Events and Global Inputs

Learn the two ways SFML captures Inputs

Events vs Global Inputs

SFML provides you two ways for capturing user Inputs (keyboard, mouse, joysticks, etc) : Events and Global Inputs. So what’s the difference ?
 
When you press on one of your keyboard buttons, two questions can be asked:
 
  • Question 1 : Has the button been pressed ?
  • Question 2 : Is the button currently pressed ?
Events respond to the first question and Global Inputs to the second.
 
The table below shows the true difference between the two systems. The moment a button is pressed, an event notification will be emitted. Whether or not you keep the button pressed with your finger does not matter, the action of pressing the button has already happened. We can say that Events capture the past state of the button while Global Inputs capture the current state of the button.
scenariosHas the button been pressed ?
(Event)
Is the button currently pressed ?
(Global Input)
Press the button and hold your fingeryesyes
Press the button and release your fingeryesno

Global Inputs Static Classes

SFML provides three static classes to capture Global Inputs. The class sf::Keyboard can tell you if any of your keyboard buttons is currently pressed, the class sf::Mouse can tell you the states of your mouse (position, wheel, which button is currently pressed) and the class sf::Joystick can tell you the states of any Game Controller connected to your computer. You will learn how to use those three classes in the next tutorials.

  • sf::Keyboard : Captures global keyboard inputs
  • sf::Mouse : Captures global mouse inputs
  • sf::Joystick : Captures global joystick inputs

Event Types

The Events can be classified into four (4) groups. Actually more, but this tutorial will not cover events related to mobile phones.

Group of EventsDescription
Window Events4 types of Events (closing, resizing, getting focus, losing focus)
Keyboard Events3 types of Events (pressing a button, releasing a button, writing a text)
Mouse Events6 types of Events (pressing a button, releasing a button,
moving the mouse, scrolling the wheel,
when the mouse enters the window space, when the mouse leaves the window space)
Joystick Events5 types of Events (pressing a button, releasing a button, moving the analog,
when the Joystick get connected to the computer
when the Joystick get disconnected from the computer)

The Event Loop

The code below is used in our Engine class to retrieve and process Events. As you can see we are using a loop called the Event Loop.

sf::Event event;
while(m_RenderWindow.pollEvent(event))
{
	
	//Capture user inputs here
	if(event.type == sf::Event::Closed)
	{
		m_RenderWindow.close();
	}
	
	//Update game here
}
//Redner Game here (outsite of the Event Loop)

When an event occurs, SFML will store it inside a queue (the Event Queue), see image below. The queue is a FIFO table (First In, First Out). When the method pollEvent() is called, the least recent event will be removed from the queue and returned to you. The idle scenario would be to process events as soon as they are emitted by the user, but that’s not always possible, sometimes several events accumulate before you get the time to process them. In this case, we use the Event Loop to process all the accumulated events before rendering our Game

  • sf::Event : a class storing all information related to an event
  • pollEvent(event) : a method used to retrieve the oldest event stored in the SFML Event Queue (FIFO table)
  • Event Loop : used to cycle through all available events till the Event Queue becomes empty.
Bonus Lesson : pollEvent() is not the only method to retrieve Events, SFML also offers the method waitEvent() that we won’t discuss.

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