How to add WASD movement in Cocoa Swift

Question

So I am trying to add WASD movement to my playCharacter class in Cocoa Swift (not using Xcode):

import Cocoa

public class playerCharacter: NSView {
    var x: Int
    var y: Int
    let color: NSColor        

    init(x: Int, y: Int) {
        self.x = x
        self.y = y
        self.color = NSColor.darkGray

        let frame = NSRect(x: x, y: y, width: 50, height: 50)
        super.init(frame: frame)
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

    public override func draw(_ dirtyRect: NSRect) {
        super.draw(dirtyRect)

        // Draw the player character square with the specified color
        color.setFill()
        dirtyRect.fill()
    }
}

I want to incorporate top-down left-right WASD player movement for my character. I have tried looking all over the internet, but it never works.

I have tried using NSEvent and keyDown functions, but I am lost. I tried looking up how to, but found barely anything. Please help

Answer 1

Add the following to your NSView class:

    override var acceptsFirstResponder: Bool {
        get {
            return true
        }
    }
    
    override func keyDown(with event: NSEvent){
        switch event.characters! {
        case "w": print(event.characters! + " = forward")
        case "a": print(event.characters! + " = left")
        case "s": print(event.characters! + " = back")
        case "d": print(event.characters! + " = right")
        default:
            print("default")
        }
        super.keyDown(with:event)
    }