A virtual on-screen keyboard supporting gamepad and mouse-based input as well as a daisywheel supporting gamepad input.

Daisywheel

It's a daisywheel for gamepad-based text input! Just like the good old days! If you don't know what a daisywheel is, it's a gamepad-centric input method where you can use the left analog stick to choose one of eight "petals" and then press one of the four face buttons to type that letter. For some people it can be much easier and faster than manually navigating across a virtual keyboard, letter by letter, to type something.

Inspector Properties

Main Set

A string of at most 32 characters that will be displayed and accessible by default.

Capital Set

A string of at most 32 characters that will be displayed and accessible when the Right Trigger (R2, RT, ZR) is held down.

Numeric Set

A string of at most 32 characters that will be displayed and accessible when the Left Trigger (L2, LT, ZL) is held down.

Gamepad Index

The index of the gamepad to use for input handling.

Dead Zone

The analog stick deadzone for analog stick input to be registered.

Signals

key_press(key:String)

Emitted every time a valid button is pressed, with the button's value passed along with it.

backspace

Emitted every time the backspace is activated.

new_value(text:String)

Emitted every time the text changes (key_press or backspace).

Customization

You can tweak any of the .tscn files in res://addons/keyboard_daisy/parts/ to change the petal texture, button texture, display font, and info text.

VirtualKeyboard

A keyboard you can click on or control with a gamepad based on InputMap actions.

Inspector Properties

Cursor Scene

A PackedScene that will be instanced to create the cursor. The default cursor is a NinePatchRect Node; any other Control or Node2D Node can be used instead, or any Scene (custom or otherwise) that has a rect_size property. Make sure none of the Nodes in this PackedScene have a MouseFilter value of Stop, or clicks won't be able to propagate down to the keys.

Backspace Action

An InputMap action that, when pressed, will simulate a backspace without the user having to navigate to/click the Delete Special Option (see below). If left blank, the user must use the Delete Special Option (if available) to delete characters.

Sections

An array of strings, where each character in the string will be a key on a section in the virtual keyboard. If you just want one keyboard with no separation into different sections, just use a one-item array.

Columns per Section

How many columns each section of the keyboard will be.

Split into Sections

If set to 0, all sections will be visible at all times. Otherwise, only split_into_sections sections will be shown onscreen at a time, and the user will need to press the Switch key (see Special Options below) to cycle between groups of sections.

Min Rows

The minimum number of rows each section should have in it. Empty rows will be filled with empty disabled keys.

Special Options

Special keys to show up at the bottom of the last visible section. Special keys are:

• Space: Add a space character.
• Delete: Delete the last character.
• Confirm: Emit the confirm signal to signify that the player is done typing.
• Switch: Switch between different section groups. This is useless if the Split into Sections value is 0 and necessary if it isn't.

Separate Special Options

If true, the special options will be given their own row in the last visible section. If false, the keyboard will try to add the special options to the last row in the last visible section. If there are more special options available than there are empty keys in the last row, this will not work, so true is necessary in this case.

Confirm Name

The text to display in the special Confirm button, if this button is specified in Special Options.

Space Name

The text to display in the special Space button, if this button is specified in Special Options.

Delete Name

The text to display in the special Delete button, if this button is specified in Special Options.

Switch Names

The texts to display in the special Switch buttons, if Split into Sections has a nonzero value and the button is specified in Special Options. There must be exactly ceil(sections.size() / split_into_sections) names in this array, with each name referencing the content of the next group. For example, if you have three sections - lowercase letters, uppercase letters, and numbers, and a Split into Sections value of 1, the Switch Names value might be something like ["ABC", "123", "abc"], indicating that when on group 0 (lowercase letters), the next section is uppercase letters, when on group 1 the next section is numbers, and when on group 2 the next section is lowercase letters.

Signals

key_press(key:String)

Emitted every time a valid button is pressed, with the button's value passed along with it.

backspace

Emitted every time the backspace is activated.

new_value(text:String)

Emitted every time the text changes (key_press or backspace).

confirm(text:String)

Emitted when the Confirm Special Option is pressed, with the full value of text typed passed along with it.

Customization

With the exception of the cursor, the VirtualKeyboard is built entirely with HBoxContainer, VBoxContainer, Button, and VSeparator Nodes, and as such, the Theme and Theme Overrides values in the Control section of the Inspector can be used to customize the styles of the keyboard, as seen in the KeyboardExample2.tscn example scene. The cursor can be replaced with the Cursor Scene property in the Inspector, as described above.

Example Scenes

DaisyExample.tscn

An example of the daisywheel. Requires a connected gamepad to use.

KeyboardExample1.tscn

A basic three-section keyboard.

KeyboardExample2.tscn

A basic two-section keyboard with a custom Theme highlighting the ability to customize the keyboard's interface.

KeyboardExample3.tscn

A single-section keyboard that can switch between letters and numbers/punctuation using the Switch-related functionalities.

KeyboardExample4.tscn

A two-section keyboard that can switch between various groups using the Switch-related functionalities.

License

Copyleft, but, like, whatever. If you've read this far and you're some new indie gamedev or something who really thinks this code will help you but for some reason you're very determined not to open source your game for whatever reason, I think that's weird but realistically don't care. If your game or project makes less than $1,000 or something, you can interpret this as me granting you a license to use this code in your proprietary game (with credit). If your project makes more than that, either release its source under a license compatible with the AGPLv3, take my code out of your project, or send me ten bucks.

The font Ulagadi Sans is licensed under the SIL Open Font License.