Questions and junk

[Smothermunchie]

Greetings Agentq.

I'm writing to ask if it might be possible in your next build of Scumm DS to have a pan scrolling option.

Instead of holding LEFT TRIGGER and RIGHT or LEFT on the control pad, which is very awkward, you could just press something like the RIGHT TRIGGER and it would automatically scroll smoothly all the way to the right, and when pressed again, it would scroll smoothly all the way to the left.

This next question really isn't a request, I'm just curious.

Is it possible to remove all of the commands and all of the stuff within your inventory from the top screen, and only have them available for display and selection on the bottom screen?

I was thinking, if you can visualize this, that on the top portion of the bottom screen would be all of the commands that are available for selection.

The bottom portion of the bottom screen would be all of the items obtained in your inventory that also would be available for selection.

In the middle of the bottom screen would be a circle that would control the visual mouse on the top screen. The further you touch away from the inside of the circle, the faster the visual mouse cursor on the top would move.

On the left and right side of the middle of the bottom screen would be your scrolling features. So for example, on the middle left side on the bottom screen would be two icons for scrolling. One would be a slow manual scroll to the left, the other would automatically scroll slowly all the way to the very left. The same would be done for the right side as well.

I'm just thinking that if you can remove the commands and inventory from the top screen that there will be more room on the top and it would not be necessary any longer to have to scroll up and down any more.

I sure would like some feedback from this idea. Again, it's not a request, I'm just curious as to what your response is going to be.

By the way, here's a picture example of the bottom screen.



The top part in green is the commands.
The bottom part in purple in what is in the inventory.
The two boxes to the left and right of the circle would be your mouse click buttons.

Many thanks for the great work you've put into this project so far. It's definitely the best homebrew for the DS.

[agentq]

Well, you've certainly given this some thought, so I thought your post deserved a good reply.

Instead of holding LEFT TRIGGER and RIGHT or LEFT on the control pad, which is very awkward, you could just press something like the RIGHT TRIGGER and it would automatically scroll smoothly all the way to the right, and when pressed again, it would scroll smoothly all the way to the left.

What about zooming in and out? At the moment you hold L/R and press A or B to zoom. You wouldn't be able to do this in your scheme.

This next question really isn't a request, I'm just curious.
[...]

Well, I can see several problems with this system. Firstly, having the game screen on the top where you can't click on items directly would spoil the directness of the game and make it less intuitive, in my opinion. I like to be able to tap on something directly to be able to select it. Having two buttons on screen to do a left and right click sounds a bit slow and clunky.

As for moving the inventory around - currently ScummVM DS supports about a dozen games, and each one has a different kind of inventory. Some use text, others use graphical icons. Some display more items than others. Some display it all the time, and others have you bring up the inventory with the mouse. It would require work on each game in order to split off the inventory and display it in some way on the bottom screen. This would take much more time than I have, and would need work each time somebody added a new game. Also, the rest of the ScummVM team would not be happy about me spreading code all over the code base to do this.

The same applies to the commands, although at least there are much fewer of them!

If I was working for an adventure game company, I would be thinking about laying the screen out specifcially for the DS, but for these games changing the layout would be very hard.
[/quote]

[Smothermunchie]

Honesty. That's all I was hoping to hear. Thank you.

I just wanted to share with you that I don't use the zooming feature at all. Both screens are set up for the 1x display option. Anything else makes me feel a little nauseous when looking at both screens at once. Maybe I should just stop playing them when I'm drunk.

Anyway, that's why it would be nice just to move the D-Pad left and right to scroll the screen around instead of holding the left trigger along with it. The way my hands always seem to fumble around on the controllers, I usually end up changing the mouse clicker when trying to scroll.

Well, thanks again for the response. This really is my favorite homebrew project and I wish you the best.

[Smothermunchie]

Okay, apparently I'm not quite willing to let this idea go just yet.

Have you thought about scaling the top screen to full width with correct aspect ratio (1x) and having the overlap on the bottom screen?

The top screen would just be the graphical part of the scumm games while the bottom screen would feature the commands and inventory.

You still would need something on the bottom screen (that red circle as shown above) to move the visual cursor around on the top screen.

And with the extra free space on the bottom, you could put other special features on the touch screen such as screen movement, scumm options, etc...

This is what it would look like on a DS for Gameboy Color games. Just try to imagine the appearance and application using your Scumm port.

http://i10.tinypic.com/5ylqdj5.png


I really would like to hear from you one last time on this, even if it's a total and complete shutdown from ya.

I just think that the DS has the ability to make good with both the screens without showing the same thing on the top and bottom.

I hope this doesn't anger you. Even if it does, you're still my personal hero, don't forget that.