[feature request] kind of. keyboard layout independent input

hello,

Apparently unreal doesn’t have keyboard layout independent input. This is very annoying for users who don’t use qwerty, which is quite common. For example azerty is used quite a lot in France and Belgium its the standards there. There are also German keyboards etc.

This wouldn’t be a problem if it was just once in the settings for the editor. But every example/game uses standard wasd too which is not usable in azerty. Also everybody playing Unreal games with a different keyboard layout has to remap the keys. Most modern AAA games detect the keyboard layout automatically to the extend that even the tutorials say zqsd or something.

Some ideas on how to implement.

  1. Check which keyboard layout is used at the start of the game/editor, and rebind certain keys accordingly. Possibly via some config file for that specific layout.
  2. Use scan code input or have the option to set game input with scan code’s, that way you can put wasd/zqsd as a scan code but put something like I for inventory as normal input.

hope to get some feedback on this I tried implementing it myself but the unreal source confuses me and i don’t know where the input is handled.

Why is this still not a thing?

Yeah, that’s pretty needed, I got the same problem too. For anyone getting here in the future, see this link: Keyboard Layout-Independent Input in Code Plugins - UE Marketplace

It’s a plugin, but apparently someone found a way to do it.

I believe there are ways to remap inputs at runtime, but I haven’t learned them. I think there are blueprint nodes, ini file settings, and/or C++ functions for this.