Do you press 'ESC' or do you press 'SPACEBAR' to pause the game?

Some old games used to have P or the Pause|Break button to pause the game. Space is how you pause DVDs however. Escape is most often used to go to a menu, which in alot of games pauses.

I'd go for 'escape' to toggle an in-game menu with an automatic pause function. Depending on the game you may wish to use a separate button for a simple pause instead/as-well. Good keys to use:

'P'
'Pause/Break'
'Escape'
'F1'

most rts games use esc to deselect units and F10 for ur menu though. space bar can be used to pause the game in a turn based rpg or something, wehre a quick pause to give orders might be useful.

I generally expect Esc to pull me out of game into a menu.

Quote:

Original post by tenseiga most rts games use esc to deselect units and F10 for ur menu though. space bar can be used to pause the game in a turn based rpg or something, wehre a quick pause to give orders might be useful.

I agree completely with this.

- An RTS could have F10 as pause/menu button.
- Any other game could have ESC as pause/menu button.
- A game which uses pauses frequently could have Space Bar as extra ause button.