[getzabelz]

What this is for: sprinting needs A held the whole time. Auto run (Controls tab, Off by default) lets the player hold A until Link sprints, let go, and keep sprinting while the stick stays pushed. What is tested: a Windows game run on an RX 6800 XT with an Xbox controller over XInput (Xbox / PC layout), including swimming, ladders and climbing walls, the keyboard alone (Shift as A, W to move), and a new game-free test. Not tested: Epona (not reached yet in the test save), Linux, other controllers.

Problem

In this game A is the run button: pressed while moving, Link rolls, then sprints for as long as A is held. Long runs across Hyrule Field mean holding the bottom face button down the whole time.

What changed

• An Auto run row on the Controls tab, after Stick dead zone: Off (the default) or On. Help text: "Sprint without holding A (or its key). Hold it until Link sprints, then let go: he keeps going. Let go of the stick or the movement keys, or tap A again, to stop."
• With it on, A held for 0.4 s while the left stick is pushed (past 30%) and then let go stays held for the game. A short press (a roll on its own) is never kept.
• It ends when:
  • the stick comes back to the middle (Link stops);
  • A is pressed again (the player's A takes over: letting go stops, a long hold keeps the sprint again);
  • Plus or Minus is pressed (the pause menu or the map opens with A let go);
  • Link is no longer the player's to move: an event or a talk playing, the game paused, or the Insert menu open. So A is never held into a menu entry or a text box.
• The stick and the other buttons pass untouched.
• Code:
  • host/auto_run.h holds the logic, game-free.
  • host/nn_hid.c runs it in npad_states on each controller read, after the flight and the free camera.
  • host/hos_main.c gets hos_oot_player_free(): Link updated within 250 ms with no event playing, noted on his update in hos_oot_lift_player.
• Option id HOS_OPT_AUTO_RUN = 55 (gpu/vk/vk_api.h), answered in vk_replay.cpp. I surveyed the open PRs that change vk_api.h: 52/53 (feat(input): a Walk key for the keyboard, held or toggled, with its speed #2345), 52 (feat(graphics): view distance settings (foliage, LOD, grass, shadows) #2669, feat(input): sprint on Shift or the left stick's press, without the roll #2604, first person: the view at Link's eyes, as a menu option #2567), 54 (first person: the view at Link's eyes, as a menu option #2567, feat(input): a Keyboard row: Auto, On or Off #2530), 60 (feat: an optional item wheel for the R/L item row, Twilight Princess style #2261) and 64 (feat(menu): save and resume when restarting for changed settings #2607) are taken; 55 is free in main and in those heads.
• Log line: hid: auto run: A kept held for the sprint (once, the first time it keeps A).
• Docs: a new row in the readme's menu table, and a note in its Controls section.

Testing

• In game (Windows 11, RX 6800 XT, Xbox controller over XInput, Xbox / PC layout):

  • holding A until the sprint and letting go keeps Link sprinting;
  • letting go of the stick and tapping A stop it;
  • a short A press still only rolls;
  • in the water, on ladders and climbing walls it behaves as expected (nothing out of place);
  • the keyboard: A bound to Shift, first with the controller's stick, then moving with a key (W): kept and ended the same way as on the controller.

  The build tested in game had the same logic on an older main (8fcc8c2) under the id 52 and the names keep_running/run_lock.h. This branch is that change squashed on current main, renamed (auto_run) and moved to id 55; it was not rebuilt and run again after that.

• tests/test_auto_run.py (new): plays presses through the header and checks that the row, its answer, the call in nn_hid.c and the readme are there. Cases:

  • kept after a long hold;
  • not kept after a short one;
  • A pressed again, Plus, an event;
  • the row off;
  • the stick under 30%, a diagonal;
  • A held while standing and then moving.

• tests/test_input_background.py: its fixture gets the header and a hos_oot_player_free stub. Locally it fails to compile on main too (oc_consumed_pads set but not used with llvm-mingw's clang -Wunused-but-set-global), the same as tests/test_driver_cache_folder.py (mkdir). Both are unrelated to this change, so I'm leaving them to CI.

[getzabelz]

CI note: after updating the branch, everything passes except Linux AppImage. It fails in the System packages step before anything is built: an ssl.SSLEOFError: UNEXPECTED_EOF_WHILE_READING while fetching packages, then a timeout (exit code 124), in run 43210240175. The same step failed the same way on the first run, and on other PRs in the same window (fix/prompts-live-hint-bars, feat/keyboard-ocarina-notes, feat/file-backed-pipeline-cache). I can't re-run jobs here; a re-run of the AppImage job should go through once the package mirror answers.

The earlier tests/test_release_scripts.py failure (Python source checks, ubuntu part 2) passed on this run; it is unrelated to the change.

[Joey-Magnus]

I merged this into current main (51da046). tests/test_auto_run.py and tests/test_input_background.py both pass on Linux with gcc. The appimage failure is the Launchpad SSL timeout in the System packages step, not this change. A re-run should clear it.

The state machine in host/auto_run.h reads right. A short press is never kept, a second A press hands control back, Plus/Minus and the Insert menu end it, and the row being off passes the buttons through untouched. Option id 55 is free on main (the highest taken there is 51) and MKWVK_API_VERSION doesn't need a bump, since only an enum is added.

One case I couldn't rule out from the code: the ocarina. oc_pad_word turns A into a note while the game waits for notes. If Link takes out the ocarina while the sprint is kept and the stick is still pushed, the release ends only if oot_event_playing() is true during ocarina play (host/hos_main.c:899). If it isn't, the game would see A held as a note. Could you check that once in game? Ending the kept A while the note wait is active would also cover it. Also, the in-game run was on the older id-52 build, so a quick boot of this exact head would be good before merging.