: You mean.. you can play with the mouse? I never knew that... O_o
I used to play with the mouse, but forced myself to switch when the OS X 10.0 public beta came out. The mouse didn't work in the Classic Environment for gameplay back then - unless you didn't find spinning around in circles and looking down to be annoying - and I wasn't about to wait. Having played both ways, I can tell you that there are major advantages to both. With the mouse you can turn very quickly. You can turn almost instantaneously and aiming is more intuitive. With the keyboard you have more control. Indeed if I go back to try to use the mouse now, I find it disorienting. I suppose for netplay that speed advantage could be critical - most players aren't so dumb as the Pfhor and will likely anticipate your moves.
If you use the mouse, you will have to change your keyboard layout - the standard layout is horrible to begin with and I still use my modified layout, even when using the keyboard - it's much more intuitive. If you use the arrow keys (or keypad if you have a regular keyobard as opposed to a laptop) for left-right and up-down, then switching back and forth is easy. My keyboard layout is as follows:
2 = forward
q = sidestep left
e = sidestep right
s = backward
` = previous weapon
4 = next weapon
tab = action key
caps lock = run
left arrow = turn left
right arrow = turn right
up arrow = look up
down arrow = look down
/ = look forward
option = primary trigger
space = secondary trigger
The other keys I don't really use so they're irrelavent, except that I keep left and right brackets for cycling through my inventory and m for map mode as per Bungie's original layout. Yes, I know what Bungie says about using he caps-lock key, but I've had arthritis since my college days (it runs in the family) and using the pinkie to continuous hold down a run key is a very bad idea. A nice thing about this layout is that the run-sidestep manouver is much more intuitive. One thing you will find with using the mouse is that hangtime manouvers with the mouse just don't work well. There is no way keep looking down while running so as to fire a grenade at just the right moment. This is another argument in favor of having a layout that makes it easy to switch back and forth.
Have fun!
