Newbie Dev Question

[Sentient]

I am having a little play with creating plugins and stumbled across something I can't figure out which I'm sure must be rather simple.

I wanted to create a simple board game - until I realised I don't know how to get the 'focus' from the buttons on the left-hand side onto the board. Is this even possible, and if so, any recommendations on functions to use/override or even some sample source that does something similar.

How does remote control input work with plugins? Can I 'see' the keys ('commands') pressed by the user or do I need to create multiple 'focusable' items?

Basically, I want to be able to move a highlight/selection box around the board.

[sub]

It depends how you've created your plugin. Generally you need to manage the focus yourself, responding to keypresses to decide which item should next get the focus, then deactivating the old control and activating the new one.

So if you were implementing a plugin based on BaseButtonUiTask, you have to override the OnKeyDown() method to monitor keystrokes, and the GetRenderList() function to make sure your controls get drawn (calling base class GetRenderList() implementation first, and adding your controls render list to that).

[bgowland]

I wanted to create a simple board game - until I realised I don't know how to get the 'focus' from the buttons on the left-hand side onto the board.

In a simple scenario with two button controls - "Start Game" and "Main Menu" you could try something like this...

Create a bool with class scope...

Code:

public class MyGamePlugin : BaseButtonUiTask
{
    private bool BoardHasFocus = false;
    ...

Override the handleCommand() method to call a StartGame() method when the "Start Game" button is clicked (the default case lets pvrx2 handle the "Main Menu" button)...

Code:

protected override void handleCommand(string command)
{
    switch (command)
    {
        case "Start Game":
            StartGame();
            break;
        default:
            base.handleCommand(command);
            break;
    }
}

Create methods which do stuff including toggling BoardHasFocus...

Code:

private void StartGame()
{
    BoardHasFocus = true;
    ...
}

private void EndGame()
{
    BoardHasFocus = false;
    ...
}

Override OnKeyDown() so that if BoardHasFocus is true, pvrx2 never gets to see the key presses. If it's false, base.OnKeyDown() will effectively handle keys focused on the button controls.

Code:

public override bool OnKeyDown(KeyEventArgs e)
{
    bool Success = true;

    if (BoardHasFocus) // Handle all keys yourself
        if (e.Control) //Process Ctrl-key combinations
            switch (e.KeyCode)
            {
                case Keys.S: // Ctrl-S is the normal key used in plugins for "Stop" - it corresponds to the remote "Stop" button
                    EndGame();
                    break;
                default:
                    break;
            }
        else // Process non Ctrl keys as normal
            switch (e.KeyCode)
            {
                case Keys.Up:
                    // Do whatever
                    break;
                default:
                    break;
            }
    else // BoardHasFocus is false - let pvrx2 handle the key
        Success = base.OnKeyDown(e)
    return Success;
}

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Brian