Can input actions in defold not have the same name? (DEF-1855)

Bugs
1

Hello all,

I’m new to defold but it looks like an awesome engine. I am watching all of the live coding sessions form setthebet and it’s cool to see someone make prototypes live and uncut and really showcases the power of the engine.

I was working through a quick prototype, and I found that my input wasn’t working. I had a touch, key, and mouse input setup all called player_action. I then tried renaming each to have a unique name, and the input started working fine. I read through the input manual, and I didn’t see in the manual where it said that inputs need a unique name. This is what I came up with:

local msg_player_action = {}

msg_player_action[hash('key_player_action')] = ''
msg_player_action[hash('mouse_player_action')] = ''
msg_player_action[hash('touch_player_action')] = ''

function init(self)
    msg.post(".", "acquire_input_focus")
end

function final(self)
    msg.post(".", "release_input_focus")
end

function on_input(self, action_id, action)
    if msg_player_action[action_id] and action.pressed then
	print('We got some actions fo real!!!')
    end
end
1 Like
2

You can have multiple input actions with the same name, I’m not sure why you didn’t get it to work.

It is worth mentioning that your example will break in a release build since you can’t use hash as a table key. You could use hash_to_hex() first to convert the hash to a string, but it will impact performance somewhat if it’s done many times per frame. I use this approach in the input util module I created for my LowRezInvaders game.

1 Like
3

Hey britzl, thanks for the response

I just tested again and I definitely can’t seem to get it working with same name input action. Does this setup look right?

function on_input(self, action_id, action)
    if hash("player_action") then
    	if action.pressed then
    	    flying = true
    	elseif action.released then
            flying = false
        end
    end
end

Screen Shot 2016-05-12 at 5.16.10 PM.png272×285 19.6 KB

Thanks for the hash_to_hex tip!

4

I just did a test and multiple actions with the same name works, except for touch triggers. Added bug DEF-1855

3 Likes