In Pulp the A and B buttons can be scripted to behave as you like, but the d-pad always makes the player move.
I've already battled with changing the default movement on a few different occassions, and I know I am certainly not the first! In those situations I ended up with a specific implementation for the behaviour I wanted, but I thought it would be fun (and maybe even useful) to go one step further and try to make a generic framework for overriding d-pad input in Pulp. This is probably overkill for a lot of use cases, but it may be helpful nonetheless!
My goal was to try and make something as idiomatic to Pulpscript as possible. If pressing the A button triggers the confirm event, and pressing the B triggers the cancel event, it would make sense for pressing a direction on the d-pad to trigger its own specific event. Otherwise I wanted an implementation that was as transparent as possible, not limiting use of Pulpscript if at all possible.
Example Project
Here is what I have come up with:
Overriding Dpad Input Demo.zip (4.9 KB)
The code is heavily commented (hopefully) for clarity, but I'm very happy to answer any questions about it. I'm also very open to any suggested improvements, I'm certain to be missing some tricks!
For this example I re-implemented standard directional movement, with an item that inverts input for a short duration, but you might make the d-pad buttons do just about anything you like.
The Code
This is all in the example project, but it's nice to share in the forum right? This is just the actual code that is needed for overriding d-pad input, and I've removed all of my comments for brevity.
The game script:
on start do
config.autoAct = 0
px = event.px
py = event.py
room = "room"
end
on loop do
skip_detect_dpad_input = 0
frame_player_update_count = 0
end
The player script:
on update do
frame_player_update_count++
if room!=event.room then
room = event.room
px = event.px
py = event.py
end
call "detectDpadInput"
if dpad_input==1 then
undoing_move = 1
goto px,py
done
end
if undoing_move==1 then
undoing_move = 0
call "processDpadInput"
done
end
px = event.px
py = event.py
end
on detectDpadInput do
dpad_input = 0
if skip_detect_dpad_input==1 then
done
end
if frame_player_update_count==1 then
if event.dx<0 then
abs_dx = 0
abs_dx -= event.dx
else
abs_dx = event.dx
end
if event.dy<0 then
abs_dy = 0
abs_dy -= event.dy
else
abs_dy = event.dy
end
abs_dxdy = abs_dx
abs_dxdy += abs_dy
if abs_dxdy==1 then
dpad_input = 1
call "determineDpadInput"
end
end
end
on determineDpadInput do
dpad_up = 0
dpad_down = 0
dpad_left = 0
dpad_right = 0
if event.dy==1 then
dpad_down = 1
elseif event.dy==-1 then
dpad_up = 1
elseif event.dx==1 then
dpad_right = 1
elseif event.dx==-1 then
dpad_left = 1
end
end
on processDpadInput do
if dpad_up==1 then
call "dpadUp"
elseif dpad_down==1 then
call "dpadDown"
elseif dpad_left==1 then
call "dpadLeft"
elseif dpad_right==1 then
call "dpadRight"
end
end
on dpadUp do
end
on dpadDown do
end
on dpadLeft do
end
on dpadRight do
end
Usage
With the above code in place, scripting behaviour for d-pad input should be as easy as using the player events for each direction button! The events that get triggered are:
dpadUpdpadDowndpadLeftdpadRight
You should be free to write any valid Pulpscript in these events. While in the example project I have re-implemented standard movement, you could just as easily have pressing up on the d-pad do something like call say and make a dialogue box appear.
Constraints
Despite wanting to make the implementation as transparent as possible I ended up with a few constraints that must be adhered to:
-
The
collectevent must be overriden on all item tiles. In the example project I implement a newpickupevent as a replacement forcollect. -
Exits cannot be used. In the example project I show how item tiles can be used as exits, but various alternative approaches are possible.
-
If
gotois called in a frame without d-pad input, and is targeting a tile adjacent to the player's current position, this may incorrectly get interpreted as d-pad input to be processed. In this specific situation the variableskip_detect_dpad_inputshould be set to1before callinggoto.
And possibly more, but hopefully not! Remember that all variables are global in Pulpscript so you must make sure your own don't clash (or change those used in the code).
Hopefully this is of interest to someone. I'm certainly interested in hearing of other ways people have solved this problem, and I am especially interested if anyone has a better solution for detecting d-pad input! 