Slick Forums

I looked through the javadoc and did a search but couldn't turn anything up. I don't see any methods such as iisKeyPressed() that just tell me if any key is being pressed. I know I could do it by running a loop over all the possible keys and checking those, but that seems rather inefficient.

For example, I was mocking up a little typing game. I wanted it to deduct points if you pressed the wrong key, but I couldn't figure out a way to detect any key using Slick without checking all the keys individually.

Just a simple isKeyPressed() and isKeyDown() to return a boolean value if any key is pressed or held down would help.

Override keyPressed/keyReleased in BasicGame or BasicGameState.

That works. Is there a reason that it's not an included method?

It 'is' included, you get it from the Input object in GameContainer for use in the update method.

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For every new problem, a new source of solutions has come to exist.

By 'it' I meant the generic isKeyPressed() and isKeyDown() method I was looking for, not isKeyPressed(key) and isKeyDown(key).

Oh guess i missed a few things when i read your post, anyway it's not included because of the methods that davedes mentioned, so it isn't really needed, but if you think its needed try writing an RFE.

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For every new problem, a new source of solutions has come to exist.

It's not needed but it would make for a good addition in my opinion so programmers don't have to reinvent that wheel all the time. They would be nice, easy to write functions that could be used in a lot of games.

I could add isKeyDown() if you want, as well as isMouseDown/etc. This will simply return true if 'any' key/mouse button/controller button is currently down.

isKeyPressed(), I'm not really sure how that would work or what purpose it would serve, as it checks whether a particular key was down the last frame, and is now up. As I said, you can already check for "any key release" by overriding keyReleased or "any key down" by overriding keyPressed.

Overriding keyPressed/keyReleased is the "appropriate" way to handle input in Slick when you don't need to poll for it every frame (i.e. when you just need to listen for the event).

A generic isKeyPressed() could be used for when you're required to hit a certain sequence of keys without messing up. For example you have to hit Q,W,E,R,T, and Y in order, so the code could be something like if (isKeyPressed(currentKey)) //continue else if (isKeyPressed()) //you missed.

Just the isKeyDown() methods would be good though if you don't feel the pressed variants are necessary. Thanks!