Movement in Firefox

Greetings!

I didn't see this one in the forums, so I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this one.

I'm working on a top-down shooter using basic 8-directional movement but also allowing the WASD keys (in addition to arrows) for movement. The movement with both sets of keys works fine in Chrome and IE9, but Firefox completely bugs out. When the WASD keys are used, the Firefox 'quick find' bar pops up on the bottom and movement gets screwy after that.

I can disable the quick find on my end, but not everyone using it is going to know how to do so. Anyone else ever see this?

It can be replicated by making a sprite with 8-direction and then programming WASD to simulate the 8-direction movement. I'm using the latest Firefox version (just updated before testing game, version 17, I think).

If anyone has seen this, is there a solution other than taking out the simulated movement?

Thanks!

I've never seen this in Firefox nor have I heard anyone else having this kind of problem. Are you sure you don't have a Firefox addon which is listening for keypresses?

Hey Ashley! First off, nice to meet you.

Yes, I'm sure there's no add-on. I did some research and found that this is actually a feature in Firefox. The 'quick find' bar comes up with a forward slash or apostrophe key press, neither of which are being triggered in the game.

I can't seem to figure out what is causing the quick find bar to pop up, but when it does, all keyboard input goes into that; in my case, the WASD movement keys appear as a repeating string in the quick find, preventing the player movement.

There's no dual-keys or other weird keyboard problems on my laptop, and no problems with movement in IE9 or Chrome.

The capx file is pretty huge and a little messy. I was able to duplicate it in firefox by just making the basic 'ghost hunter' demo game and using WASD simulated 8-way movement.

Thanks for the response, Ashley. If you or anyone else encounters this and has a solution, I'd be much obliged.

Well, I do use firefox, and haven't encountered this issue at all. (at least in previews)

When you say "I was able to duplicate it in firefox by just making the basic 'ghost hunter' demo game and using WASD simulated 8-way movement.", do you mean you export the ghost shooter demo or you execute it as preview and it "bugs" ?

Personally, I reach the quick find bar by pressing F3, and it never had interfered with controls in games so far.

I have an AZERTY keyboard and a French version of FF, maybe it is an issue with the english version (though I'd doubt it).

Really a strange behavior, it might be worth reporting to mozilla itself.

FF's most recent version is 17.0.1, make sure it is the version you're running (in case this "bug" had been corrected by the patch).

Hey Kyatric! Thanks for the reply, amigo.

I made sure FF was updated to 17.0.1, so that's not the case. Maybe it is something with the English version, but I don't know how to verify that one.

I re-made the ghost hunter tutorial game while learning C2 and added WASD movement as simulated 8-direction movement. Whether I preview it on Firefox or export it as HTML5 game, it bugs out--doesn't seem to matter how I do it. I know it's not Construct, as Chrome and IE9 execute the moving perfectly (though IE9 is sloooooow).

I'm trying to think of what else could be causing it as it doesn't seem this behavior was experienced by anyone else. I tried the 3 browsers on a desktop, laptop, and netbook with the same results.

Also, I'll check with Mozilla and see if I can get anything from there--thanks for the suggestion, Kyatric.

Is there any other way to simulate key presses in C2? Is it possible to map WASD to the arrow keys, so W corresponds to an 'UP' key press rather than 8-way movement, or is that the same thing?

Thanks again for your help, guys! I'm thoroughly impressed with Construct; it easily beats the other tools available for game-making.

space Ape

It would be useful if you could provide a Dropbox link to the .capx for us to try ourselves. It may shed more light on what is happening.

Yes sir, I was working on that one! :) The capx is a little messy, so I was worried it wouldn't be helpful to someone taking a look (I was trying to clean it up a bit). I do have the HTML5 game exported on dropbox for friends and family to test, if you'd like to give it a whirl. I'm getting the same behavior in FF even running it exported.

dl.dropbox.com/u/125327365/index.html

* Sorry, couldn't post hyperlinks due to low Rep! :)

I'd confirm your issue is local (only on your Firefox installation).

I've tested your link, it works as intended and no quick find search or anything unwanted pops up.

Try to remove any add-ons/additional module that might be installed.

If nothing changes, try to unisntall FF, clear the registry base and reinstall it.

Or try to find if you've some shortcuts set up or anything input-related that would be different from a clean install.

As for the implementation of the keyboard/wasd, check the ghost shooter.capx example that is shipped with C2's install (accessible from the start page, left column), the example contains an example of WASD movement + arrows movement (default controls of the behavior).

Thanks a bunch, kyatric! At least I know where to start now. It's very odd that two systems, my desktop and laptop, both exhibit the same behavior after FF 17.0.1 updated--no extensions or plugins aside from Flash and Java.

The WASD from Ghost Shooter is the same as I used in this one. Thanks for pointing it out, as there are some other good ideas in there.

Again, thanks for confirming it as a local issue and I'll start with your suggestions and see what happens.

Cheers, amigo.