Out of curiosity, has anyone beaten the original Duke "keyboard only"?

[Snowy]

My friend finally bought Duke 3D Megaton and we did some DukeMatches (not too much of an issue, we live within 5 minutes driving distance of each other). He prefers to play with the classic-style keyboard controls though. Control isn't an issue since we only play Duke with each other (whether it's online with DOSBox or this).

While I use mouse and keyboard with Megaton, I mainly use keyboard when playing the classic version. Especially since this was how I played the Mac demo in 1997. As weird as it sounds (I know lots find the old control scheme weird), I find it amusing that the game is beatable, even with just a keyboard, I even did it a few times before.

I'm curious, are there any on here who beaten the original three episodes of Duke using just the default control set? I'm sure some of you probably played Duke before Steam, whether it's the GOG version, the shareware, or even an original 1996 (or 1997 Mac) copy.

[Malooga]

Trying to do that right now as a matter of fact. I played the original version on Sega Saturn before anything else, and decided to teach myself PC games using Duke. At age 27 this is literally the first game I will BEAT on PC...and unfortunately enough for me -- no mouse. Wish me luck!

[Snowy]

Originally posted by Malooga:

Trying to do that right now as a matter of fact. I played the original version on Sega Saturn before anything else, and decided to teach myself PC games using Duke. At age 27 this is literally the first game I will BEAT on PC...and unfortunately enough for me -- no mouse. Wish me luck!

Awesome! Good luck on that. I remember when doing the keyboard only for the first time and beating Stadium (there's The Birth, but I always considered it a bonus ep as it wasn't part of the original 1996 release), I was pretty surprised how it was possible.

[Ziel]

I've played and beaten it with keyboard only. At the time I knew only one guy who played with a mouse but the wasd-layout wasn't a thing yet. It was really weird, I think the mouse was used for strafing? Jump on right mouse button? I don't remember it clearly but it was nowhere near any level of control you would have in Half-Life and Quake 2 and such.

[Snowy]

Originally posted by DrMaybe:

I've played and beaten it with keyboard only. At the time I knew only one guy who played with a mouse but the wasd-layout wasn't a thing yet. It was really weird, I think the mouse was used for strafing? Jump on right mouse button? I don't remember it clearly but it was nowhere near any level of control you would have in Half-Life and Quake 2 and such.

Cool you did. Defaults for the mouse (according to the Atomic Edition in the manual) were...

Left click - fire
Middle mouse button - walk forward (modern mice, mouse wheel down)
Right click - strafe

Also, moving the mouse up and down, was forward back, and turning was obviously left and right (strafing too). Playing the demo on Mac, all we had was the included one button mouse, so if I went to use the mouse, forward would be pushing it. Keyboard was used to for jumping (wasn't WASD and that didn't cross my mind then).

Definitely not like Quake 2 or HL. When looking up, it looked all disorted.

[krz]

I had(now its lost) original cardboard Duke Nukem 3D Premier Collection(it was older version not Atomic and had double foot kick :) game and back then i played all fps games with keyboard only :)

[NECROMANCERFORLIFE]

yep when i was around 12 years old and this game totally fresh we beat it with keyboard only. Mice were not that great like the ones today. and until quake 3 i stayed with keyboard only.

[Snowy]

Neat, neat, nice to see I'm not the only one who can play and beat this with keyboard only. I was just playing the DOS version and beat Episode 1 keyboard only this afternoon.

Originally posted by krz:

I had(now its lost) original cardboard Duke Nukem 3D Premier Collection(it was older version not Atomic and had double foot kick :) game and back then i played all fps games with keyboard only :)

Had to Google that, very nice looking set, especially with the box style. ^^

Originally posted by NECROMANCERFORLIFE:

yep when i was around 12 years old and this game totally fresh we beat it with keyboard only. Mice were not that great like the ones today. and until quake 3 i stayed with keyboard only.

I agree, back then we had mainly ball mice. When I pushed the mouse forward in Duke, it seems to be very smooth compared to what I remember from the Mac demo in 97.

Neat, my first FPS to use keyboard and mouse in the way we all know it today was Red Faction 1. That introduced me to WASD and mouse aiming.

[α E-MAN-cipation Ω]

Not only with a keyboard but also with an N64 controller.

[PixelPusher]

Back in 1996 with default keyboard controls and a good old Gravis Gamepad. Some years after that on the Saturn and the Playstation.

[Malooga]

Finished L.A, honestly I don't know why I waited so long to play games on the PC--its not near as hard to pick up as I thought it would be. Would be much easier with a mouse but keyboard alone really isn't that bad. Love this game so much, timeless fun, not sure why people hated Forever its really just a modern day reincarnation of 3D.

[Nilex]

Pretty much most did, speaking of PC. Keyboard only was the standard those days because full sphere mouse motion didn't exist in FPS at those times. And mouse movement was awkward, unpredictable and pretty much unusable.
There were two ways to perform vertical aim. One was classic auto-aim which which could aim at about 60° angle from the horizontal plane only when there was an enemy present above or bellow your horizontal view direction. The view remained horizontal but the bullets went at the target which sometimes you couldn't even see because of the high angle and proximity to the target. The second way was via look up/down buttons which was highly impractical. It took ages from horizontal to up/down and it distorted image, also known by "lookspring" name i think.
Just took a look at classic version and Duke 3D's vertical view can be achieved with mouse too. It is still lookspring and awkward though, maybe good only to rest from keyboard only action to take a look around :)

With that technical thing outta the way now i can say what i really wanted to say and that is: of course i played full keyboard! Enjoyed every second of it. It was very rewarding and satisfying to play is that way, like you are in-tune with the game. Needed more precision in movement too which helped later, in kb+mouse battles :)

Funny story from when i went to my first LAN with the notion of owning everyone using KB only. This was after high school sometime in '99 or '00 i think and the game was AvP. That first LAN is also source of my current nick which didn't change over the years :)
The other guys went one time before so i was only 1 game experience short. Not a big deal i thought, especially since they didn't have much PC experience, let alone FPS. But as it turned out i got my ass handed out to me, getting slaughtered. I could win some if not most of the 'horizontal' duels using KB but it being a very 'non horizontal' game with aliens in the dark and on the walls & ♥♥♥♥ I was having a bad time. More so when i figured out that auto-aim didn't exist in AvP :)
So after eating my soup, my mouse training began and soon things were set right again.

It took many more years for the switch from directional keys to WASD to be made though... :)

[5onic]

Yes.

[[SoTu] Spys4Darwin]

My dad and I both finished all the episodes using keyboard only. Well, mostly my dad.

[Mylliah]

Yup, at 10, but took a lot of quick save-load.

With original controls:
Keyboard arrow to move (wasn't strafing back in time, so left/right was to turn around)
Q to jump
W to duck
Space to use
I was only using medkit as inventory item

Couldn't go further than piece of cake difficulty, but I did finish all the 4 episodes a lot of time.

The hardest was the xeno with miniguns and grenade launcher, and the bosses.

[Arjaneke]

Never played Duke Nukem 3D with a mouse untill this version came out. And the first time I played this game I was 6 years old.