Input handling between game loops

Posted by user48023 on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by user48023
Published on 2014-06-11T16:08:36Z Indexed on 2014/06/11 21:43 UTC
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This may be obvious and trivial for you but as I am a newbie in programming I come with a specific question.

I have three loops in my game engine which are input-loop, update-loop and render-loop. Update-loop is set to 10 ticks per second with a fixed timestep, render-loop is capped at around 60 fps and the input-loop runs as fast as possible. I am using one of the Javascript frameworks which provide such things but it doesn't really matter.

Let's say I am rendering a tile map and the view of which elements are rendered depends on camera-like movement variables which are modified during key pressing. This is only about camera/viewport and rendering, no game physics involved here.

And now, how can I handle input events among these loops to keep consistent engine reaction? Am I supposed to read the current variable modified with input and do some needed calculations in a update-loop and share the result so it could be interpolated in a render-loop? Or read the input effect directly inside the render-loop and put needed calculations inside?

I thought interpreting user input inside an update-loop with a low tick rate would be inaccurate and kind of unresponsive while rendering with interpolation in the final view. How it is done properly in games overall?

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