Castle Paradox

athenshorseparty · Joined: 07 Dec 2013 Posts: 5

Hi all. Nice forum. I first heard about and messed around with this software back in high school (class of 07) but I'm really glad it's still continuously being updated!

I am working on a game and would like to implement full use of the USB joystick to replicate the 8 bit experience as much as possible, but I've noticed a bug (or feature?) in the implementation of the "on-keypress script" trigger for maps:

Joystick buttons 1-16 activate the trigger just fine, but sadly the D-pad buttons don't. (The calibration screen works fine so I don't think it's a backend compatibility issue). Does anyone know a simple way to fix this? I looked at plotscript.hsd but it only defines the functions and constants.

Is this something you'd have to patch the source-code to fix? How difficult do you think it would be? I have a lot of experience with some higher level scripting languages (javascript, PHP) but haven't ever done anything really extensive in BASIC. Still it seems like if the other joystick buttons can trigger the script there should be a simple fix to get it to include the 4 joystick axis constants.

There may be some kind of simple work-around that I'm missing here using the other script triggers but I can't figure it out right now.

Either way, thanks for an awesome utility with such a capable scripting language. It's a dream come true.

EDIT:
sourcecode just in case:
plotscript, waitforkeys, begin
if (key is pressed(key:J),and,jumping==0) then, begin
jumping:=1
jump
end

if (key is pressed(key:G),and,attacking==0) then, begin
attacking:=1
suspend player
attack
end

if (key is pressed(joy:y down)) then, begin
show textbox (1) #only works if another key is being pressed
end

if (key is pressed(joy:button1)) then, begin
show textbox (1) #works just fine
end

end

athenshorseparty · Joined: 07 Dec 2013 Posts: 5

Whoa duh. I put a while loop in the autorun script and it works fine now.

Now I simply need to figure out how to map the controls!

athenshorseparty · Joined: 07 Dec 2013 Posts: 5

Upon further tooling around I've figured out that it's not just the D-pad control on the joystick that doesn't trigger it. It's every joystick button other than button 1, at least with my particular game controller (Logitech Precision - 10 button)

TMC · Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 8:11 am Post subject:

Hi. I don't have a joystick, so I can't test any of this stuff. Hopefully James can.

I looked at the code for the onkeypress script and it definitely looks like joystick movement (of the main axis) should cause the onkeypress script to trigger, so I'm surprised that it doesn't. (Note that secondary axes are unsupported, but your controller only seems to have one anyway.) But I did notice that certain other places where the engine waits for a keypress ignore joystick movement. (I don't really want to touch that because I don't understand how the joystick calibration stuff works.)

Also it definitely looks like all of the first 16 buttons on the joystick (not counting secondary d-pads/axes) should trigger the onkeypress script.

Unfortunately we don't yet have a testing game which reports all the joystick input, as we do for keyboard input. But maybe I could get you to test whether "key is pressed(joy:button2)" for button 2 and higher buttons works?
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athenshorseparty · Joined: 07 Dec 2013 Posts: 5

Okey doke. I'm running the latest stable build listed on the wiki (Beelzebufo) by the way (Windows XP sp3 if that makes any difference.

As I've been messing around with stuff since last night, it seems like all the joystick inputs are getting detected just fine by the "key is pressed" function within the scripts themselves. I switched to running a while loop on one of the autoload triggers and I've been able to make some workable controls after a little experimentation, it does seem like it'd be a lot easier to control/predict for the flow and processing order. I'd prefer to just have a control function on the keypress trigger and save the autoloads for more specific scripts.

Anyway, I made another .hss to test the "on-keypress" trigger. My Logitech Precision game pad has only 10 buttons (and a 4 button D-pad) and here's what happened...

TMC · Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 9:50 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the testing. Buttons 2 and 10 do work but don't trigger the onkeypress script? I had another thorough look at the code for that, and can see absolutely no explanation. Argh!

athenshorseparty · Joined: 07 Dec 2013 Posts: 5

TMC · Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:38 pm Post subject:

So does joystick input break only when you use alt+tab, or when you change the window focus in general?

User input (keyboard, mouse and joystick) is handled by the graphics 'backend'. The default graphics backend on Windows is gfx_directx. Could you please try using gfx_sdl instead and see whether that fixes the problem with alt+tab (or perhaps even any of the others)? To switch to gfx_sdl simply remove (or rename) the gfx_directx.dll file before running game.exe. You can check which backend is in use by clicking on the icon at the top left of the window in the window frame: with gfx_directx you'll see an extra "Options" menu item which isn't there with gfx_sdl.
_________________
"It is so great it is insanely great."