Brilliant work on the Palm OS port! Can't get enough of it.
I have a suggestion about the UI though. Since the whole point & tap interface is obviously inherently different from the conventional point & click interface I thought we could use a few tweaking.
When I play an adventure game with a mouse, my first instinct is to move around the mouse pointer on the screen and examine each hot spot by hovering the pointer over it. But that may not be an easy thing do to with a PDA since as soon as you tap on an object a "left click command" is issued and your alter ego is already on his way to reach the destination. Even worse, as your alter ego moves about the screen might scroll horizontally and some items you wanted to access might get out of sight.
Now if we change the behavior of the stylus tap and make it issue a "left click" command only when stylus was lifted from the screen (without changing its coordinance) this problem can be solved. As soon as you start moving your stylus(dragging) the pointer will go into a "hover" mode and "left click" will not be issued when the dragging is done and the stylus is off the screen.
When the user taps on an object and hold without moving you could set off a timer (say, half a second) to trigger either the left click or just switch to hover mode (I don't know what would be better. I guess we'll have to experiment and find out what is more intuitive for the users).
I use right mouse clicks pretty extensively whenever I play LucasArts' adventure games to issue those often used commands. However, I found the whole push-a-button-to-issue-right-click-command-at-last-coordinance on the Palm OS port somewhat tedious. Can we supplement this by an additional method of issueing a right click command, like say... double tapping? I think it would be a whole lot easier and much more intuitive to simply double tap on various objects to "look at" and "open" them.
That was my 2 cents.
Control scheme suggestion
Moderator: ScummVM Team
My other post about a possible screen tap operation should have been a comment to this post, sorry. But anyway there is a problem. If I disable "stylus mouse click", for example when playing Monkey 2, there is no way I can achieve a specific command, such as "Use". When I point to the "Use" command, and push the 4th hardware button, ok, it puts "Use..." but then I select an object on the main game screen or the inventory, and push the 4th button again, then the "default" command for an object (such as "Look") is executed. I tried with the "Enter" key on my T|C hardware keyboard but it doesn't seem to do anything.
So, the same problem is there. I need a hardware button to use as a common left-click (it seems the 4th hw button from the left is performing the right click function).
So, the same problem is there. I need a hardware button to use as a common left-click (it seems the 4th hw button from the left is performing the right click function).