KEEN – Key Environment for Developers

Here’s a quick app I threw together with Hype and Wrapping.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wrapping/id1403205583?ls=1&mt=12

It’s a quick way to show the KeyCode number, which is useful for building control systems in HTML games. The description on the product page explains more.

To celebrate the launch, it’s a free download. :slightly_smiling_face:
(So, get it while it’s free!)

3 Likes

Hmm… KEEN might be more useful than I thought.

Ha ha, test those keys. :smile:


Also, does everyone know how KeyCodes work, or do you need a tutorial?

1 Like

Hi Michael,

Downloaded your app.
It’s great, I have no use for it.

I checked your site.
I like your writing.

luc

PS: is your book still useful for Hype today ?

1 Like

HA HA. I'm glad to hear that! :smile:

I'm considering adding new features and which might make it more useful.

Hey, great! I'm glad you like my website.

It's probably still useful. There's really only one section that's really obsolete. That's the Hype-To-App section. I wouldn't use that code. Wrapping is so much better. The slide puzzle is also... ehhh... I probably could make that better. I don't think it needs sliced images. Last time I tried to use Pixelmator to slice an image, it crashed. So, I've been thinking about rewriting the tutorial to use a single image.

At some point, Hype 4 will be released. A lot of the information in the book is still the same. But because there are so many new features in Hype 4, I really should update the book.

So, to be fair to the people that already bought the Hype 3.5 book, I'm thinking of shutting down sales while I write the Hype 4 book. (I'm not doing anything right now as Hype 4 is still in Beta. I'm waiting to see what happens with Physics, as that could dramatically change the direction of the book.) It will probably take me 3-6 months to create a new version of the book.

Note: There's still a possibility I won't write a new version of the book. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to write a book. I'm not sure if there's enough demand to justify the work involved.

Thank you for the answer.
I bought Hype because of Physics.
But never had the time to really learned to use it… because I’m writing a book. :wink:
I started to create a very simple old game (in the real world ) but quickly hit a wall.

When I saw you were Photics, I thought, well maybe it’s a sign.

Is there a release date for Hype 4 ?

Three months ago :crazy_face:

Tumult was aiming for a Q1 / Spring launch, but it looks like they’re putting more work into the update. It’s cool. They might as well wait for macOS 10.14 now.

1 Like

Just letting you web developers and designers know that KEEN is likely to become a paid app soon. I think I’ve found a way to make it useful. I’m planning to work on it this weekend.

New features planned…

  • More keys
  • More JavaScript related data displayed
  • Touching on-screen keys works too
  • Typing mode
  • “Mathematical” font-like characters

𝕻𝖊𝖗𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖘 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖜𝖆𝖞𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖞𝖕𝖊 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘. :man_shrugging:t2:

Looks really useful.

Can you make it available on the Japan App Store?
…before it becomes a paid app, if possible :wink:

Thanks!

Really? You think it's really useful? :slightly_smiling_face:
Even in the app's description I put... "lower your expectations" :laughing:

Well, there are two issues with that.

  1. I'm not too familiar with the rules in Japan. They have extra tax laws that confuse me. It's not just Japan. I've excluded my apps from a lot of countries. I've been seriously thinking if this is necessary. Perhaps I'm overly cautious. I don't know.
  2. The app was made for a US Keyboard, or at least an English keyboard. I'm not sure what it would do with a Japanese keyboard.

Maybe this could be really useful in Japan though. Now that I think about it, keyboard mapping could be a big problem with Japanese JavaScript games and projects.


Anyway, here's a screenshot of the latest progress...

It shows more data. I wanted to include more, but I wasn't sure what else would be useful. It has a little typing area and pretty much all of the keys on a standard Mac Keyboard are available on-screen. So, if you press the "A" key on the keyboard or click the virtual "A" key, the effect should be the same.

All that's left to do is add that wacky mathematical "font-like" support. Maybe next weekend I'll send version 2.0 to the Mac App Store.

But if there's to be a version 3.0 of KEEN, it seems like multilingual support is a strong candidate for future expansion.

I guess I should have said “potentially really useful” as I haven’t had a play with KEEN. I regularly toggle between US, UK, Spanish, and 3 Japanese scripts, using physical keyboards that could be US, UK or US/Japanese depending on where I am/which device I’m on. Symbols in particular seem to be peppered quite randomly in different layouts. That all sets up issues that KEEN might be able to cut through.

Thanks for the reasons. I’ll have to find access to a different store, then. Wrapping and a Book About Hype are also on my list!

I think I might have stumbled onto something here. If you want to use fonts, where fonts cannot be used, these Mathematical “Font-Like” characters are pretty cool. A great example is with iMessages. You can send pretty messages to your friends, just cut-and-paste the converted text from KEEN.

This could be big!

Probably not, but maybe! :smile:

OK, I’m done. The app has been sent to Apple for review. I really enjoyed this project. There were some technical challenges, such as getting the text box to delete special characters, but I was able to figure it out.

Anyway, the price is set to go up on August 27, 2018. It’s Tier 1 / 99¢.

If you’re wondering why you would ever use this, here’s some sample code…

// Sample JavaScript Code
window.addEventListener("keydown", keys);

function keys(e) {
    var k = e.key;
    var c = e.code;
    var i = e.keyIdentifier;

    if (c == "ShiftLeft") {
        console.log("Left Flipper");
    }
    if (c == "ShiftRight") {
        console.log("Right Flipper");
    }
}

Even if you don’t use KEEN, that code could be helpful. If you wanted to use shift keys as flippers for your Pinball game, then knowing the exact e.code string spelling is important.

Who knows, maybe one day Hype will be as big into gaming as the golden days of Flash. I basically built KEEN in Hype, and wrapped it up with Wrapping, so there’s lots of potential here.

𝔸𝕝𝕤𝕠, 𝕥𝕙𝕖 “𝕗𝕠𝕟𝕥-𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖” 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕜 𝕒𝕤 𝕖𝕩𝕡𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕. 𝕀𝕤𝕟’𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕟𝕚𝕔𝕖! :slightly_smiling_face:

Well, I guess that’s it for version 2.0 of KEEN. I’m moving onto the next project.

1 Like

Hmmm, I’m not sure what happened, but there was a spike in purchases yesterday. KEEN is now #20 on the Developer Tools list.

It’s been a while since I touched this one. I didn’t even remember that I built it with Hype. HA HA. :smile:

3 Likes