I'm working on a game design / UI project to redesign an existing game's control scheme (in this case, Trine) to use minimalistic input. I am trying to map lateral movement and the jump function to a Win8 tablet's volume buttons. Here is the basic code I am using:
Volume_Up::
Loop 5
{
Send {right down}
Sleep 50
}
Send {right up}
Return
Volume_Down::
Loop 5
{
Send {left down}
Sleep 50
}
Send {left up}
Return
This is working fairly well and is pretty responsive for moving left and right. However, the desired behavior that I want is to trigger jump (i.e. up) when BOTH buttons are depressed. For instance:
Player holds VolumeUp to move right.
Player comes to an obstacle.
Player continues to hold VolumeUp to queue right-bound movement and;
Player taps VolumeDown momentarily
Player jumps, movement continues up-and-over obstacle toward the right.
I have tried various permutations on using another script with the (Volume_Up & Volume_Down::) syntax to trigger this interaction, but that always seems to interfere with the movement commands. I think this may call for a nested If statement inside the move-left / move-right commands, to check if both buttons are depressed, but the Autohotkey documentation is not very clear and I'm unsure how to code that (I'm more of a game designer than I am a programmer). Any help would be really appreciated!
First of all, give attention to the comment from MCL. Pressing a button down 5 times and never releasing it in between does not seem to do much.
I think that you want multiple threads to be able to run at the same time.
Look up threads, but be aware about the following:
"Although AutoHotkey doesn't actually use multiple threads, it simulates some of that behavior: If a second thread is started -- such as by pressing another hotkey while the previous is still running -- the current thread will be interrupted (temporarily halted) to allow the new thread to become current. If a third thread is started while the second is still running, both the second and first will be in a dormant state, and so on."
Related
I'm building a platformer in Scratch 3.0 where a player can run, jump, crouch, and has a few basic attacks. Right now I have animation set up under a custom block like this example for the idle:
switch to costume (1+((floor of (timer*10)) mod 6)
This loops the costume around with the game timer as long as the animation conditions are met; and works fine for idle, run, and jump—however I'm not sure how to implement something like a crouch (three costumes/frames), which always needs to start on a specific costume, play through two additional costumes, then stop until the down key is released. Similarly, I need attack animations to always start on a specific costume, and play the entire animation through sequentially.
I hope that makes sense. Any advice for a good way to implement this, or additional parameters I need to include to make that work?
So let's say that you want to start walking. you can set the costume to the first frame of that, and then go to the next costume a few times (maybe also add in a wait block depending on the fps of your animation) and then if the costume goes past your animation frames, just set the costume back. Here is an image, but you can just ignore the custom block, and pretend that the if else is in the forever. i just like using custom blocks because of the run without screen refresh. (The mage of the code needed)
sorry if this is confusing, i'm just bad at writing
How about using a state variable that is a number?
Example, lets create a block called crouch and apply a counter so that if the down arrow key is pressed, you set counter to 1 and then to 2 for the crouching sprites. Then you use a wait until <=> block to wait until crouching is gone.
Now you do the same for the others
I have been working on a makeshift RPG, and the Regenerate function, is supposed to be called every 3 seconds, NO MATTER WHAT THE PLAYER's STATUS IS
For Example:
Shoes.app do
# Display on main screen
animate do
# Set para(s) to current values of health and other stats
end
every 3 do
RegenerateVitals
end
end
But at times, the user will click on buttons that will trigger functions and new windows (the base window will keep opened in the background at all times.)
Do the every function really runs behind the scenes every 3 seconds no matter what menu the player is on? Or do I need to do something else for that?
Thanks.
Yes, the specification is that every calls the block no matter what (as long as the main windows stays open). I looked up the implementation of shoes4 and that one definitely does it (using the SWT scheduler) but other implementations such as Shoes 3.1, 3.2 and green shoes should do the same.
I am trying to implement frame independent movement in SFML, but am having trouble getting it to work. When I had this problem earlier with SDL, I found somewhere that Windows pauses the main thread of an application whenever it is moved (by dragging the title-bar). The problem comes because when the window is being dragged, the clock updates but the movement is not drawn until I let go of the window. When I move the window, the window is no longer being drawn to, but the time is still increasing. Thus, when I let go of the window, the units immediately jump to where they would be if the window had not been dragged.
I tried thinking of a solution, and since Windows only pauses the main thread, I considered just running the entire game in a separate thread, and launching it in main() but that does not appear to work as the same result occurs. I also thought about the extremely low FPS's I get as a result, but I would have no way of being able to differentiate between someone dragging the window and if their game is just naturally running slowly... There has to be a way to either prevent windows from pausing the main thread, or doing something that prevents this issue, but I haven't found any sort of solution on the internet...
Here is a link to a zip file which demonstrates the problem. Both Demo0 and Demo1 are the same, except Demo1 uses a second thread to run the program, yet the same effect occurs. Just run both and watch as the delta value is output to command line. Then drag the window and move it to some other part of the screen. When you let go, you should see a very large delta value and the circle should jump ahead depending on how long you had the window suspended. The source code is all there (in the "src" folder), so I hope people can understand the exact problem: http://www.sendspace.com/file/4er8f4
I see two solutions to the problem:
You can try to see if the sf::Events LostFocus or Resized picks up a window drag, and if they do, simply pause the clock on the game. More information can be found here: http://www.sfml-dev.org/tutorials/2.0/window-events.php
However, if that doesn't work, I would simply add an upper-cap on your delta. Meaning, if the game goes above a certain threshold of delta (1/60 or 1/30), you set delta to a lower value. In your situation though, this cap could probably be really big, like 1/15.
if(delta > 1/15.0f)
delta = 1/15.0f;
Chances are you don't expect your game to be playable at 15fps anyways, and if the user drags the window while moving, the worst you'll have to deal with is a 15fps delta on resume.
Can SendInput be used to simulate a drap & drop operation?
I've got an application that accepts files of a certain format that are dropped on it, but not from the command line, and I want to associate it with a file. I thought I'd create a small tool that finds the window, and simulates a drag & drop of the file - is this at all possible? Do I need to use SendInput or possibly SendMessage? What would be the parameters?
Yes, pretty likely. SendInput injects mouse events at a very low level. SendMessage won't work.
You'll need a thread since DoDragDrop is a blocking call. Fake the mouse down first, start the thread, call DoDragDrop. The thread should sleep to give enough time for DoDragDrop to get started, then fake mouse move and mouse up. Keep fingers crossed that it works the first time, it is impossible to debug if it doesn't.
The shell already has a function that simulates a drop: SHDoDragDrop, no need for hacks like faking mouse input.
Since you are talking about the commandline, XP added support for simulating D&D for applications/registered file types: How do I accept files to be opened via IDropTarget instead of on the command line?
Base question: TStatusBar flickers when calling Update procedure. Ways to painlessly fix this
The executed code is in the questions first posts first part ( you can see light grey separating line ) ...
But - problem is that while this code is executed, form does not automatically activate and focus on the top of all other applications.
I have read these articles:
http://www.installationexcellence.com/articles/VistaWithDelphi/Original/Index.html
http://delphi.about.com/od/formsdialogs/l/aa073101b.htm
but according to them it should be working no matter what. I tried all the TApplicationEvents and TForm events with Show; Visible: Repaint; Refresh; BringToFront; ... nothing works.
So - I think I have two options - multithreading or trapping WM_SYSCOMMAND message and in the SC_ACTIVE event simply repaint form. Could this scenario become successful?
None of your linked articles deal with the problem you are having. What you see is the behaviour of a program that does not process Windows messages, so consequently it will not redraw parts that become invalid, and it will not react to keyboard or mouse input (for example moving or resizing with the mouse, or app activation using the taskbar button).
In your code you call StatusBar1.Update, so at least the status bar text is redrawn, but apart from coming to the foreground your application is probably also ignoring move or resize requests.
You need to process Windows messages in a timely manner, so any execution path that takes more than say 200 or 300 milliseconds needs to make sure that messages are handled, otherwise the application will appear unresponsive or hung.
You have basically three options:
Keep the long running code, and insert calls to Application.ProcessMessages - this will allow Windows messages to be processed. Make sure that you keep the code from being entered again, for instance by disabling all the controls that are used to start the operation.
Rework your code in a way that it appears as a sequence of steps, each taking no more than a few 10 milliseconds. Put calls to the code in a timer event handler, or call it from the Application.OnIdle handler.
Call your code in a worker thread, and post messages to the main GUI thread to update your UI.
All these options have their own pros and cons, and for multithreading especially there is a lot of questions and answers already here on SO. It is the most difficult but best option overall when you are working on anything more than a toy program.