As I assume to be the obvious, the convenient and logical controls for a QWERTY keyboard is WASD. For an AZERTY keyboard, this would be ZQSD. However, it’s been a couple months now where I can only use WASD for movement using an AZERTY keyboard.
This is awfully inconvenient and only happens in-game. This does not happen in Studio’s test mode.
How it should be: Able to quickly and smoothly switch between Z and S for maneuvering in-game.
How it is now; A total pain.
Soooo what % of the entire world uses this keyboard layout?
And why should software developers cater to such a keyboard?
Not sure what % of the world uses it.
Either way, this shouldn’t be hard to program just movement into the game for it. I can’t think of any controls Roblox has other than movement that would need to be changed. I’m in support.
Came off a bit harsh there to OP. I dislike the idea of keyboards popping up that aren’t QWERTY. But if it’s actually supported by Roblox hence why this is in bug reports, I have to ask, how does it work when I have the key ‘Z’ and ‘Q’ set to do something not related to moving?
Roblox used to support this until a couple months ago. There’s no point ending that support now unless you want to mess over certain countries in Europe.
Netherlands is one of the countries they host RDC in; assumingly implying they care about their users there; and the Netherlands are one of the countries that use AZERTY keyboards.
Enlightening map, thanks. I’m still stuck on the 2nd half of my post though. I use q for ragdoll and z for zooming in fov. Wouldn’t that affect something with AZERTY layout?
Not if you use key position and not KeyCode. If you use the objective key position it doesn’t matter what the actual key is. It would be the same way AZERTY/QWERTY movement is coded, where AZERTY = QWERTY.
After some digging, I found this thread:
where @darthskrill said:
But despite all, it is such a pain for people who have AZERTY keyboards. Imagine playing every game like this:
As far as I can remember I’ve never seen an “ĄŽERTY” keyboard in Lithuania, we’ve always had normal american layout QWERTY’s in school and at home so that map is probably outdated.
I think Roblox should just add Custom Key Biding, but idk if it would effect the Client in a bad way or not.
I doubt you’ve been to every place in Lithuania; There may be zones where they have a different default? It’s only a guess to me.
I wonder why France is one of the only countries supporting AZERTY
all keyboard layouts should work fine with the movement controls. If you have an AZERTY keyboard layout, the keys ZQSD move your character, not WASD. We accomplish this by always passing InputObject.KeyCode for InputType.Keyboard as if your keyboard is laid out for US QWERTY.
Obviously that would be an issue for text input in chat or any textbox, so textboxes listen for InputObject.TextInput, in which case the string field (this is an internal field for InputObject) is the correct string that was typed on the keyboard, taking layout into account.
So tl;dr just write your keyboard input code assuming US QWERTY layout. We still owe you guys a way to query a KeyCode and get the translated KeyCode the user will see, so you can prompt a user with the appropriate key in a GUI if you so choose.
Normally keyboards send “scan codes” which are based on the physical positions of the keys rather than the label printed on them. The OS then has a configured “keyboard layout” which is a table that maps scan codes to “key codes” which are a more direct representation of the textual input. For the WASD movement controls in Roblox, we use scan codes that correspond to where the WASD keys will be on a QWERTY keyboard.
It is possible that the keyboard on your laptop, instead of sending correct scancodes for AZERTY, is internally jumbling up the scancodes so that it can pretend to be a US keyboard layout with a US keyboard mapping. If your keyboard is doing this, then you should be able to notice this same problem in games other than Roblox, and there is also almost nothing we can do from our end to fix it other than to add keybind remapping and force users to manually remap their keys. Ideally, basic movement controls should work out of the box without requiring extra configuration.
Can you provide the make and model of your laptop (and what country you bought it in)?
My laptop is an HP Pavilion 17-f256nb Azerty bought in Belgium. The keyboard layout is set to Dutch (Belgian); Belgian (Period) keyboard
do other games work with WASD? or do they have the same issue?
They appear to have the same issue, I usually have to change the inputs.
I notice that this only happens in Roblox though; When using Roblox Studio’s test feature, I can use ZQSD to move my character.
Interesting, we will try and repro this in house and get back when we can
Do you have any update on this? I have gotten a new keyboard, a QWERTY keyboard this time, and still this occurs. It still uses ZQSD (as opposed to the logical WASD) as the movement keys. This also only happens in online mode, I don’t get this issue in Studio.
Sounds like a good idea but would probably also require changing its keycode for user input service but not internally so textboxes get the correct input. This will most likely have to be done because otherwise a lot of games with custom movement scripts will not support this change. Either that or it will just be a roblox movement control thing and you would need to update games to support it.