Chapter 5. User Input

"If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger."

—Frank Lloyd Wright

KEY TOPICS

• The Keyboard

• Mouse

• Joysticks

• Hardware Abstraction

• Force Feedback

• In Closing

A smooth user interaction model is key to any good game. Without adequate user input mechanisms, gameplay becomes obstructed and frustration occurs. In this chapter, we will explore the basics of user input control. Sadly, there will be few general rules. User interaction takes place at a relatively low abstraction level, and implementations tend to be quite hardware dependent. Where possible, general techniques will be exposed. But most of this chapter is devoted to the specific input methods available for popular platforms on the PC, such as the Win32 API and Microsoft's DirectInput.