C# trying to capture the KeyDown event on a form

Posted by Patrick on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Patrick
Published on 2009-08-19T09:06:53Z Indexed on 2010/04/15 22:33 UTC
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Hello!

I am creating a small game, the game is printed onto a panel on a windows form. Now i want to capture the keydown event to see if its the arrow keys that has been pressed, the problem however is that i can't seem to capture it.

Let me explain, on the form i have 4 buttons and various other controls and if the user for instance press one of the buttons (to trigger a game event) then the button has focus and i can't capture the movements with the arrow keys.

I tried something like

private void KeyDown(KeyEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Left)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.E);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
        else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Right)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.W);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
        else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Up)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.N);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
        else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Down)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.S);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
    }

and then when the form key down event was pressed, i used this

private void MainForm_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
    {
        KeyDown(e);
    }

I also added keydown for the buttons and the various other controls on the windows form, but i am not getting any response back. I have setup a breakpoint inside the function to see if it's being called, but that breakpoint never triggers?

Any ideas?

The most optimal was to have a general KeyDown event that triggers (regardless of what control that currently has focus) and then calls the KeyDown method.

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