Player Controls

Controls are all about how the player interacts with the game. For a browser game, this typically means handling input from the keyboard, mouse, touch screen, or even a gamepad, and translating that into movement or actions in the game world. For example, one common control scheme in 3D games is the WASD keys for movement (W = forward, A = left, S = backward, D = right) combined with moving the mouse to look around. We can implement this by listening for keyboard events in JavaScript – when the player presses or releases a key, we update the game state (e.g. set a flag that “move forward” is active). Similarly, for the mouse, we can capture mouse movement or clicks. A common technique for 3D games is to use pointer lock (capturing the mouse) so that as the player moves the mouse, it directly controls the camera view (used in first-person games). If the game is third-person, we might implement an orbit control, where dragging the mouse rotates the camera around the character. On touch devices, we handle touch events – maybe a virtual joystick on screen for movement and swipe gestures to look around. The browser provides events for all these inputs (KeyboardEvent, MouseEvent, TouchEvent, Gamepad API for controllers), so we tie those to game logic. Implementing controls for a beginner might seem tricky, but we can start simple: perhaps just allow the player to use arrow keys to move a character forward/back and turn left/right. Then we can add more as we go (jumping, running, etc.). It’s important to give feedback to the player too – for example, if they press a key to move forward, we should see the character move or the camera move forward continuously until the key is released. This means updating positions every frame based on input state. We will likely use the requestAnimationFrame loop (the game loop) to update controls and physics each frame. There are also helper libraries or examples we can utilize; Three.js has some control utilities (like OrbitControls for basic camera orbiting, or PointerLockControls for FPS camera) that we can use or learn from. Controls are what make a game interactive, so we’ll test and tweak them to feel responsive. Once we have basic movement, we’ll notice something: if our world has gravity or physical objects, we need to handle those interactions. That’s where physics comes in.