This is extremely easy. Firstly open a new form, or the form that you would like to catch the key presses on.

We can then declare a new procedure:

Code

Private Sub Form_KeyDown(KeyCode As Integer, Shift As Integer) 'space for your code End Sub

Now this is the only tricky bit, (if you have no understanding of computers what-so-ever). When you press the letter "d" on the keyboard, you are not sending "d" to the comptuer, you are sending a number. Every key on your keyboard has it own, unique, number.

So if I wanted to find out what the key of anything is, I made a form that would tell me. Whenever I pressed a key, it would set the .text property of a disabled input field to the keycode value.

Code

Private Sub Form_KeyDown(KeyCode As Integer, Shift As Integer) Select Case KeyCode Case Else txtKey.Text = KeyCode End Select End Sub

As you can see from the above example, I have used a SELECT structure. This is going to add easy expandibility to the code. If, for example, I wanted to run a procedure when the user pressed the Up Arrow of the keyboard, after running the first program, I know that the up arrow keycode is 38. So I can add

Code

case 38 call myUpArrowProc

To the SELECT structure, and it would have been intergrated as easily as that!

This technique is used to make games in all kinds of computer languages. I have taken the source code from ocstudios for a small rally car sim. Its pretty good. I have added movement, and it should be put up in the downloads area.

Enjoy!