Preliminaries:
Staying at the "How to Walk" sign, let's capture all the ways of walking while we're in this spot. If you've wandered off (but still at "Adventure Island"), humor me and back-track to here.
WASD Not Working?
The default setup with Firestorm might not be with WASD enabled for movement. The arrow keys on the lower right of the typical keyboard will work. If you are using a left-handed mouse, that can be fine. When using a mouse right-handed, switching to and from the arrow keys is awkward.
When WASD is not enabled, pressing those (and any other alphabetic keys) are taken as initiation of a message in Nearby Chat (about which more later).
Here's how to enable WASD keys for movement. On the far left of the top menu strip, click "Avatar" and then select "Preferences."
On the Preferences dashboard that opens up, select "Move & View." Then click the "Movement" tab. The second entry specifies "Pressing letter keys affects movement ...". If there is no checkmark in the adjacent box, click to create one.
Then click "OK."
Hallelujah! I Can Walk
After confirming that you can use both WASD and the arrow keys for movement, now's a good time to learn more about movement.
On the strip of buttons at the bottom of the Firestorm Window, one of the buttons depicts someone walking.
When this button is pressed, a small movement tool appears.
The tool will be farther away than shown.
The movement button is a toggle. Clicking it again removes the tool.
I recommend using click and hold at the top of the tool to drag it near the bottom center of the Firefox window as shown here. Leave it there. Toggle it away when it's in the way of something.
There are three modes of movement: Walking, Running, and Flying. Walking is shown as selected at the moment. You can choose among all of them at any time. Let's explore walking first.
The Walking Moves
Moving around with the WASD keys, now, notice that your choices of movement are brightened on the movement tool. The same is true using the arrow keys.
Clicking on the direction arrows on the movement tool also works. But there are more moves than WASD provides. There are 8 cases there, in addition to choices for Run, Walk, or Fly. Here's what works.
- Walk Forward: W and ∧
- Turn Leftward: A and <
- Walk Back: S and ∨
- Turn Rightward: D and >
And, in addition,
- Step Left: Shift-A and Shift-<
- Step Right: Shift-D and Shift->
- Jump Up: E (tap) and PgUp (tap)
- Jump Down: C (tap) and PgDn (tap)
Jumping down does not do much if you are on the surface. It is useful underwater and also if you are flying.
With a calculator pad on your keyboard, those directional keys can also be used when Num Lock is not set.
Fledgling Flight
There are four ways to initiate flying. Take a fledgling flight straight up and back down one of these ways.
- Toggle Flying: Home starts and stops flying. Try this first.
- Jump into Flying: Hold E until the jump turns into vertical flight.
- Another Jump into Flying: Hold PgUp until the jump turns into vertical flight.
- Clicking the Movement Tool: Click the flying figure at the lower-right corner of the movement tool.
IMPORTANT: Don't fly around much until you can see how to find your way back to the "How to Walk" starting point of Adventure Island. Seeing a way to backtrack the green tour-guide arrows is one way. Keep them in sight.
Walking movements work to move around when flying also. Control of Ascent and Descent are by pressing E (PgUp) and C (PgDn) respectively. Ascend to give yourself a good view of Adventure Island.
Landing on the surface below where you have flown is easy.
- Tap Home for landing.
- Click the "Stop Flying" button that appears on the movement tool when you are flying.
- Descend to the surface until your avatar can't descend farther, forcing return to surface movement mode.
WARNING: Stay out of the water. It works to go underwater, but returning to the surface can be obstructed and it takes effort to find an area where you can break through to fly again above the surface and back onto the tutorial path.
You'll have much practice of movement on Adventure Island and in other locations. The movement tool will be important then and also when new kinds of movement are introduced, such as solo/group and couples dancing.
And Another Thing ...
While (back) here at the "How to Walk" sign, there's another toggle button to try out.
The button with the question mark toggles the Welcome Island Guidebook. The guidebook is available at all times; it's an useful supplement to this and the Adventure World tutorial; it remains available when you finally graduate from Adventure Island. (You'll notice that changing of past names has not been implemented consistently among various materials. Don't worry about it.)
Enough talking about walking. Let's talk about talking now. ...
Continuation:
