Resolved What would be the logic to trigger messages when pressing a key?

Hi,

I have 2 strings: StringA and StringB.
I want to display StringA, wait until the player press space bar, then display stringB.
So I made this logic:



The green line is the flow.

The problem with this logic is that the Input system Event button On pressed is not 1 "Tick", it keeps firing over time.

So this is what happens:

Trigger
Set X to True
Display String A

Then nothing until the player presses Space Bar, then:

IF Bool = True
Set X to False
Set Y to True
Display String B
Input system Event button On pressed is still firing.
IF Bool = True
Set Y to False

Result: The player presses Space bar once and StringA and StringB are displayed.

I tried something else: I replaced Input system Event button On pressed with On update, if SpaceBarPressed = True then Set SpaceBarPressed to False then execute the If BOOL instruction.

Another script sets SpaceBarPressed to True when the player presses the Space Bar.

The problem is that I have many messages that could be displayed depending on conditions. This means many DisplayTexts graphs, and therefore many On Update firing. This has a performance impact.

Thanks

 

There has to be a way to detect input on single "tick". But I'm not that familiar with the new input system.

Alternatively, you could use "Once" node to execute the text change once, then after button is released - reset the once node so it'll trigger again.

 

Where would you place Once?
I have tried to place it right after the Input Event but it doesn't work. It seems that the Input Events don't fire at the same time.
So it happens that the second Input Event fires after the first Input Event and VarY was already set to true.
So 2 messages are displayed.

The last resort is to add a delay. But for the user, it feels that the messages lack responsiveness.

 

This _should_ not be the case. from the source code of the Visual Scripting node:

Code (CSharp):

1.                 case InputActionChangeOption.OnPressed:
2.                     shouldTrigger = m_Action.WasPressedThisFrame();
3.                     break;

If it actually fires more than once, than it's more likely to be an issue with either the Input system itself or with the inner workings of the Visual Scripting system. But it's definitely a bug, because it's supposed to fire only when the button is pressed in that particular frame.

1. Have you measured it? or are you fearing the performance impact in advance?
(Premature optimization is the root of all evil)
2. If an OnUpdate call is your main performance concern ... OnInputSystemEventButton is also an OnUpdate call internally

Code (CSharp):

1.     public abstract class OnInputSystemEvent : MachineEventUnit<EmptyEventArgs>
2.     {
3.         protected override string hookName =>
4.             UnityEngine.InputSystem.InputSystem.settings.updateMode ==
5.             InputSettings.UpdateMode.ProcessEventsInDynamicUpdate
6.             ? [B]EventHooks.Update[/B]
7.             : EventHooks.FixedUpdate;

3. If performance is actually a concern of yours, you wouldn't use Visual Scripting at all.

I'm not really getting whats your problem.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. OnStart => ------------------------------- > Set Text "String A"
3.  
4. OnInputSystemEventButton => -------------- > Set Text "String B"
5.  

even if the event fires multiple times, it would still show stringB as soon as the button is pressed once.

Do you want to toggle between the texts (each time the button is pressed)? Or what is it what you want to do?

 

Because I am not a programmer, otherwise I would use C#.

I am not a the beginning of the project.

Yes, with deep profiling.

The graph is much more complex than that and is used in nearly 130 other graphs, that's why I made a drawing and not a screenshot to focus on the issue. It's not 2 strings to be displayed on start, but hundreds coming from a csv file to be displayed through the game.
The issue is that when 2 graphs are following each other, pressing the key once displays 2 messages.

I know there are different phases and it fires twice. It's by design but it created an issue as mentioned in other forums. The suggested workaround is to use if(!context.performed) { return; }
https://forum.unity.com/threads/player-input-component-triggering-events-multiple-times.851959/

I don't know how to do that in UVS.

 

the input system has 2 ways of how it can be used. either subscribing a callback function to the events, or checking each frame.
The UVS node checks each frame. there is no CallbackContext because it does not use the callback approach.

and it showed that the update node was the bottleneck?
then you're out of luck, because the InputSystemEvent node is just a Update node in disguise


Edit

I did a small test project with this:


it fires once, when it is clicked. I can't reproduce it printing the message multiple times.


maybe it is time to show your graph? or create a minimal example that shows the issue

This sounds more like an issue in your graph to me. do you have the event TWICE in your graph? once in each subgraph? or something like that?

don't add the event in the subgraph, chain them via Trigger Inputs: Subgraphs and State Units | Visual Scripting | 1.7.8 (unity3d.com) (see section: "Subgraph inputs and outputs")

 

It's true that the InputSystemEvent is just an update, replacing one by the other won't solve the issue.
But thanks to @PanthenEye who suggested to use Events instead, the perf are better now.

 

Just for completeness sake:

You want to move the event OUT of your subgraphs, and instead add a "Trigger Input" in your subgraph.
This allows the parent graph to send the event only to the subgraph that should receive it.

For example this graph:


alternates between the 3 subgraphs. Every time the event is fired (e.g. space is pressed) it visits a single subgraph.

("next" is a Integer variable with default value "-1")

 

This is not the logic of the drawing I posted. You can reproduce it, it's pretty quick. Do not forget that there are 2 subgraphs each wih an InputSystemEvent. You can replace the TRIGGER in green in my drawing by OnStart.

You'll see that pressing the key once will display both strings.

 

as I wrote: this is the error in your logic. Your logic is wrong. Fix it.

 

Oh my god, this is not an error, i need to use to]he subgraph multiple times...
Just forget it.

 

In my image above, I used the subgraph multiple times, too.
the event triggers "multiple times" in your graph because you listen to it multiple times.