Making interactive buttons with duration

[rex_noctis]

I don’t really know how to explain this but I’ll try.
I’m making a game using scene. I am using four buttons to control the movement of the player, however currently, if I hold down on the movement buttons, the character only moves one step in the given direction. The reason for this is because in def touch_began(self, touch): I have only told it to move the player one step. I tried implementing a variable that changed depending on what button was pressed and then in def update(self): telling it to move in whichever direction the variable ( move) specifies. When I try this, the buttons don’t even respond. How can I get it so the player ( self.player) moves in the direction of the button pressed until the user is no longer pressing the button?
Here is my game code at the moment (I have only programmed the up button in touch_began):

from scene import *
import time

class Game(Scene):
	def setup(self):
		self.background_color = '#ffffff'
		
		#Up button
		self.upCtrl = SpriteNode('2018-07-21 7.32.39 pm.png')
		self.upCtrl.x_scale = 100/2048
		self.upCtrl.y_scale = 100/2048
		self.add_child(self.upCtrl)
		self.upCtrl.position = (self.size.x/2), 175
		
		#Left button
		self.leftCtrl = SpriteNode('2018-07-21 7.17.22 pm (1).png')
		self.leftCtrl.x_scale = 100/600
		self.leftCtrl.y_scale = 100/600
		self.add_child(self.leftCtrl)
		self.leftCtrl.position = (self.size.x/2)-100, 75
		
		#downButton
		self.downCtrl = SpriteNode('2018-07-21 7.17.22 pm (2).png')
		self.downCtrl.x_scale = 100/600
		self.downCtrl.y_scale = 100/600
		self.add_child(self.downCtrl)
		self.downCtrl.position = self.size.x/2, 75
		
		#Right button
		self.rightCtrl = SpriteNode('2018-07-21 7.17.22 pm (3).png')
		self.rightCtrl.x_scale = 100/600
		self.rightCtrl.y_scale = 100/600
		self.add_child(self.rightCtrl)
		self.rightCtrl.position = (self.size.x/2)+100, 75
		
		#Game map
		self.gameMap = SpriteNode('2018-07-21 8.06.38 pm.png')
		self.gameMap.x_scale = 2
		self.gameMap.y_scale = 2
		self.add_child(self.gameMap)
		self.gameMap.position = self.size.x/2, (self.size.y/2)+100
		
		#Player sprite
		self.player = SpriteNode('2018-07-21 9.05.27 pm.png')
		self.player.x_scale = 2
		self.player.y_scale = 2
		self.add_child(self.player)
		self.player.position = (self.size.w/2)-415, (self.size.h/2)+100
	
	def touch_began(self, touch):
		touch_loc = touch.location
		if touch_loc in self.upCtrl.frame:
			self.player.position = self.player.position.x, self.player.position.y+5

run(Game(), LANDSCAPE, show_fps=True)```

[JonB]

you want to set flags in touch_began, and clear them in touch_ended, that are then used by update to add to motion. sort of like what you said you tried, but you didnt post that attempt. likely you just had a bug in your implementation.

Or, for a "joystick" type operation, you would compute the vector between the touch and center of the joystick sprite, which you would set to a variable in touch_began, update in touch_moved, and set to zero in touch_ended. Then you would scale that to some desired joystick sensitivity, and then treat as a delta position or delta velocity depending on how you want your physics to work.

[rex_noctis]

Thanks, it’s working now!