[Scummvm-devel] Android port: mouse/touchscreen improvements

[Michael Nicholls]

On 5 August 2010 20:12, Eugene Sandulenko <sev at scummvm.org> wrote:
> Any helping hand is always welcome.

Thanks. Not overly sure how much time I will be able to commit, but
I shall give it a go.

> It sounds to be usable, but I strongly suggest to have it switchable.
> I.e. you may switch between current behaviour and new one. I believe
> that only testing may help here.

Having it switchable sounds like a good idea. I was initially thinking of
handling this directly in java for the moment and then passing the scumm vm
events I generate down to the C++ layer. I could factor out the code so that
it is just a switchable class that changes the behaviour and maybe tie
the switch to
a hardware button (if there are any left).

> On the question whether it will fit current games, I would tell with
> certainty that not all of them. Besides the fact that some engines and
> even games do something special with the mouse (consider FT and COMI
> showing their action menu after holding the mouse), any future engines
> may bring something completely new.

It's been a long while since I played COMI so I will give it a go on the
desktop to see what it does and see how well that fits.


On 5 August 2010 21:02, yotam barnoy <yotambarnoy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fortunately, there's no need to reinvent an interface for Android. the
> iPhone dev (vinterstum) has already come up with a very good
> interface. One of the 2 modes on the iPhone turns the screen into a
> touchpad just like the one on a laptop. It's very clever, because it
> means your finger is on a different part of the screen and you can
> then aim precisely. Tapping with the touchpad finger is a left click,
> and touching with another finger anywhere on screen is a right click.
> I find this to be very good and efficient. This can easily be
> implemented on the Andriod, or even better -- refactored into a base
> class since it seems like touch controls are the wave of the future.

That does sound like a nice mode to have and shouldn't be to difficult to
implement. Unfortunately I don't think the right click would work as pre 2.0
Android devices don't have multitouch. Not sure if we could support two ways
of working, depending on the OS version.

> Another option is to do what the iPhsoft guys do in their mod (at
> least this is what I think from the screenshots on their App Store
> pages) and create a small zoom box right above where the finger is
> touching so you can see that part precisely. However, that forces your
> finger into a certain orientation, so I'm not too fond of that option
> (though I haven't tried it).

I don't really like the sound of it too much either, but maybe it would be
a useful thing to have as an option at some point.

On 5 August 2010 23:37, Max Horn <max at quendi.de> wrote:
> sorry, no time to reply in detail now (too late, need sleep ;), but first off: All help is welcome :). Secondly: More and more devices out there have touch screens. It would be nice if ScummVM played similarly on all of them. Maybe we can come up with some good solution(s) and share them among our various ports (ideally even code can be shared, but for now I'd already be happy if the general behavior was similar).

It does seem evident from what you guys are saying that some kind of shared
interface code for touchscreens would be very useful.

I think for the moment I will try some of these approaches out and see
how it works. Would be nice to get something usable so this port can
be released, but
discussion of a common framework for handling touchscreens or just "mouse input
devices" sounds like a good idea.

If I manage to get some code together, is the usual procedure to post a patch
on the patch tracker so it can be discussed and updated?

Cheers,
Mike