Detect when a key is held down

[JasonCurnow]

I have a simple quality-of-live mod (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Blink) that teleports you in a certain direction with shift or control-WASD. I made it since I got down to ~15 UPS with my first megabase and running was.. Painful. I've had a very good suggestion to make this mod work when the key is held down - i.e shift-D held down makes you keep teleporting south until you release it. Looking for a keypress wasn't hard to figure out, but I can't find any way to detect when a key is held down to repeat the action. Anyone have any advice? Thanks!

- Jason

[DaveMcW]

There are no key down events. The best you can do is make one button to start teleporting in a direction, and one button to stop. Then do the teleporting in on_tick() depending on which was pressed last.

You could also hijack the player controls by checking character.walking_state every tick, which does update on key down.

[JasonCurnow]

Thank you very much for the rapid reply!

You know, that makes me think of something.. I've always wanted a way to "run and keep running" with one keypress. Before I did the Blink mod, running a distance required constantly holding the key down and you can't switch to another window while looking something up on a long run. Would it be possible to build an always-run function (i.e. alt+w to run north until any other button is pressed) with what you are describing?

[DaveMcW]

Yes, character.walking_state is writable, so you can automate running by updating it every tick.

[jamiechi1]

I found out recently that my programmable keypad (from allreli) can be programmed to do this.
I just created a macro that pressed and released a key and then deleted the keyup event in the recorded macro.
I suppose any programmable keyboard can do this. (Unfortunately the allreli keypad is no longer available.)
You might also be able to do this with autohotkey.

[eradicator]

Yes, character.walking_state is writable, so you can automate running by updating it every tick.

Years ago i tried on_tick'ing walking_state in multiplayer and concluded that (probably due to lag hiding) it produces erratic laggy walking.

You might also be able to do this with autohotkey.

Trivially! I.e. "press shift+w to hold down w until w is pressed again."

Code: Select all

+w::Send, {w down}