XNA "Game" I'm Making for my Daughter

[SinbadEV]

Original Topic Name: C#.NET+XNA Figured I'd ask here on the off chance y'all know

So, I'm trying to make a simple application that will display which keys are being pressed at any given moment while preventing any "Scary" keys from being pressed... the net result is that I can let my 17 month old daughter mash on my keyboard without fear of her accidentally tripping a shortcut key etc...

I found a nice little package that disables things like the Windows key but have yet to be able to manage to kill Alt-TAB... and it seems like 90% of the Internet thinks that disabling alt-tab is a horrible thing to do to users and I shouldn't do it, and the other 10% have provided only solutions that work in C++ not C# ... I thought I'd found a nice piece of C# code to so it but when I modified the code to use what I THOUGHT was a different scan-code it causes all the applications running on my computer to simultaneously crash... so that's the end of tonight's gambit... my daughter would be hard pressed to successfully mash Alt-Tab so I'm going to move forward with my current framework (making pictures representing the words starting with the letters she's pressed show up)... but figured I'd poke y'all and see if you had any suggestions on how to do what I'm looking for... if at all possible... even if it's a setting I change on my computer prior to me starting the game for her.


http://pastebin.com/f6b04f200

[rattle]

Simpler and more effective solution: physically remove the unwanted keys from your keyboard!

If you don't mind the german, this is what you want.

[SinbadEV]

I need to be able to use my keyboard when she's not mashing it.

I don't mind german but I don't speak it either, what does the linked program do... simply allow me to temporarily disable/enable dangerous keys?

[rattle]

I think so

[aegis]

you can write a pretty simple autohotkey script to disable keys

[SinbadEV]

That program requires a reboot, too much effort


now

you can write a pretty simple autohotkey script to disable keys

That sounds awesome, how do I do that?

[SinbadEV]

Well, I'm a little disappointed that no-one was able to help me but... here's an image of what I have so far...


I've only mapped out those 12 keys at the time of that screenshot... when you hold shift they change to the Shifted version (aka @ for 2 and Q for Q) and shows all the keys being held down in the center there where it says "LeftControl"... when I finish mapping all of the normal keys to the keyboard image then I'm wondering what other "fun" things to throw in... The obvious would be to have images show up on the screen for the letters being pressed... and I was thinking having a character walking around (maybe a pacman, or a Nibbles style Snake) controlled by the arrow keys.

Any other suggestions that fit the "drawing things to the screen or moving them when certain keys are pressed" category and would entertain a sub-2 year old?

[KaiserJ]

this is very cute :) i hope the little one enjoys it

although... 2 years old? randomly mashing the keyboard? she'd probably do quite well on 8x8 DsD.

[lurker]

Did you get autohotkey yet? Should be as simple as putting a shortcut in the config file and then not giving it anything to do.

Beware ctrl+esc and alt+esc, with and without shift.

[aegis]

if you throw a wildcard, it accounts for unknown modifiers?

[knorke]

lol i google "disable dangerous keys c#" and the first hit is this thread.
Then I found this:
http://bitboost.com/pawsense/index.html

autohotkey script that seems usefull:
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic20 ... sable+keys

If you can not disable crtl+alt+enf maybe user use windows user account settings to disable the taskmanager and other stuff too?

I need to be able to use my keyboard when she's not mashing it.

Get a second keyboard with removed keys, usb + ps2.
Also do not forgett to protect the PC so your daughter does not try to feed the cd-drive with paper etc...

[SinbadEV]

AutoHotKey Is awesome!!!... it even appears to have a DLL version that I could incorporate in my game if I am so inclined.

edit:

This is super odd, it appears that my XNA application somehow overrides the lock-out of the AutoHotkey... oh well, back to the drawing board.

[Spawn_Retard]

[quote="KaiserJ

although... 2 years old? randomly mashing the keyboard? she'd probably do quite well on 8x8 DsD.[/quote]
I'd say most BA players are like this, she could probably beat most of the 1v1 team, even without a mouse.