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Event Handling

Overview​

Another knock-on effect of the game loop is how you'll handle events, such as key presses, mouse clicks, and touch events.

Traditionally, we write code that responds to changes in the state of input devices. For, example, when a key is pressed down, and maybe again when that key is released. But in our update functions we want to query the current state of input devices, such as "is a key currently being hand down.

We could achieve this by listening to both keydown and keyup events, then maintaining a list of all keys currently in the 'down' state. But since this is a common pattern, Overreact takes care of it for us.

In the following example we're checking to see if the space bar is being held down, and if it is, the player blows bubbles!

const { isKeyDown } = useKeyboard();

useUpdate(() => {
  if (isKeyDown('Space')) {
    fireBubbles();
  }
});

Down vs pressed​

In the example above we used the isKeyDown function to see whether a key is held down.

Keyboard​

Coming soon...

Pointer​

Coming soon...

Orientation and motion​

Coming soon...