Re: key press events & holding keys down

[Christopher Howard <christopher howard frigidcode com>]

On 03/19/2012 03:34 AM, Chris Vine wrote:
> Since GtkWidget objects have key-press-event and a key-release-event
> signals that you can connect to (and from your explanation, clearly you
> have connected to), you will probably need to explain why these don't do
> what you want in order to get a meaningful answer. Most people would
> monitor these in conjunction with gdk_event_get_keyval() or
> gdk_event_get_keycode() and keep state.
>
> Chris

I'm currently attempting to code a simple space combat game. In my game
it is possible (quite likely) that two keys will be held down at the
same time (especially the up arrow and another arrow) e.g. to turn and
to accelerate at the same time. Currently I monitor for key press events
as you say; the problem is that key press events are only being
generated for the last key that was pressed. So if a user attempts to
turn and accelerate at the same time, he will actually only do one or
the other, depending on which key he happened to press last.

If I could just check whether or not a key is currently depressed, then
I could check both keys between a main loop iteration and handle them
appropriately. This is precisely what I used to do back when I was using
ClanLib, which had a function just for this purpose.

An additional problem is that, although key press events do get
repeated, they do not get repeated immediately; it seems that there is a
brief delay (half a second or so, but noticeable) between the first key
press event and the subsequent stream of them. This is the same effect I
notice when using a word processor.

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