Input management. Will be filled out for v0.53.
misc notes for the docs
Design Proposal
Notes
- Concept
- Creates and handles inputs for each player, in collaboration with the flow module and/or general Castagne
- Cover regular inputs, macros, and the like
- Flexibility
- Need to work in menus
- Rebindable from a lot of places (ingame, menus, CSS)
- Need to be able to change from one to the other during gameplay
- Needs to be given by a replay, online, or an AI
- Motion Inputs and buffers to be handled later during v0.7/v0.8
- Handle the move canceling directly
Technical Proposition
- Overview
- Input storage is separated from the way it's polled.
- Input Definition
- Three categories of input can be defined
- Primary Inputs: Physical buttons directly bindable by the player. Examples: 8 way direction stick (left, right, up, down), basic attack buttons (A, B, C)
- Secondary Inputs: Button combinations / macros. May be binded separately or not. Examples: Throw macro (A+B)
- Tertiary Inputs: Actions affected by game state and/or derived from the previous ones. Examples: Forward - Back direction, A just pressed.
- Primary and secondary inputs are linked and determined first. If the basic buttons are pressed as primary inputs (A, and B), the corresponding macros are also active (A+B throw). This also applies in the opposite sense (pressing the A+B macro will also register the physical buttons).
- Only primary inputs are stored and transferred over the network / replays.
- AIs and other systems may press primary or secondary inputs instead of the player.
- The combination of all inputs is known as the input map.
- Several types of inputs exist to be added by the user, and provide several primary, secondary, or tertiary inputs.
- Raw: a very basic input that is not meant to be added directly most of the time, but to be precise.
- Primary inputs: X
- Analog: Can be retrieved as a value between 0 and 1000 (although the internal representation may have less precision)
- Button: A binary input
- Primary Inputs: X
- Tertiary Inputs: XPress and XRelease
- These are active for a specified amount of frames after the event occured.
- Analog: Can work from an analog input using a threshold, or be retrieved as an analog input directly.
- Axis: Linear input with from -1 to +1
- Primary inputs: +X, -X
- Tertiary inputs: Press and Release, and Neutral
- Same as button for both
- Stick: Input along axises, going from -1 to 1, along two or more dimensions
- Primary inputs: All directions
- Tertiary inputs: Neutrals, full press
- Analog: Can also normalize the input
- Internally, Axises are two buttons, and sticks are two or more axises. Their individual actions are also added to the input map
- The button name displayed can be different than the internal name.
- Input Schemas
- Represent default configurations for keyboard and controller, as well as the custom ones
- A controller/device is associated with one or more input schema
- The multiplicity is intended more for keyboard than controller
- These are used to initialize and change the internal godot input configurations, which are then used by the input module
- Input - Game Connection
- Done by the input module itself by injecting inputs before the AI phase.
- Inputs are polled from the Input module, accessible through ConfigData
- Considering we need to access it in menus, there is a need for some kind of input to be always active
- At the same time, having it setup in ModuleSetup will make it troublesome if there is an input module variation active
- That could be solved by having some sort of generic data storage INSIDE of ConfigData
- At the same time, it's not critical at this stage, but good to think about at least
- Input-driven state transitions
- Alternative way of doing transitions to the
Transition method
- Checks for an input and will transition to it if it fits.
- Can be controlled manually, but by default will happen automatically at the Transition phase
- The functions will add checks, and need to be executed each frame.
- Can handle direction + buttons.
- Is going to be the method for motion inputs.
- Additional limitations (whiff/hit/block and chain limits) are handled by the Attack module. This interface is meant as an additional raw system.
- Non player-driven presses
- During gameplay, inputs may be injected to the various players.
- Interface only allows primary and secondary inputs to be sent.
- Input resolution is done after the AI phase, before the init phase.
- AI: AIs may add inputs during the AI phase and scripts.
- Replays: primary inputs are stored in a separate file and fed to a character during the AI phase.
- Training: Inputs are provided either by a module, or specific AI scripts.
- Motion Inputs and Buffers
- Coming at a later time, with v0.7 - v0.8 as it might be affected by both the rewrite and online.
- To reduce expense, inputs may be lazily evaluated.
- Common scenarios and solutions
- Simple fighting game
- Input schema is defined in the editor and may be changed by the player
- Flow module calls on the input module to initialize everything as expected.
- Menu Navigation
- Devices are gathered from the input module, accessible through the global singleton
- Could maybe add a simpler way to check for all inputs at the same time ?
- 4 player
- Each player will initialize as usual
- Forward-back is defined by the direction of the character, so no changes (1v1 has specific code to handle it itself)
- Open Questions & Points to Extend
- How to handle training mode effectively ? Will probably need some system with the modules, but overall it can be covered.
- How to handle AI ? Input injection is nice combined with the AI phase, but it's not the most intuitive method. Will need to redesign for better UX.
- Rebinding interface is managed through editor and menu system.
- Should we get different input maps for different players ? Maybe later
- Is there a need to allow attacks to register themselves for better UX ? This will be handled by the attack module anyway