Using the Joystick

Contents

• Introduction
• Showing the Joystick
• Changing the Joystick's Appearance
• Joystick Behavior
• Dual Joysticks

Introduction

Some games involve moving a character around in a wide range of directions. Often, these games require a joystick to provide precise-enough control over that character’s movements.

Creating the logic yourself that would allow joystick input would be cumbersome. Thankfully, we’ve built this functionality into Stencyl, and it just takes a couple of steps to enable it!

How to Enable and Use the Joystick

To enable the joystick and access its values, use the blocks shown below. They’re located under the User Input > Mobile category.

Joystick direction ranges from 0 to 360 degrees, inclusive.

Joystick distance equals how far the user has “stretched” the joystick relative to its center, in pixels.

Example

The following example code, used in the Joystick example game, shows how to use the blocks to implement 360-degree player movement.

Don’t panic about the math - you can find this behavior on StencylForge by searching for “Joystick” or as part of your local Library when importing a behavior (From Your Library > Mobile > Joystick).

You can adjust the “-10” values shown next to the joystick distance block to tune the sensitivity and movement to your liking.

Changing the Joystick's Appearance

You can change the Joystick’s appearance and how it appears on the screen through the Settings > Mobile > Joystick page.

Access the Joystick Configuration Page

Click the Settings button, as shown, to open the dialog:

Next, click Mobile > User Input, as shown in #1 and #2.

Changing the Appearance is a matter of providing two graphics - one for the "background" and one for the moveable portion of the josytick.

Changing the Behavior

You have full control over when and where the joystick appears on the screen. In Stencyl 2.2, this is on the same page where you provided the graphics. In Stencyl 3.0, these are exclusively controlled through blocks under User Input > Mobile.

The Show where Pressed option shows the joystick where the user last touched the screen.

The Fixed option shows the joystick at a fixed position on screen. To set this position, use the following block, located under the User Input > Mobile category.

Dual Joysticks

As the name suggests, dual joysticks let you work with two joysticks rather than one. All of the key joystick operations can now be applied to Joystick 1, Joystick or both of them.

[TODO: Dual joystick motion example]

Jon
Ben - You could achieve it by inputting blank joystick graphics for both fields.
0 2 months, 1 week ago

benplant
Does anyone know of a way to have the joystick not be visible on the screen? I'd like to allow the movement of the joystick without it actually being visible.
0 4 months, 2 weeks ago

brainmeats
I could really use a second joystick for my game
0 8 months, 1 week ago

dvfe
@ Stevetheipad:
Thank you for your response. I tried to tweak the default joystick to only follow the 4-way movement but I couldn't do it. It seems to be quite complicated to just tell it which direction to follow. There doesn't seem to be a way to do it.
0 10 months, 1 day ago

Stevetheipad
@dvfe: Just program a behavior (or work off the default) that accepts the joystick to be moved in all directions, but detects whether it's going up, down, right or left the most, and only goes in the appropriate direction.
0 10 months, 1 day ago

dvfe
What if I want my actor to walk in a 4-way movement, instead of 360?? How do I configure the joystick?
1 10 months, 3 weeks ago

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