Post by navi in Too Many Chefs comments

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Thanks for the kind words! Sorry about the issues with German keyboard layout-- since release, I've discovered a lot of interesting localization problems I'd never even considered before.

Unfortunately, I don't have a German keyboard, so it's difficult to debug. Can you help me out by sending me the number codes for each of the special keys? http://keycode.info/ You can post here or email them to chef@toomanychefs.party. Thanks a lot!

PS: As a temporary solution, you can try to press Shift+; for ":" and Shift+/ for "?" (these are the key combinations for a standard QWERTY keyboard).

MondSemmel6 years ago

Hey there, thanks for the quick reply!

I tried the keycode site, but it doesn't seem to recognize special characters if they're part of a two-button combination (e.g. "A" = shift + 'a', ":" = shift + ".", etc). Pressing capslock doesn't help, either; I only get the keycode for e.g. "a" or ".", never for "A" or ":".) Maybe that's (part of) the problem, not (just) the language-specific keyboard layout? (Though see my remarks at the very bottom - maybe checking via keycode instead of sth else is the problem.)

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Anyway, here are some key codes:

188 = comma

189 = dash

190 = period = '.'; holding shift plus period does nothing, it's still just period

When I press the button for "'" / "#", I get key code 191 (forward slash) instead.

The button for '*' / '+' / '~' yields key code 187 (equal sign) instead.

The button for "ä" yields key code 222 (single quote / "ä") instead.

The button für "ü" yields key code 186 (semi-colon) instead.

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I couldn't find *any* button which yields "?", which leads me to believe this line of inquiry maybe isn't fruitful? Rather than try to map whatever I press to whatever key code javascript turns it into, maybe there's instead a way to have Javascript correctly recognize my inputs as coming from a German language schema / keyboard?

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I quickly googled the topic, and I think that what you actually want might be the keypress method, instead of keycode? See the answers here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7831494/how-to-get-the-correct-language-and-... and here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11030532/keypress-and-keyup-why-is-the-keyco...

navi6 years ago

Thanks for the help and sorry for the delay! I've been busy with one of my newer projects and haven't had much time to debug.

I don't listen to keypress because this game is unique in that it needs to know ALL keys pressed at a time. Unfortunately, keypress only fires on the last key that was pressed; so if someone was holding A and then pressed B, only B would be registered.

I have a custom keyboard util that knows when shift is pressed, so I actually only need the keycode for the keys that turn into ? and : with shift pressed. The only issue is that these keys are different on different keyboards, so I'd have to whitelist all of them-- which may lead to weird combinations accidentally triggering a different key.

PS: If you're interested and technically inclined, you can find the source code here. Happy to accept pull requests.

MondSemmel6 years ago

Hey there, thanks for the reply. I've only recently begun programming (in Python; no experience with Javascript), so looking for solutions on Stack Overflow was the best I could do.

If my suggestion re: keypress vs. keycode didn't work, all I can think of is a clumsy workaround: Allow players to map their controls, i.e. instead of asking players which button they want to press for up/down/left/right/jump/shoot, here ask them which button to press for question mark, period, dash, full stop, etc.

navi6 years ago

That's not a bad idea, but requires a bit of work implementation-wise. I ended up just replacing the ? and :'( characters with text. Hope you can enjoy the rest of the game!

MondSemmel6 years ago (1 edit)

Hey there, I tried the game again (on itch.io, if these are different versions), and from what I can tell, there are still tons of special characters in the last two recipes. In "Pan-Asian Lunch", the Friturier "wipes away a single tear" once, which consists of pure special characters, and the patissier says "yum?" once, with a question mark. I haven't been able to progress much in the last recipe, but from what I can tell, it's similarly filled to the brim with special characters.

Also, I no longer get the music in Chrome, but that problem may be on my end (or due to a browser extension or something).

Anyway, I've had my fill of the game, and I understand if you want to move on to other projects. Just wanted to let you know.

navi6 years ago

Hi there, thanks for the report, and sorry for the delay (been traveling the past few weeks so unable to code!)

You are correct that itch.io and www.toomanychefs.party were running two different versions. My apologies! I've updated the game to be the same version on all sites, so the special characters should now be removed. Thanks for your patience and all the bug reports!