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Using InputEvent

What is it?

Managing input is usually complex, no matter the OS or platform. To ease this a little, a special built-in type is provided, InputEvent. This datatype can be configured to contain several types of input events. Input events travel through the engine and can be received in multiple locations, depending on the purpose.

Here is a quick example, closing your game if the escape key is hit:

GDScriptC#

func _unhandled_input(event):
    if event is InputEventKey:
        if event.pressed and event.keycode == KEY_ESCAPE:
            get_tree().quit()

However, it is cleaner and more flexible to use the provided InputMap feature, which allows you to define input actions and assign them different keys. This way, you can define multiple keys for the same action (e.g. the keyboard escape key and the start button on a gamepad). You can then more easily change this mapping in the project settings without updating your code, and even build a key mapping feature on top of it to allow your game to change the key mapping at runtime!

You can set up your InputMap under Project > Project Settings > Input Map and then use those actions like this:

GDScriptC#

func _process(delta):
    if Input.is_action_pressed("ui_right"):
        # Move right.