Question

I’m writing a platform game for my university project using the canvas element and Javascript. I’m well on my way, but I’m stuck at how to see if a certain key is being pressed in my players update loop.

I was thinking like this:

if(d) {
    // move player right
} else if(a) {
    // move player left
} else if(w) {
    // move player up
} else if(s) {
    // move player down
}

That’s psudocode, obviously. The only resources to key presses in Javascript that I can find are events, nothing to see if a key is being pressed at a certain point.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Answer 1

Setup 4 boolean variables if key is up or down. On keydown set it to true, on keyup set it to false. Than you can do if(key_d == true) { // key d is pressed }

That’s the best way to do it. Its not “hacky”, add event listeners to handle key presses.