Newbie question: WASD keys, need a bit of help and pointers

[Shadrach]

Hey,
pretty much a total newbie to AHK - I know basic programming and had a look at the documentation, and although a bit obtuse, I think I can manage.
However, my first project is a basic WASD key script for a game that uses only the arrow-keys for movement. Should be simple enough, but I've run into some issues and not sure if I've solved them the best way.

I am doing a simple map of WASD to the arrow keys. First I started with a simple Send, {Down} but apparently it didn't take, there seemed to be movement but it seemed to be slow, like only one keypress. I tested in another application (notepad) and pressing S did send downarrow commands while being held down. If I changed to Send,{Up down} it just held the key down (makes sense though).

So what finally worked was this:

Code: Select all

#IfWinActive The Operational Art of War
w::
   Send,{Up down}
   KeyWait, w
   Send,{Up up}
Return
a::
   Send,{Left down}
   KeyWait, a
   Send,{Left up}
Return
s::
   Send,{Down down}
   KeyWait, s
   Send,{Down up}
Return
d::
   Send,{Right down}
   KeyWait, d
   Send,{Right up}
Return
#IfWinActive

It works, but not sure if that's the recommended way to do it? I've found several examples but they seem even more complicated than what I'm trying to achieve.

I think (a theory) is that the game has some sort of keyboard code that interferes with AHK in some way.

Generally it's a bit weird, for instance after I remapped 'A' I thought I needed to remap the original A to Ctrl+A and then send A. But for some reason I didn't need to, Ctrl+A did what A originally did, some sort of 'fallback', I dunno.

[Nextron]

You're better off to use remappings: w::Up, etc..

[Shadrach]

Thanks a bunch for the reply - just wondering, what's the difference between remapping and using the Send command?

I've seen examples of people using both.

Will try it now.

[Nextron]

A remapping is a AHK built-in hotkey combination, which also uses Send:

Code: Select all

;a::b produces

*a::
SetKeyDelay -1   ; If the destination key is a mouse button, SetMouseDelay is used instead.
Send {Blind}{b DownTemp}  ; DownTemp is like Down except that other Send commands in the script won't assume "b" should stay down during their Send.
return

*a up::
SetKeyDelay -1  ; See note below for why press-duration is not specified with either of these SetKeyDelays.
Send {Blind}{b Up}
return

Main difference with a 'plain' Send hotkey is that a remapping doesn't interfere with physically pressed modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, ...) due to the * in the trigger hotkey and {Blind} in the output; and keeping a key pressed keeps up- and down events aligned, e.g; dddddddddddddu instead of dudududududududu, by defining an up and down hotkey.

If you want a key to behave like another key; use a remapping (or recreate the code above for each key ).

[Shadrach]

So I just tried it, and it works very well, thanks a lot! Especially helpful is the explanation of how the code actually is called in the background for the built-in.

However I'm still confused on the difference since both methods seem to work.

During testing, just using Send worked fine in for instance notepad and sent a stream of keys, while in-game it appears Send just sent a single key?

Also with the remapping method, I actually had to rebind the keys it replaced, like +a::+a which meant it didn't register Shift+A as a different key than a.

I guess a remapping actually *replaces* the keys on your keyboard while the Send command just sends them to the window. But why wouldn't it send a bunch of {Down} commands when S was pressed when I just used Send {Down}?