most common PC control scheme?

[mirkvid]

I'm setting up the controls for a game I'm coding and would like to know what the standard control scheme for a PC shmup is.

Is it wasd + arrows to move and z,x,c for firing?

Thanks guys!

[TidusBlade]

Pretty much all PC shmups I've played (Not that many though xD) had the default set to Z for shooting and X for bomb, and any other buttons were C or SHIFT and moving was arrow keys, don't recall any that had WASD by default or any that had over 4 keys for normal play o.0

Imho though, leaving the default as ZXC + arrow keys and letting the player configure the keys would be best. As a player, I expect ZXC to be the default and if I use something else I at least hope there's a way to change the keys

[mjclark]

Imho though, leaving the default as ZXC + arrow keys and letting the player configure the keys would be best. As a player, I expect ZXC to b e the default and if I use something else I at least hope there's a way to change the keys

Yeah-configurable keys are a must AND joystick support

[Ixmucane2]

You can stretch zxc to zxcv (with the main weapon on x, not z) if you need four buttons. Some games recognize asd/asdf as alternate buttons, or more commonly wasd as alternate arrows.
Keys should be configurable in any case: QZERTY, AZERTY, Dvorak, etc. keyboards ruin all default neat arrangements of letters.

Ctrl and Shift (left or both) are acceptable as buttons if you only need one or two, but not used together with Alt because there are rubbish keys between Ctrl and Alt on both sides of most keyboards.

[null1024]

Shift, Z, X, C, and V are the standard for a shmup [for example, every single Touhou, Cho Ren Sha, almost every random doujin shmup you download will probably use these keys].

User configurable keys should be allowed, but generally, loads of devs are too lazy to do it. BUT IT IS THE BEST OPTION, hands down. Too bad I'm one of those lazy devs :PPP [Seriously, it's not hard, it's just annoying to do. It's a Simple Matter of Programming (tm).].

If you want the best keyboard support [and are too lazy to do configurable keys], map your two most important buttons to Shift and Ctrl [read: Shift - fire, Ctrl - bomb], as well as Z and X.
Most keyboards support many pressed down modifier keys, which means they won't have problems when inputting diagonals.

Also, allow joystick/pad control. This is very, very standard, and quite a bit more common than remappable keys [from what I've seen].

[Rozyrg]

Kind of a newb question...

I recently made a control config for one of my GM projects that assigns names for keys based on their ASCII codes. I'm just wondering if this is something different/nonstandard keyboard layouts would effect, or is it even worth worrying about?

[mirkvid]

ASCII codes are not affected by your keyboard layout.

[Jeneki]

These days it seems like a lot of people are using 360 controllers on their PC (the drivers are built into Windows). There was a big topic about it in the Steam forums when Razor 2 came out.

If you do choose to support 360 controllers, keep in mind that most 360 joysticks emulate the digital thumb pad, not the analog stick.