Text Input

There are many ways a user can input text in your game, for example using a keyboard, an on-screen keyboard or a virtual keyboard such as on mobile devices.

TextInputEvent

The cer::TextInputEvent is raised when the user has pressed any physical or virtual key that produced a Unicode character.

To capture it, handle the event just like any other:

auto text = String();

auto printText = [&] { logInfo("Text: {}", text); };

while (game.tick()) {
    game.handleAllEvents(
        [&](TextInputEvent e) {
            text += e.text;
            printText();
        },
        [&](KeyPressEvent e) {
            if (e.key == Key::Backspace) {
                text.removeLast();
                printText();
            }
        },
        cerIgnoreEvent,
    );
}

On-screen keyboards

To show or hide the system’s on-screen keyboard, use the Window::activateOnScreenKeyboard() and Window::deactivateOnScreenKeyboard() methods, respectively.

Typing on an on-screen keyboard will produce TextInputEvent events.

void MyGame::playerInputRequired() {
    game.window().activateOnScreenKeyboard();
}

void MyGame::playerInputFinished() {
    game.window().deactivateOnScreenKeyboard();
}

On-screen keyboards are typically a mobile-only feature. If the system doesn’t support on-screen keyboards, calling these functions won’t have any effect.