Help With Renpy Keyboard on PC

[CarlosAvius]

So, I can't seem to use my Keyboard to play Renpy games. Like, it does nothing at all, be it arrows, Z, X, WASD, nothing does anything. I can only play with the mouse, but as you can guess, some games have puzzles, stealth or whatever that you need to use the arrows for it to be playable. So what could be the reason? Should I have installed something?

 

[Meaning Less]

Could be related to some keyboard language you have configured that renpy doesn't support.

Press windows+space and see if works with a different keyboard language.

If that isn't enough go to your Language preferences and test with a more common language like "English (US)"

 

[CarlosAvius]

I discovered it by randomly mashing all buttons. I discovered that Alt Gr + X opened the menu! So I mashed Alt Gr + Everything and Alt Gr + C opened a comand prompt(?) and now I can play normally no idea why but it works, im leaving this anwer here for whoever may have the same problem. Thanks for the Language tip even though I found another way to solve it, I thank you for taking your time to help

 

[anne O'nymous]

Could be related to some keyboard language you have configured that renpy doesn't support.

I have some doubt.

Firstly, PyGame (that Ren'Py use for the keyboard input) get its information from the OS, not directly from the keyboard. What mean that it get standardized values, even for the control keys that are handled by their scancode. Therefore, whatever the key to press to have the ctrl scancode, it will change nothing for PyGame and so, by extension, for Ren'Py.

Secondly, he named WASD, what is typical of a QWERTY keyboard, since it's the only layout where this combination can be used. It's not the straight original one, since he have an Alt Gr key (perhaps the Italian variation), but the said Alt Gr key is in fact just a shortcut for Ctrl + Alt.
But, whatever the variation, it's a standardized layout, there's no reason for PyGame to not be able to handle it correctly.

And now for my conclusion:
On Windows (that is probably the OS he use) the combination Alt + shift is used to switch the keyboard layout, and on keyboard layout that don't have an Alt Gr key, it also happen with Alt + Ctrl. And he solved his issue by spamming the Alt Gr key...

So, was he in fact flooding the OS of keyboard layout switch requests, until it fall back on the correct layout at the right moment ?
As long as he don't use other control keys than Shift, he would be able to use is computer without real problem, but still fail to use Ren'Py, where the key binding massively rely on the said control keys.