How to model input when many keys/most/all of keyboard will be used?

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1

Godot Version

v4.2.2

Question

Hello! New to Godot and trying to make a game where basically all of the keyboard is used for input (imagine your pointer and middle finger walking across your keyboard–that’s going to be one of the core mechanics). While I know I can make keyboard mappings for every character, I feel like that may be a lot of tedious work. And for different keyboard layouts, that work would only multiply. Does anyone have any suggestions for modelling organizing the input in this case? Like a way where I can just have a list/array of keyboard characters and just instantiate packed scenes that will listen to the right things and create the relevant signals?

Thanks!

2

You can add actions and map them to keys in code with the InputMap class.

3

I’ve made a typing game from mostly InputEventKey, I am not sure how exactly you want to model your game, but you can avoid creating a wild input map.

func _input(event: InputEvent) -> void:
    if event is InputEventKey:
        # "walking" across a keyboard might make use of this
        event.physical_keycode == KEY_W
        # keycode needs some work for non-english/ascii keyboards but is a strong start
        event.keycode == KEY_W
4

Does GDScript have reflection capabilities so I wouldn’t need to enumerate all KEY_* enum values? E.g. It would be great if a scene could be parameterized with a letter and then the code could check event.physical_keycode == KEY_${letter} (of course, not sure what syntax is valid here). It seems KEY_`-prefixed constants are not keys in a Dictionary/Enum so I can’t do some of the subscription syntax I’m familiar with.

5

Oh I suppose I can do something with event.as_text() but I could see how that’s considered bad practice…

6

You can add to the keys for a while KEY_0 + 2 == KEY_2 same with letters KEY_A + 2 == KEY_C but after 9/Z it gets funky, as_text() is fine you can also use String.chr(event.keycode) without modifiers (shift/alt/ctrl).