request new feature - tablet friendly controls

[vcft67]

Hi all,
I have a tablet pc and I would love to play U7 while I'm commuting. The tablet is running Win 2K so there's no problem getting Exult to run, but the controls are awkward on a tablet.

All I have is a stylus, so holding down the right mouse button and moving the cursor is almost impossible. Double-left clicking is no problem, so I can open objects and talk to people... it's just moving that's hard.

Ideally for tablets, there would be a small circle in the bottom left or right of the screen and depending on where I tapped the stylus in the circle, the Avatar would go in that direction. So, for eample, if I pressed and held down the stylus (equivalent to left click and hold) in the top left corner of the circle, the Avatar would go north-west diagonally. Ideally, the closer to the center of the circle I tap and hold, the slower the Avatar walks. It could be combined with the three walking speeds of the Avatar.

On top of that, a little button that acted like a right-click toggle would be awesome. Basically, if I tapped (equivalent to left-clicked) on the button, it would treat the next tap anywhere else on the screen like a right-click. That way I could tap the button, then tap on something else to right-click on it.

Does any of this sound reasonable? If anyone could help me with this I would be forever in your debt.

[Dominus]

I think we may be able to help you. AFAIR, the Zaurus port had similar control problems and solved them. Mabye someone wants to look at what Artaxerxes did and see if that is applicable to the tablet.

[artaxerxes]

hi,

I doubt you could use the solution employed for the zaurus. We use the directional buttons to allow users to move the avatar around. Unless you have directional buttons on your tablet, there is no way to do it "out-of-the-box".

Artaxerxes

[Colourless]

Tablet control would pretty much be a 1 button mouse interface with no keyboard. You'll need some kind of HUD.

[vcft67]

All I have is a stylus.... and a power button. No directional controls

[MV]

What about a hand held trackball mouse? Surely the tablet has ps/2 or USB inputs?

[Colourless]

Obviously you are missing the point of a tablet PC. It's to be used without any other control device. Only the stylus

[MV]

Hey, it's a solution until you program a HUD system for him.

[Ethan]

this is tedious, but if the single button works as a left click, you could simply use a bucket or some other item to have the avatar keep walking to it, eliminating the need for a right button. or just use hackmover to walk around. This sounds like more of a pain than its worth, though.

[jens]

Sorry to bring up such an old topic. I got a Fujitsu Siemens Stylus 3500 tablet pc running win2000. Exult runs fine on my systems. The only problem ist (as mentioned above) moving around in U7 (no real rigjht mouse button). Is there any way to reconfigure the controls (moving around with single left click e.g.)?

Thanks
Jens

[m4yh3m]

Surely if the tip of the stylus is for left clicks, the other end is for right clicks! Try turning it around!


If you know how to code, or know someone who can code, see if there might be a way to have a gesture that would activate a right click. Otherwise, you'll need something along the lines of a click-and-hold for 5 seconds = right mouse click. This is probably going to have to be done on your OS.

[ericw]

It looks like there are some physical buttons on that tablet pc; if they do something that exult could catch (maybe the arrow ones register mouse wheel events?) then that would seem like a good way of toggling between 'walk' and interact.

alternatively, I'm not sure if this would work, but it might be possible to write a 'single button mouse mode' where clicking on anything you can't pick up causes a right click, and otherwise a left click.

[Arnim Sauerbier]

I'm looking into these issues.

Currently porting to Nokia 770 tablet - movement currently with directional pad, not stylus click.

First UI task is to get on-screen menu for ESSENTIAL keyboard commands:


b Use spellbook
c Combat mode
f Use food
g Use Abacus
i Show inventory
k Use keyring/Keys to unlock
j SI: Show jawbone
l SI: Show combat stats
m Show map
p Use lockpicks
Esc Show Game menu box and closes all open boxes
w Use watch, shows the time if you got a watch
z Show stats

[Arnim Sauerbier]

s/ESSENTIAL/essential(?)

I find movement with the directional pad to be quite awkward, as party members seem to block movement frequently.

The most convenient way to move i've found so far is to invoke gwin->start_actor_along_path() when tapping the stylus. However i have to test that no object or player was clicked-on before calling it.

I also failed tonight at reliably detecting a button press to use as a toggle for stylus tap functionality. A buttonpress + tap_on_object would be a more reliable way to initiate dragging for purposes of picking up objects, since double-taps seem fairly hard to do reliably.

At the moment, i think something like this would work best for tablets:

Single tap on any ground tile moves you there via path (running if distant).
Single tap on any object gives you description (no need to click-drag)
Single tap on any npc gives you conversation dialogue
Button+tap on an object activates it (sack, book, sign)
Button+tap+Drag on any object picks it up and begins dragging.

Hopefully someone with some more knowledge about exult.cc events will respond

cheers

[djvonfunkin]

Hey guys I got a toshiba tecra m7 tablet. i haven't tried exult on it yet but used to use exult all the time a year ago. i have both vista and windows xp tablet edition and a pen with an eraser and side button so I think I'll be ok.

of course the @!#$ answer would be buy windows xp tablet edition or vista where you can have holding the stylus down work as a right click, or get a stylus with a side button . This is easy to find if you have a wacom digitizer, but I don't know what the older tablets use.

More things you can buy:

software to program gestures to anything you want, although i don't know how useful a gesture would be for movement. might be handy for a billion other things though.

http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/

or maybe what you want to hear: free software that will allow you to hold down the stylus to perform a right click:

http://www.jerrykindall.com/download/softrightclick.rar

of course this came out in 2005 so i don't know if it will work right or how it would interact with a game where you click and drag items with the left click.


of course an exult gui option would be cool too :0.