Gamepad stick input triggered too many times

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1

Godot Version

4.2.2

Question

Hi there!
I have a problem with some inputs, more precisely with gamepad sticks.

In my game I mapped (via Input Map) some actions, and some of them need to have a stick up/down. What I want is not a continuous movement, but a discrete one like the press/release of a button.

So I have for example:

Input Map
Input Map815Ă—229 21.3 KB

And this code (inside a Control node):

func _input(_event: InputEvent) -> void:
	if _event.is_action_pressed("control_up"):
		select_previous()
	
	if _event.is_action_pressed("control_down"):
		select_next()

When I press the stick all the way up or down, it detects a change but if i keep it pressed and tilt the stick just a little it detects an infinite amount of movement, so it continuously triggers one of those two methods in the conditions above.

How can I fix that?
Is there also a best-practice on how to detect input for UI elements and/or game elements (like the player movement)?

Thanks in advance.
I also uploaded a minimal reproduction on github so you can test it directly there.

2

Try is_action_just_pressed(“”).

Edit: another thing you can do, as I’m doing it more often too, is adding a timer node to configure an “input rate” (similar to like an “attack rate”). That way the input is only polled once every 0.5 seconds or so.

3

For joysticks it’s detecting little movements that are over the threshold, you may have to add your own debounce variable, or use Control nodes and their “Focus” properties.

var event_rest: bool = true
func _input(event: InputEvent) -> void:
	if event.is_action("control_up"):
		if event.is_pressed() and event_rest:
			event_rest = false
			select_previous()
		elif event.is_released():
			event_rest = true
	
	elif event.is_action_pressed("control_down"):
		if event.is_pressed() and event_rest:
			event_rest = false
			select_next()
		elif event.is_released():
			event_rest = true
4

I thought about doing a debounce boolean but it seemed to me a bad practice as I was also hoping to implement customization of controls on the player-side (so even buttons like A, B, RB etc… could be mapped to analog sticks).

In this case I should implement that for every action that need a single input in _input callback, am I correct? Or maybe is there an alternative way I don’t see at the moment?

1 Like
5

is_action_just_pressed is not a method of InputEvent, instead it’s of singleton Input that I’m trying to avoid since I have an event to consume.

The input rate solution could be interesting, I need to evaluate that since I also want to offer the player a total customization of the input commands!