Events programming...

Why not just have pseudo code like this in your main loop:

if isKeyDown LEFT
player move LEFT

where player would be pointer to the player controlled object

If you want help whit the event solution you should tell what language you are using.

Have some sort of mediator object that manages the interactions between the world and the keyboard:

You could implement an event based system using boost::signals which I've been reading up on all day and will be using the my event/message system.

GCoda:

Sorry man, I'm working in C#. As to the pseudo code you offered, I will be using this code for my GUI, so I will not have the keyboard respond to only one object, otherwise that would be a very good and valid suggestion.

Antareus (Is that Orion?):

Thanks for the code but I understand C or C++ code about as much as I do Japanese (or the computer equivalent... Assembly *bad memories*). But, what I get from your code is that you cycle through each of the objects until the one that is currently supposed to react to input (or in focus) will get the keyboard input. Is that correct?

Saruman:

Like I said before. I dunno crap about C or C++ which seems to be what boost::signals is about, but I'll have a look and see if I can port anything from there in to C#. Thanks for your help.

EDIT: Ise reallyz gots ta workz on my engelischz.

If you can code in C# you really should not have any problem understanding C++ code. There extremely simular in syntex. I guess a C++ lib won't help you much, but I would imagine there are a ton of C# equivalent libs out there.

I suppose that (iterating through all objects to determine selected ones) is one method of checking to see what is selected, although from a programmer's perspective I would think it easier to keep a list of the currently selected items that changes as the user clicks on them. Then when it comes time to modify the selected items you can just apply a transformation to them and go.

Use a pointer to the item that has focus similiar to Windows' own event system. It'll be more efficient. Implement your own SetFocus type of functions etc.

A good first first thing to do is to separate the physical key input from the semantic action interpereted by the program.

So you might have an enum of all actions like:

enum EActions {
eMoveRight,
eMoveLeft,
eMoveForward,
eTurnRight,
eTurnLeft,
...
}

and then one function that maps the incoming keypress into an action. Then your program's objects only respond to these actions. For example, you might want to the left arrow to mean "Turn left". But you might also want the letter 'a' to. And you might want the numeric keypad #4, also. You don't want your game logic to be worried about these possibilities, so you do all the mappings in one place and only make game objects respond to "eTurnLeft".

This doesn't really answer your specific question, but it is a wise path to take on the way.

Thanks for all your help, I think I've decided what I will do for my events system.