Can't start a new game

[craig234]

A relative is running this on their Windows 8 laptop, and the game starts and gets the main menu, but when they click to start a new game, nothing happens. Any ideas?

[Protocol27]

Did you try pressing Z?

[craig234]

No. I tested and it worked for me. How is the player supposed to know to press z, nothing in the game says that.

[Protocol27]

I do agree with you on that. To be honest I just pressed every key on my keyboard until something happened.

I'm guessing the developers assumed you already played a japanese game before... As most games made in japan use the same buttons.

[DeathJohnson]

I don't play Japanese games and I figured it out in about 5 seconds, seemed pretty obvious to me. I don't see how it would confuse anyone.

[craig234]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von DeathJohnson:

I don't play Japanese games and I figured it out in about 5 seconds, seemed pretty obvious to me. I don't see how it would confuse anyone.

Well maybe that I've been gaming since before you were born and have thousands of games, and have never seen anything like that suggests you are pretty clueless ot say that.

[craig234]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Protocol27:

I do agree with you on that. To be honest I just pressed every key on my keyboard until something happened.

I'm guessing the developers assumed you already played a japanese game before... As most games made in japan use the same buttons.

Thanks Protocol. Seems very strange, but you sure helped. The little I'd seen of Japanese games, not crazy about the ones I've seen, I hadn't run into that.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

From my own experience -- which is probably very atypical for a current PC gamer -- it seems to be a common control scheme.

I started off playing DOS games. The ones that were platformers tended to use the arrow keys for movement, Ctrl for jump, and Alt for attack (or some other function. If you used the left Ctrl and Alt, you can see how the scheme is pretty similar. This was used in such games as Duke Nukem (the very first three episodes), Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Commander Keen, Secret Agent Man, Dark Ages,...

It wasn't used for a number of other games, though -- point-and-click adventures naturally used the mouse, as did various implementations of table games (such as card games and board games), or edutainment games that involved clicking on the right answer, or even typing it out. At least one game -- Tank Wars -- used the arrow keys plus Space and Tab. Meanwhile, on consoles and handhelds, control schemes generally involved a d-pad plus two to six buttons (depending on your system).

Fast-forward several years, I discovered console emulation. Since everything was integrated with Windows, and the Ctrl and Alt keys were often unwieldy to use, I naturally moved right over to the Z and X keys, for two-button controls. I did this without any prior knowledge that other people did or would do this. Later, though, I discovered that other people did indeed "colonize" the ZXCASD keys when emulating.

I guess it just came naturally for some reason? I have no idea why, but I think it's because:
1. it uses the arrow keys, which are assigned to the right hand only by keyboard design convention, but which seem to be the most natural choice when it comes to replacing the d-pad.
2. it spaces the two hands with comfortably on the keyboard -- I know I once considered using arrow keys + numpad or arrow keys + <>?:, but that would have been less comfortable. (For what it's worth, for some time I used QWEASD + UIOJ(K)LM<> for SNES controls, with the left hand being the "face buttons" and shoulder buttons and the right-hand being 8-directional buttons for FFVI's Blitz inputs.)
3. Because the right hand is using the arrow keys, the left hand has to deal with the face buttons. This is where people differ a little bit -- some people basically just transpose the face buttons to the left hand, so that (for example) the Jump button is still to the right of the Attack button, while others (such as myself) "mirror-imaged" the buttons, so that Jump is on the left of Attack. (This is why I refer to "outer" and "inner" buttons.)

Some people have used the numpad instead of arrow keys. It has the advantage that 7931 can be used for diagonals, though it also has the disadvantage that 5 becomes a dumb key if you make 2 your down key, and if you're not careful, you might hit 5 a lot. Also, many laptop models don't have numpads, or have a distorted numpad as an extra function on a set of keys, making this much less transferrable between computers. (Arrow keys, on the other hand, are very standard.)

(Ironically, I actually originally used Right Ctrl and Right Alt, rather than Left Ctrl and Left Alt. Kinda admired my friend who was able to do the latter. But I guess the unusuability of Winkey and context menu key, as well as my normal hand positioning for typing, got me to using the ZXCASD keys.)

So when I ran back into platformers and JRPGs that were native to PC -- in the form of freeware, flash, indie, doujin, retro, etc. games, starting in about 2005 or so (Cave Story) and onward, it made complete sense for me to just keep using this control scheme. And lo and behold -- it turned out to be quite common.

Funny thing is, I never played FPSes on PC until 2011. So I never got exposed to the WASD control scheme until much, much later. Took me some time to learn how to platform using WASD (including same-hand jumping) in Terraria.

I think the reason that this control scheme is common in Japanese games is partly because those genres that this control scheme is useful for -- namely, things like platformers, Zelda-likes, and JRPGs -- remained popular in Japan, even amongst the PC gaming and indie game development folks, and thus, people there -- not unlike myself -- just came up with the same control scheme. (If I recall correctly, FPS games are much less popular in Japan than in North America.)

[Kit Reil]

I had not trouble with this at all... "Z,X,C" are the typical action buttons for most japanese games. Granted if youve never played one before it might take a few seconds, but yeah. If youre playing a japanese game or even some flash animation games, "Z,X,C" are the go-to keys for most developers.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Well, there are a couple other common control schemes for flash platformers:
* arrow keys left/right to move left and right, up to jump
* arrow keys left/right to move left and right, space to jump

[Kit Reil]

space to jump is kinda universal to any pc game...

and movement isnt really an "action" key lol =P

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Space to jump is universal in FPSes, but in flash platformers I've seen both that and up to jump. And occasionally Z or X too.

I prefer space to jump over up to jump because I can use two hands.

[Kit Reil]

usually its space or X. Typically Z is your "do stuff/hit stuff" button, X is jump or secondary and C is jump if X is secondary, secondary action or switch action in games where you sitch between modes.