game controlls?

[zergmuncher]

How do I get java to read special characters (such as the left and right arrow key)? I'm a java student and my final project is a game which will use arrow keys to navigate, I can get it to read characters like "l" using the ConsoleIO class, but, you know...I'm a n00b. Thank you!

getComment()
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return null;
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[Belisarius]

I'm not much of a UI expert, but how are you doing things? Swing?

[zergmuncher]

I'm using just plain old console, which will probably be what makes this interesting. We're going to println the overhead image...

[Belisarius]

Wow, I've never even tried anything like that before. I'll try out some stuff and get back to you.

[Belisarius]

Here's the problem you face; you can grab the input stream through System.in, but putting together the input can be tricky, as I'm not sure what bytes correspond to "left" and "right". If I were you, I'd put the whole program in a while loop and wrap System.in with BufferedInputStream. Every iteration, check to see if left or right has been pressed and do stuff accordingly.

I haven't tried this, but it's where I would start if I were doing the same project as you are.