Creating custom keyboard controls [Elm]

I'm trying to create custom keyboard controls for a 4 player game. Right now, the keys are predetermined like this:

type Orient = { x:Int, y:Int }
type GameInput = { space:Bool, delta:Time, so1:Orient, so2:Orient, so3:Orient, 
                   so4:Orient, amount:Int }


gameInput : Signal GameInput
gameInput = 
             let sampledInput = sampleOn delta 
                                <| GameInput <~ Keyboard.space
                                              ~ delta
                                              ~ Keyboard.arrows
                                              ~ Keyboard.wasd
                                              ~ Keyboard.directions (toCode 'O')
                                                                    (toCode 'L')
                                                                    (toCode 'K')
                                                                    (toCode 'M')
                                              ~ Keyboard.directions (toCode 'Y')
                                                                    (toCode 'H')
                                                                    (toCode 'G')
                                                                    (toCode 'J')
                                              ~ amountPlayers.signal
             in  lift (Debug.watch "input") sampledInput

I have created (for each player) input of the form:

type CustomKeys = { up:Char, down:Char, left:Char, right:Char }

customKeys2 : Signal CustomKeys
customKeys2 = CustomKeys <~ ck2up.signal 
                          ~ ck2down.signal 
                          ~ ck2left.signal 
                          ~ ck2right.signal

ck2up : Input Char
ck2up = input 'W'

ck2down : Input Char
ck2down = input 'S'

ck2left : Input Char
ck2left = input 'A'

ck2right : Input Char
ck2right = input 'D'

A handler elsewhere will adjust the values of the input as needed by the player. But I'm having a hard time figuring out how to insert these values into the arguments for Keyboard.directions.

I have tried lifting the arguments into Keyboard.directions directly:

~ Keyboard.directions <~ ...

Any result will become a Signal of a Signal, which cannot be lifted onto GameInput (correctly).

I have tried passing on the chars as arguments into gameInput:

gameInput2 : Signal GameInput
gameInput2 = gameInput <~ customKeys2

gameInput : CustomKeys -> Signal GameInput
gameInput { up,down,left,right } = GameInput <~ Keyboard.directions (toCode up)
                                                                    (toCode down)
                                                                    (toCode left)
                                                                    (toCode right)

Now gameInput2 will have as result a signal of a signal.

My last idea is to combine signals, but that doesn't seem like an option to me since I want one signal to depend on another signal.

Directly using Keyboard.directions is not gonna work. The problem is that at the start of the game the keys can be changed so you have some Signal Char. And Keyboard.direction goes from "normal types" to "signal types". So you can't lift it.

But you also have access to the keys that are currently held down, Keyboard.keysDown. I looked up the implementation of Keyboard.directions and I think you can recreate it in Elm in a way that has it take Signal Int arguments.

Here's an Elm implementation of the normal Keyboard.directions:

directions : Int -> Int -> Int -> Int -> Signal { x : Int, y : Int }
directions up down left right = 
  (\kd -> 
    List.filter (\ky -> List.member ky [up,down,left,right]) kd |>
      List.foldl (\ky st -> if | ky == up    -> { st | y <- st.y + 1 }
                               | ky == down  -> { st | y <- st.y - 1 }
                               | ky == left  -> { st | x <- st.x - 1 }
                               | ky == right -> { st | x <- st.x + 1 }
      ) {x=0,y=0}
  ) <~ Keyboard.keysDown

and here's the implementation you'll want to use:

directions : Signal Int -> Signal Int -> Signal Int -> Signal Int -> Signal { x : Int, y : Int }
directions up down left right = 
  (\u d l r kd -> 
    List.filter (\ky -> List.member ky [u,d,l,r]) kd |>
      List.foldl (\ky st -> if | ky == u -> { st | y <- st.y + 1 }
                               | ky == d -> { st | y <- st.y - 1 }
                               | ky == l -> { st | x <- st.x - 1 }
                               | ky == r -> { st | x <- st.x + 1 }
      ) {x=0,y=0}
  ) <~ up ~ down ~ left ~ right ~ Keyboard.keysDown

Feel free to refactor, I just hacked this code together quickly so it's kind of too large for a single function.