Dec 082017
 
C (or C++) routines which implement a multi-key replacement BIOS interrupt, providing the capability to read more than one key at a time (among other things). Uploaded by author.
File MANYKEYS.ZIP from The Programmer’s Corner in
Category C Source Code
C (or C++) routines which implement a multi-key replacement BIOS interrupt, providing the capability to read more than one key at a time (among other things). Uploaded by author.
File Name File Size Zip Size Zip Type
KEYTEST.C 1205 561 deflated
KEYTEST.EXE 9572 6208 deflated
MANYKEYS.C 5938 1744 deflated
MANYKEYS.H 2105 979 deflated
READ.ME 5271 2306 deflated

Download File MANYKEYS.ZIP Here

Contents of the READ.ME file


MANYKEYS.ZIP
MANYKEYS.C
MANYKEYS.H
KEYTEST.C
READ.ME
KEYTEST.EXE
---
Multiple key-getting routines
by Brian Dickens
---
Released to the public domain.
These routines may not be sold in any way shape or form.
---

ManyKeys was designed for two main purposes.

1. To provide the capability of reading more than one key at once.
2. To remove BIOS'S slow keyboard repeat rate and let you sample the
keyboard at your own speed.

Video games often need to read more than one key at once, whether it be
needed to allow two players (or more) to share places on the keyboard, or
to let a character walk and shoot at the same time.

Also, BIOS is characteristically slow when getting/reading keys from the
keyboard buffer. A game which relies on BIOS calls cannot smoothly move
the game characters around the screen, since it would take an hour to walk
across the screen with the BIOS progression of getch(), move character,
getch(), move character.

Often the keyboard buffer will overflow, causing terrible beeping noises
and program interruptions.

In summary, BIOS is excellent. NOT.

ManyKeys gets right to the heart of the matter, and removes the BIOS
keyboard interrupt altogether. While buffered input is great for word
processing, it's no good for games. In your C code, when you insert the
line:

manykeyson();

You are actually replacing the BIOS keyboard interrupt with a new and
improved interrupt. The BIOS interrupt is naturally saved, so that you
can restore it later. In fact, if you don't restore the BIOS interrupt
sometime before your program ends, no other programs that rely
on the BIOS for keystrokes will be able to run. (including DOS!) So
remember to turn ManyKeys off with the statement:

manykeysoff();

In-between those statements, you have access to some very powerful
key-reading commands. One of the most important is the function
"ispressed". "ispressed" takes a key number as a parameter, and returns a
1 if that key is pressed, and a 0 if it is not. For example:

if( ispressed( 1 ) )
printf( "The escape key is pressed.\n" );

If escape (key 1) is pressed, this piece of code will print "The escape
key is pressed." If you've had experience using the BIOS method of key
getting, you might be wondering why 1 is used and not 27. The answer is
that the BIOS uses a conversion table to convert raw keycodes into numbers
that at least fit into the ASCII scheme of things. Manykeys does very
little conversion on the keypresses, giving mostly raw keycodes, which are
loosely based on the key's location on the keyboard. (The escape key is
in the upper-left hand corner, so it is keycode 1, get it?)

You also might be wondering exactly how you are going to know what key is
what since this is obviously a really screwy numbering scheme. Never
fear, I have entered an enumerated type for all the keys on the keyboard
(on my keyboard, at least). So that instead of the above piece of code
I could have written:

if( ispressed( ESCAPE ) )
printf( "The escape key is pressed.\n" );

If you don't know the name for a particular key, check in the MANYKEYS.H
file.

An interesting problem comes up when you WANT to interpret keys in a sort
of buffered way. For example, if you have a rather slow loop in a
program, and you want to check to see if the Escape key was pressed
signifying that the user wants to exit, the user might have released the
key by the time you get to the "ispressed( ESCAPE )" check. Even so, the
user obviously wanted to quit. That's why manykeys keeps track of the
number of times a key has been pressed AS WELL as whether the key is
currently being held down.

The two main routines used to deal with press counts are "presscount" and
"checkcount". "presscount" will return the number of times the key has
been pressed and then clear the press count for that key. "checkcount"
will return the number of times the key has been pressed but WON'T clear
the press count. At the onset of the program, all the press counts are
set to 0. Press counts have a maximum value of 127, after which they will
wrap back around to 0.

Some other interesting routines are included, although anyone could easily
write them themselves. "clearallcounts" sets all the press counts to 0.
"totalpressed" counts the number of keys that are currently being held
down. "firstcount" returns the code of the lowest order key with a
presscount that isn't 0. "firstpressed" returns the code of the lowest
order key that is currently being held down.

There's one other nice routine included called "keyname". "keyname"
returns an ASCII string of the name of a particular key. This is useful
especially in configuration programs. Try the program KEYTEST.EXE to see
an example of how keyname is put to work.


SPECIAL NOTE:
---
If you have an extended keyboard, there is a distinction between the arrow
keys and the numeric keypad UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT, as well as between the
HOME/END/PGUP/PGDN/INS/DEL/ENTER/+/-/*/etc. If you don't, then the arrow
keys will register as numeric keypad keys.


THANKS TO:
---
Richard Biffl for his advice and help.


Until next time...


 December 8, 2017  Add comments

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