfortable compromise for almost all FPS games. I use mouse look with my right hand and with the left i use all but my 5th finger to control arrow keys while the last finger i use to hit the right Ctrl key for jump and the backslash key for reload or crouch depending on the game....i like it a lot compared to wasd and spacebar
RocketShock is a site for System Shock fans and those interested in rockets/rocketry.
http://rocketshock.atspace.com/index.html
But... but... the very first thing the game does is show you the built-in help screens, which includes how to view all the keys. Why would anyone ignore that?!?Originally Posted by ToxicFrog
How can you NOT use the mouse??
Personally I think it was a sad day when FPS's ignored SS and went the mouselook route. Being locked into having to look dead center at what you want to shoot at is so limiting. Think The Last Starfighter.
I personally found it much more powerful to be able to move and strafe one way while firing in a different direction.
*mourn's SS1's control system*
Or just wide desks. Although even in that case, I find WASD et al more comfortable
i liked that movie
A question I have asked myself many times.
Not that I completely missed that the first few times I played or anything...
The ? screen doesn't list everything, though.
Exactly: you can't.
Seconded...
/smacks Qaladar in the back of the head
Yeah, it was just soooo great having to press individual keys to look up/look down/turn left/turn right. Combined with the movement keys and the mouse aiming, you only need three hands for efficient control!
Two hands.
They're actually good for different things. SS1 for mid/long range combat and normal use, mouselook for fast manouvering, close-range combat, and sightseeing.
Ideally, of course, we'd be able to toggle between the two.
/smacks Qaladar in the back of the head
Yeah, it was just soooo great having to press individual keys to look up/look down/turn left/turn right. Combined with the movement keys and the mouse aiming, you only need three hands for efficient control!
No you don't need 3 hands... its a bit of a stretch but I can manage to control all movement/looking with my left hand leaving the mouse solely for shooting.
How often do you really need to look up/down in SS1 anyway? Not very often. Ditto crouching and leaning. That just leaves move, turn, and strafe... 6 keys. You got 5 fingers but you only ever can use 3 keys at once anyway so its fine.
Oh, so now you're qualifying your superior control scheme to just SS1, eh?
Keyboard-look sucks. It's awkward and slow. Interface design moved on to better things. Deal with it.
I look up and down all the time. In fact, Sometimes I click and hold the mouse on the thingy up the top, and then use the keyboard to move around, giving me about the closest thing I'll get to mouselook.
You'd be surprised how much stuff you'll miss if you don't look at the ground all the time, especially in the thin twisty tunnels.
While mouse look is a whole bunch faster, there is the other part of the SS1 interface: crouching, crawling, and leaning. I haven't played a single other game that incorporates all three of these things.
Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark on N64!
However:
Only PD has crouch AND prone
In both games, leaning just moves you to the side of your current position about a foot, and letting go moves you back. Still effective.
Same here. I may have long fingers and a laptop keyboard, but I've never needed 3 hands, or wished I had 3. Even when I had a regular keyboard, SS1 wasn't a problem. Now, the controls still are a snap. I guess ZB doesn't exactly have abnormally large hands.
She's not a maniac, a raving thing, she just goes a little mad sometimes.
I'm not suffering from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
Well if it had been up to me I'd have swapped SS1's lean keys with the look up/down keys. But thats a minor niggle and I can live with it the way it is.
It doesn't matter how you arrange the keys, the fact remains that you can't look around a fraction as quickly using keys as you can using a mouse. And there's no way in hell you can efficiently move AND look around at the same time using one hand to work all the keys. WASD by itself uses up three fingers-- that just leaves one finger for working all the look-around keys.
Y'know, Dark Engine games do support keyboard-look. Why don't you try it some time and see how "fun" it is?
Its pointless if you can't shoot in a different direction than you're looking... thats what makes it worthwhile. You can't do that in dark engine games but could in SS1.
WASD only takes 2 fingers. You can't move left and right at the same time... nor can you move forward and backward at the same time.
That leaves 2 fingers for looking. Plenty.
Ever play any mechwarrior games? Typical setup is to have joystick for movement... if you have a fancy one with rotational motion and a hat switch that would be perfect. Joystick in left hand for movement and the hat switch to control where your head is looking. That still leaves the mouse for aiming. And you still have the twist action left over to control turning left and right.
Ugh. Really, mouse-look really is the best way to have 'looking' in a game. It's very quick and very accurate. There really is no downside to it.
Having the ability to move the 'cursor' outside of the centre of the screen momentarily is useful though, something like Goldeneye on the N64 could be quite fun for certain situations...
EDIT: Your description of the Mechwarrior controls doesn't sound too bad. But that's a whole world of difference to not having mouselook at all.
You seem to have lost sight of the fact that, if you're shooting at something-- you're looking at it. What possible advantage is there to having your target NOT centered in your field of vision?
No, it takes three. You can't have one finger cover A/D while the other finger covers W/S. It's physically impossible.WASD only takes 2 fingers.
Yes, that's wonderful. Also completely irrelevant to a discussion on keyboard control.Ever play any mechwarrior games? Typical setup is to have joystick for movement
If it's centered in your screen, you have to be standing directly in view of it to be certain you'll get a good shot. Normally I hide around corners and poke my head around to shoot my intended victim. With SS2, I had to be in plain sight of it to not risk shooting the wall. With SS1, I just have a far easier time shooting things, it's easier for me to aim anywhere in the screen to shoot than to use mouselook to get a perfect shot. It just seems easier for me to slide around with one hand and shoot with the other. But maybe there's a reason I'm not used to SS2 ranged weapons . . .
I don't know if I made any sense, but I have my mind on something else anyways.
She's not a maniac, a raving thing, she just goes a little mad sometimes.
I'm not suffering from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
1) The advantage here is that you can be moving in a different direction than the direction you are shooting. Here's an example... say I run straight down a hallway at a target while firing continuously. With mouselook I have to do some sort of weird turn/strafe combo that ends up with me moving sideways at some point then backwards and requires time before you can turn back to where you were going to pick the next target. With SS1's system you can run towards something, get a full 90 degrees of firing time and you are still pointed in your original direction of travel ready to blast the next robot/mutant/whatever.
2) Only if you limit yourself to using the same fingers. I don't... perhaps I'm simply a freak of finger agility. Since you can only operate two of those keys at a time, you only need 2 fingers if you simply move your hand around a bit.
3) Was simply pointing out a different system that also allows shooting in other directions than the forward direction of travel. I think a joystick system would be superior to keyboard but unfortunately I've never encountered a game that used both joystick and mouse simultaneously.
A compromise between mouselook and free aim could be that you first aim in a certain direction, and that you look at that point a bit later. Kind of like mouse trails. This allows you to shoot things near the edges of your screen as well as mouselook
I loose track of what the keys are for a game, it all turns into instinct. If I want to do something, I do it; I just have no concious idea how. It doesn't really matter how complex the controls are to me.
Metorid Prime games use a different interface... Sorta. The analog isn't set to strafe, it's set to turn. If you wanna go into free look mode, you hold a shoulder button down and the analog changes to free look. You can then no longer move. Holding down the other should button locks the view, and the analog then becomes stafe.
If you lock onto an enemy, the view centers - and stays centered - on your target, and the analog then allows you to strafe around it.
So, movement mode you use the controller to go forward, back, and to turn; when you see a target you use the right shoulder button for free look so's you can center it in your view, then you lock on and strafe around the place.
It's not a traditional shooter, but it works quite well. I suppose SS1 isn't a traditional shooter, either.
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