Controls

The game controls are the inputs by which the player directs movement and other game functions.

Default controls
The default controls, in vanilla Doom, for the most often-used functions are as follows.


 * 1) The single-key strafe controls (comma and period) are not listed in the instruction manuals
 * 2) The strafe key changes the left and right turn keys into left and right strafe keys
 * 3) The run key increases the speed of movement

Consult the game instruction manual regarding weapon selection keys, function keys and other controls.

Mouse and keyboard
The instruction manuals provide a tip that recommends using the keyboard and mouse simultaneously, saying "the mouse provides fine control for aiming your weapon (allowing you to smoothly rotate right and left) [...]". The keyboard and mouse combination also provides rapid rotation and easier strafing, resulting in quicker maneuvers than when using the keyboard alone.

In mouse and keyboard mode, usually the mouse is used for turning, firing and (perhaps to a lesser extent) strafing and moving forward, and the keyboard is used for the other functions.

Some TSRs (such as Istvan Pataki's Novert) and mouse drivers provide the option to disable or decrease mouse forward/backward movement. This is used especially by players to control forward/backward movement from the keyboard only and thus want to disregard inadvertent vertical mouse movement. Many source ports include this as an internal configuration option.

While the Options menu in vanilla DOOM imposes an upper limit on the maximum mouse sensitivity that some may consider too low (a maximum value of 9), it is possible to bypass this limit by manually editing the Configuration file. However, setting the mouse sensitivity to 31 or higher will cause DOOM to crash if the Options menu is accessed. This is due to the slider graphic being drawn off-screen, causing vanilla DOOM to immediately return the player to the DOS prompt with a "Bad V_DrawPatchDirect" error message.

WASD
When using mouse and keyboard, many players (right-handed people in particular) find the default location of certain keys to be less-than-optimal. Using the Setup program (or a corresponding menu in a source port), it is possible to reassign these key functions to other keys. One popular arrangement is known as WASD (since those are the keys that are reassigned):

Analogous arrangements using, for example, ESDF and (for left-handed mousers) IJKL are also used.

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Joystick
The joystick is more awkward than the keyboard and mouse combination, and is thus not used very often by Doom players, but the run button setting of the joystick in the configuration file (joyb_speed) will have the effect of allowing the player to always run (as if the key assigned to key_speed were always pressed) if set to 29 (or 31).