Way to rotate arrow key input when game view is rotated in the simulator?

Hi - we're working on a portrait mode game. While testing in the simulator it would be great if there was a way to rotate the arrow keys as well so that the "up" on the keyboard/controller arrow keys sent a "left" to the simulator (which then becomes screen-space "up" in the game).

Is that possible?
Thanks!

It's not immediately clear to me that this would make sense — the simulator is simulating a Playdate, so the key assigned to "up" needs to send upButton events regardless of the orientation of the device. It's a development tool, not a video game player. We do flip the keys if you're in upside-down mode (Settings > Accessibility), though, because that's what the device does.

I think what we really need to do is make the keyboard controls fully remappable. There's an open request for that already, but thanks for the extra justification!

1 Like

I think this is just a special case of that - being able to remap would be great, but for our action puzzle game being able to play with arrow keys as if they were rotated would be handy for debugging gameplay stuff. Thanks!

1 Like

Just wanted to post a follow up on this. Now that we've released our game:

One thing I've noticed is that folks releasing playdate games often include simulator instructions for folks who don't have their playdates yet... but given that our game is sideways, even in the simulator the only real way to play is if you use a playdate console to control it. It would be nice for folks releasing sideways games to include sideways control options so that folks who don't have their consoles yet can still try the game out.

Thanks!

1 Like