Detect multiple keys pressed to move a "character/player" - javascript

I have an example of what I have got so far here (example 1), you'll need to click on the 'result' window so the keys will move the character (w, a, s and d keys move the character), also bear in mind that this has not been browser tested and only works in a select few modern browsers.
I can now get the image to move up/down/left/right as wanted and depending on the 'health' it moves a particular speed, and using a good example I found it rotates along with the mouse too, so it works in a birds eye view styled game.
Now, I'm a little confused about how I can get the image to move diagonally, I've tried using multiple if statements linking the possible combinations of keys, but it always takes the last key pressed.
I don't really know how to tackle the problem, do I need to put them in some sort of while loop to say while a certain key is pressed move it in that direction? Would that eliminate the need for the diagonal/multiple key press?
if ((key == key_W && key == key_D) || (key == key_w && key == key_d) || (key == key_W && key == key_d) || (key == key_w && key == key_D)) {
// Player Up/Right
}
Or do I need to set some sort of array to generate a list of keys pressed?
I understand and I'm fully aware making games in Javascript/jQuery isn't the best method to make games, it's an experiment more than anything.
EDIT
There is now have a more workable, moving character here (example 2), but there is a delay in the movement, so to expand on my question, is there anyway to reduce this?

Well this looks like a fun project so it got me curious and I started to look around. I found an article on Quirksmode that talks about using keycode vs character code. I see that you are detecting both upper and lower case letters. The following blurb seems to indicate that this is unnecessary. This article also has important docs on browser compatibility and special key compatibility between browsers and systems. For instance, the command button on a Mac keyboard. What is it? How is it detected and behaves in various browsers?
for instance, a lower case 'a' and an upper case 'A' have the same
keyCode, because the user presses the same key, but a different
charCode because the resulting character is different.
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/keys.html
So then the question becomes, how do you detect multiple key presses. I found this SO answer on it that is remarkably simple and straightforward.
Can jQuery .keypress() detect more than one key at the same time?
var keys = {};
$(document).keydown(function (e) {
keys[e.which] = true;
});
$(document).keyup(function (e) {
delete keys[e.which];
})
Update
Basically I just brought in the code from above, deleted your diagonal code and iterated over the keys array for all movement operations.
http://jsfiddle.net/mrtsherman/8NW2K/3/

Jwerty is a great library which handles this sort of thing, i suggest you check it out:
https://keithamus.github.io/jwerty/
It's compatible with jQuery too!

Related

KeyboardEvent: how to get numeric key code while 'Shift' is pressed?

In my application, I need to identify if the user pressed any of the number keys (either main keyboard or numpad) as well as if shift/ctrl/alt keys are pressed at the same time.
I need this because the pressed key represents the number in the array (from 0 to 9) which should trigger an action with this number. So my logic is simple:
#HostListener('document:keydown', ['$event'])
handleKeydownEvent(event: KeyboardEvent) {
let index = Number(event.key);
if (isNaN(index)) {
// skip, for now
}else{
doAction(index);
}
}
I like this because of its readability and transparency.
It seems that things are simple when I additionally need to handle 'Alt' or 'Ctrl'. In these cases, event.key still represents a numeric key value of the key pressed (like '1' or '2') (and I can check event.ctrlKey/event.altKey.
But things are getting more complicated when I need to consider the 'Shift' key. In this case, event.key does not represent a numeric key. Instead, it represents other characters such as '!' or '#'.
I guess I could convert this into key code by building a map, but I'd need to handle keyboard layouts as in some cases Shift+2 will end up to be a '#', in other - '"' (Russian layout vs English).
What is the proper and simple way to detect the code of the key pressed when the 'Shift' button is pressed?
Thanks!
Options:
Uisng event.which: It returns numeric value but it is deprecated.
Your idea of creating map is cool. To create the map, instead of using "event.key", use "event.code".
EVENT.CODE is your life saver.

In Intern.js Leadfoot, how do I preform a CTRL Click

I'm just wondering what the preferred way to preform a ctrl + click action in leadfoot is. In java I would have used the Actions class and used keyDown, but since we have moved to a JS based framework I'm a complete fish out of water!
I've seen in the api that there is a pressKeys function but it doesn't seem to do what we need. I've thought about using jQuery to do this but I would really rather keep it in the current framework.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Peter
You can use pressKeys, for example:
command.moveMouseTo(myBtn)
.pressKeys(keys.CONTROL)
.clickMouseButton()
.pressKeys(keys.CONTROL)
A good thing to remember about pressKeys (https://theintern.github.io/leadfoot/Command.html#pressKeys)
keys: The text to type in the remote environment. It is possible to type keys that do not have normal character representations (modifier keys, function keys, etc.) as well as keys that have two different representations on a typical US-ASCII keyboard (numpad keys); use the values from leadfoot/keys to type these special characters. Any modifier keys that are activated by this call will persist until they are deactivated. To deactivate a modifier key, type the same modifier key a second time, or send \uE000 ('NULL') to deactivate all currently active modifier keys.
TheIntern/LeadFoot provides you a function execute. You can trigger any event from this function using JS.
.execute(function() {
//You can even access window from here
$("#someId").click() //example
//or try something like this
e = jQuery.Event("keydown");
e.which = 50;
e.ctrlKey = true;
$("input").trigger(e);
})
To trigger keyevent follow these links:
jquery trigger ctrl + click
How to trigger key combo with jQuery

Caret position not keeping track?

What I'm trying to do is put key codes in an array, to do some interesting stuff with later on. So, I capture the keystrokes, get the caret position and put the key code in the array (with some help from MooTools):
var keyArray = [];
$('form').addEvent('keyup', function(event) {
var pos = document.activeElement.getCaretPosition();
keyArray[pos] = event.code;
});
Generally speaking, this works great. However, I noticed some undefined values in my array when showing the complete array in my console. Exploring this further, I found out that when typing quickly, the caret position seems to lose track, or being quick/slow to respond. I've made a jsfiddle to demonstrate this: http://jsfiddle.net/HQVR8/1/
If you type quickly in this example, you'll see a caret position sequence like
- 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 6 - 6.
But when typing slowly, it's
- 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6.
Of course, the trouble now when typing quickly is that I have a undefined value in my array and I overwrite one array item. So the result is different.
My question is if I can somehow let the caret position keep track. I've tried using the 'native' selectionStart instead, but results are the same. I also tried capturing the caret position in a keydown event and putting it in an array in the keyup event. No difference. I'm wondering if using little pauses (ie. forcing the user to type slower) might solve it, but this feels like a hack and I would prefer a 'proper' solution. Hopefully, there is one.
you are basically making a mess by using an array instead of an object.
array indexes are dodgy and can create sparse arrays if you are not careful. for instance:
var foo = [];
foo[0] = "one!"; // foo.length = 1;
foo[2] = "two!"; // foo.length = 3, foo[1] = undefined
so if you type too fast and skip the return value, it is probably doing just that. also, pasting etc can push caret further down...
you can probably use an object though there are no guarantees on the order of keys in vs keys out in all browsers - particularly webkit, who tend to reorder and put numeric keys at top of object key loops... but if you prefix the key like "pos" + caretIndex, you ought to get FIFO
one way to solve your need to extract the actual codes w/o the undefined is via Array.filter.
eg.
retArray = Array.filter(retArray, function(el) {
return el !== undefined;
});
With an object, you can just do:
console.log(Object.values(foo));
After some more tests, it appears to be a behavior specific to keyup. When I use keydown I do get a consistent sequence: http://jsfiddle.net/HQVR8/3/
One disadvantage is that keydown is a step behind keyup when you're doing the 'value collecting' I'm doing, but in my setting, this is only a minor issue.
The difference in behavior appears odd to me: when you press four keys at a time, the keyup displays the same caret position for all of them, while keydown is showing four separate caret positions. This seems odd because you press them at once, but also depress them at once, so the caret 'readings' should be the same.
go to the JSfiddle and fiddle with this:
a) depress 'q', then depress 'w', then release 'q', then release 'w' (fast enough to avoid autorepeat). That kind of sequence happens quite often when you type 'quickly' with more than one finger :).
b) leave any key depressed long enough for the autorepeat to kick in.
The differences are in plain view
Basically, keyUp fires when the physical key is released, but
another key can be depressed before the previous one is released
keyDown is called in case of autorepeat, while keyUp isn't
Since carret position and whatever text area updates are kept in sync with keyDown, you will simply miss the intermediate steps when monitoring keyUp.
In case (a), the keyUp handler sees carret pos jump from 0 to 2 as 'q' is released because two characters have been typed before the first key was released. The release of 'w' does not change carret position, so the handler ends up storing both q and w at position 2.
In case (b), the handler misses the repeats completely, and stores only the last instance of the key.
As a conclusion, using KeyUp will never achieve the intended meaning.
keyDown could, but personnally I would rather hook the changed event.
I reckon it is no less reliable to detect a bot filling the field (after all, a legit user could want to paste the password too), and you won't have to bother with control keys like backspace or whatever other non-keyboard means of clearing the input.
You could use keyUp as an extra paranoid check, as long as you don't expect to reconstruct the exact input. For instance, you could simply check that the released key matches the character at current cursor position. But frankly I'm not sure it is worth the bother.

Trying to figure out if there is a bug in jQuery or if it's something I'm doing

$(document).keydown(function (event)
{
alert(event.which);
});
For the semicolon key, ;, this gives 59 in Firefox and 186 in Chrome. However, from the jQuery reference page for the keydown event, it says
"While browsers use differing properties to store this information, jQuery normalizes the .which property so you can reliably use it to retrieve the key code. This code corresponds to a key on the keyboard, including codes for special keys such as arrows."
Am I missing something?
The which property is a "one stop shop" for which key was pressed, allowing you to ignore the differences between the keyCode and charCode properties. That is the "normalization" that jQuery provides.
The difference in the value of which comes down to a difference between the way the various browsers supply the information - so you'll have to write code to handle the different values that come back. There are a few references to this behavior online.
A quick Google search says you will simply have to test for both. This is a consistent inconsistency with Firefox.
I don't know about jQuery but I'd suggest sticking to keypress events for typing keys and only using keydown events for special keys such as arrows.
Here is the entirety of the "normalization" that jQuery does:
if ( event.which == null ) {
event.which = original.charCode != null ? original.charCode : original.keyCode;
}
Looks like it just gets keyCode if charCode doesn't exist. And charCode is only used if event.which doesn't already exist. It doesn't change the numbers around to make them consistent.

transform pressed key values to english values

I have an input like this
<input id="guestCard" name="guestCard" onkeypress="transform(event)" type="text" value="" />
and I want to transform the key pressed on a keyboard regardless of which language settings to english character. E.g. when I press on czech keyboard + (with keycode 43) , I want to get 1 (with keycode 49).
Is there some standard way to do this? How would the function transform look like?
Alternatively I want the same functionality but using ajax (on asp.net mvc). Any ideas there?
Thanks in advance.
As far as I am aware, JavaScript is not locale aware - so you would need to somehow detect or have the user pick the appropriate transform mapping (in this case, perhaps a radio button for czech as the source and U.S. ASCII as the destination). Once that is taken care of, your function could be something like:
function transform(event) {
var code = (event.charCode) ? event.charCode : event.keyCode; // cross-browser happy
switch (code) {
case 43 : return "1";
}
}
There is a great test page to see how keyCode/charCode properties and the onKeyDown/Press/Up events behave in different browsers. http://asquare.net/javascript/tests/KeyCode.html
I doubt there is one but to create it, create an associative array, add some JS to a text field which saves the two values in the array and then press every key on the keyboard. After that, you can dump the array somewhere and use this as a constant in your code.
But be warned: Almost all users will have problems when they don't get the character on the screen which they've typed on the keyboard.
Trimack -
I think you are using the wrong event. You need onkeydown, and use the keyCode property of event.

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