Analogue keys mean they know how far you’re pressing them down.
Until now, keyboards haven’t had this technology but the Wooting One does have this technology
and I have it so it makes sense that I use it and see if it works in games now doesn’t
it lets begin.
My STUPID brother, 3kliksphilip, also has a video on this that he released today, though
clearly my video is better and will get the most views.
But I still suggest checking his video out to help get your head around analogue and
the new options it opens up to gamers.
My video is more focused on specific games and will assume you know stuff about analogue
already.
You can skip to the game you want to see in this video’s description.
DIRT RALLY is my racing game of choice and it works with
analogue.
You set the control system in-game to ‘XBOX 360 CONTROLLER’, see which buttons control
the accelerator, brake and steering… and then hop into the Wootility control panel
and put WASD into those buttons accordingly.
This all worked perfectly straight away and did make a difference to how I played the
game.
I’ve actually completed this game with a digital keyboard, something I’m proud of-
AND RIGHTFULLY SO.
It’s like driving to work either fully pressing the accelerator or not at all, whilst fully
locking the steering wheel around every corner, no matter how small.
It means that I developed a very twitchy, tappy style of play out of necessity.
And I’ll be honest- even with analogue buttons I often overpressed them out of blind panic.
You don’t want to understeer around corners in this game!
So still expect to make a lot of frantic, corrective stabs in this game.
But you know those little taps you have to make along straight sections?
Yeah, those are now possible without requiring an immediate stab the other way to counter
for oversteer.
It makes sense really- I was told (EVEN AFTER BEATING THIS GAME) that you can’t play this
game with a keyboard because it lacks the precision of a steering wheel.
I still think a large wheel is better than a small button but analogue is a step in the
right direction, especially if you don’t want the hassle of a bulky steering wheel
that’ll be sat unused whenever you’re not specifically on a racing game.
CS:GO is the ideal game to limit analogue to 2 levels, but Dirt Rally is a prime candidate
for all 255 that it’s capable of.
ARMA 3!
Oh, dear.
What a mess this game’s controls are.
I find them intimidating enough with a normal keyboard, all buttons seemingly double-booked
already.
But throw the Wooting One into the mix and it somehow gets worse!
I sort of looked at it and asked myself, can I be bothered?
To which the answer was: YES.
If you try to bind a button, it thinks you’ve pressed both the keyboard button, AND the
controller button it’s bound to at the same time.
So to configure analogue controls in the menu, then, you have to disable the digital keys,
effectively turning the Wooting One into a controller where most of its keys do nothing-
enabling them again once you’re finished with the controls screen.
But until then you’ll need a SECOND keyboard to alt+tab between the control panel and the
game and so on.
This is the problem with being an early adopter of new tech, I guess.
And even if I can be bothered…
can you?
Still!
I’ll reveal my findings in-game.
Analogue works great!
You can test this out on one of Arma 3’s thousand config screens.
I could slowly press a button and watch as it registered gradually.
But how does this translate into gameplay?...
WASD work beautifully.
Half-press them and you walk, fully-press them and you run.
Excellent stuff.
BUT I managed to go one step further!
Wootility has a feature called ‘DKS’ which lets you bind 2 keys to a single button.
With a bit of experimentation, I could walk, run AND sprint with the same button, depending
on how far I pressed it down.
I’m kind of proud of myself for figuring out how to do this in Arma’s menus!
What about elsewhere though?
Leaning!
This also works with analogue, letting your character only poke around the corner as much
as he has to.
I’m really happy with this and suspect anybody that plays this game will immediately see
the appeal.
It gives you an undisputed advantage over digital keyboards.
I haven’t tested it in this video but I’m interested to see if I can slice the pie in
SWAT games.
(And Portal.)
Something to look out for though- sometimes the analogue feature wouldn’t work until
I bound it to a different controller button in Wootility- almost as through some simply
aren’t capable of analogue.
Just in case anyone’s watching this video in 3 years’ time, having tired Google’s
search results, desperately wondering why their analogue key bindings still don’t
work.
Honestly, I could be (and almost was) here all day testing Arma.
There’s certainly value to be found in analogue here.
But before I move on, I had to test a vehicle.
How couldn’t I?!
I decided to test a stealth jet.
I could do slight turns, sharp corners and all the stuff inbetween.
I’m beginning to realise how pointless my hand-cam is cos it’s not like you can make
out these subtle things any way.
But what can I say.
In the Arma series, I’ve never been a good pilot, but with this, I finally felt… graceful!
I could swoop and soar- the more I did, the better I felt I was!
How had I ever struggled with this before- Grand Theft Auto 5.
This game came out on consoles first!
Of course it’ll work fine with controller buttons.
So I decided to do this the easy way.
I used this screen as a guide, bound all of my keyboard keys to the corresponding console
buttons in Wootility, disabled digital keys and effectively had a keyboard shaped controller.
…and then this happened.
Some keys are bound to 2 different things, depending on how long you hold the button
for.
And it quickly annoyed me, having become accustomed to the many keys on a keyboard.
So, analogue here is a mixed blessing.
Yes, it helps you to control cars and their acceleration and steering better.
But then you also have to put up with how they’ve crammed a million controls onto
a limited number of buttons.
The alternative is to use the Wooting One as a part controller, part keyboard.
You use Wootility to bind the keys you want to behave as analogue to controller buttons,
then you disable those specific keys in GTA 5, leaving the rest as standard keyboard buttons.
But then other stupid stuff happens.
Like, to accelerate in a car is the same key as shooting when on foot.
So because I had W bound to both MOVE FORWARD and ACCELERATE (because that makes sense on
keyboard), when I got out of the car I’d start punching everywhere in a murderous rage.
I think you COULD get around this if you’re willing to learn a new keyboard layout.
But will you?
I didn’t get around to testing as many games as I hoped to because it turns out it’s
a lot more time intensive than I expected.
But I feel I get the gist of it: analogue keys give you any benefits that console games
have that use this feature- and any downsides of using a controller!
It helps with vehicles in particular, but Arma 3 also has some nice features thanks
to how extensive its support is for practically every control system ever.
And CS:GO also benefits and gives you some dank advantages, as was tested in 3kliksphilip’s
video.
The problem isn’t the keyboard- it’s the fact that PC games don’t expect you to have
analogue keys.
I’m honestly surprised that there’s as much support for them as there is.
We’ve all moaned about console ports for years but actually, this is one way in which
it has paid off!
There is clearly potential for this technology.
I liked the leaning in Arma 3.
I do enjoy the enhanced vehicles.
And I do like silently drifting about like a ghost in CS:GO.
If analogue keys ever become the standard then I look forward to improved implementation
in games and the exciting possibilities that it will open up.
For now, though, I think it’s too much effort to have to set up for every game you want
to play.
If you have 1-2 favourites then yes, it’s worth configuring for analogue and reserving
the setup in Wootility so that you can just flick to it whenever you want to play to reap
the rewards that analogue provides.
You can check out 3kliksphilip’s analogue CS:GO video here.
And thank you to the guys at Wooting for letting me test out their Wooting One keyboard.
Find their website in this video’s description if you want to know more.