Disable User Keyboard input

[Tasyen]

This is an working version of an idea: disabling the keyboard input for specific players. It works by giving the keyboard focus to an EditBox. That focus is reapplied multiple times a second.
This disabling can be bypassed by the user by spamming the esc Button, the wanted hotkey and a mouse click. Although it still requires multiple seconds and dozens of tries to use the hotkey (quite much effort for one activation). This does not block the mouse input.

do
    local timer = CreateTimer()
    local frame
    -- the players having hotkeys disabled
    local disablePlayers = {}
    TimerStart(timer, 0.0, false, function()
        -- create the Frame keeping the Keyboard focus
        frame = BlzCreateFrameByType("EDITBOX", "", BlzGetOriginFrame(ORIGIN_FRAME_GAME_UI, 0), "", 0)
        BlzFrameSetSize(frame, 0.001, 0.001)
        BlzFrameSetAbsPoint(frame, FRAMEPOINT_BOTTOMLEFT, 0.001, 0.001)

        -- Reapply the focus to the frame for the wanted players
        TimerStart(timer, 0.01, true, function()
            if disablePlayers[GetLocalPlayer()] then 
                BlzFrameSetFocus(frame, true)
            end
        end)
    end)
    function DisableHotkeys(player, flag)
        disablePlayers[player] = flag
        if GetLocalPlayer() == player then
            BlzFrameSetFocus(frame, flag)
            BlzFrameSetVisible(frame, flag)
            BlzFrameSetEnable(frame, flag)
        end
    end
end

after one uses: DisableHotkeys(Player(0), true). Player Red won't be able to chat nor use any hotkey.

 

[Lt_Hawkeye]

Would it be possible to disable a specific key rather than all?

 

[Tasyen]

Not with this technique.

 

[apsyll]

Couldn't you use the mouse pressed and player skip cinematic natives to hook into to let the player focus again to your frame? So it should be impossible for them even with spam-clicking.

 

[Tasyen]

Will test that. But there might be a problem with network play which is not existing when only using a timer.

 

[SinisterLuffy]

@Tasyen Yo, did you ever test @apsyll's hypothesis? Is there a way to separate disabling chat from disabling command card?

And do you have anything for mouse input?

 

[Tasyen]

I got another more simple Idea to disable user input. One makes the Player an observer. As observers are not allowed to give orders.
Disable Input.
call SetPlayerState(Player(0), PLAYER_STATE_OBSERVER, 1)
Reverse the disabled Input
call SetPlayerState(Player(0), PLAYER_STATE_OBSERVER, 0)

Has some sideeffects though:
The player also can not trigger any sync events anymore (can't end it from the target player poistion).
It changes the upkeep text for that player.
The game saves the units one had selected before becoming a Observer and remembers it. Then when becoming a real Player again and giving Orders the remembered units will do the orders aswell (without being selected UI wise)
Until one selects and deselects them.