Android (and other touchscreen devices) usability suggestion

[brainflakes]

Hey guys, been playing SCUMMVM on my Android phone for a while and it's brilliant (thanks Angus Lees, great job) but find the controls quite fiddly, especially when clicking on text or trying to find onscreen objects.

I've got a suggestion I think would improve usability on touch-screen devices, why not send the "click" on finger up rather than finder down? that way you could hold your finger down to mouse around and position the cursor where you want it, and release to click.

[moclei]

I second this. Is it possible?

[gus]

Hey guys, been playing SCUMMVM on my Android phone for a while and it's brilliant (thanks Angus Lees, great job) but find the controls quite fiddly, especially when clicking on text or trying to find onscreen objects.

I've got a suggestion I think would improve usability on touch-screen devices, why not send the "click" on finger up rather than finder down? that way you could hold your finger down to mouse around and position the cursor where you want it, and release to click.

Yep, that's certainly possible. It means you can't click+drag anything, but I don't think we ever want to do that (?).

[md5]

Hey guys, been playing SCUMMVM on my Android phone for a while and it's brilliant (thanks Angus Lees, great job) but find the controls quite fiddly, especially when clicking on text or trying to find onscreen objects.

I've got a suggestion I think would improve usability on touch-screen devices, why not send the "click" on finger up rather than finder down? that way you could hold your finger down to mouse around and position the cursor where you want it, and release to click.

Yep, that's certainly possible. It means you can't click+drag anything, but I don't think we ever want to do that (?).

Some games work with click and drag (Sam'n'Max for example, if memory serves well). Perhaps this can be set as an option?

[moclei]

Yep, that's certainly possible. It means you can't click+drag anything, but I don't think we ever want to do that (?).

I can't think of any games that you need to. In my case I was thinking of Lure of the Temptress, which doesn't have item dragging, but my understanding is that DOTT, S&M HTR etc. don't require item dragging as such, you click the item and the cursor becomes it until you click again. Click 'n' stick, as it were.

At the moment pointing is hit and miss, so that mis-touching fires an event you didn't want, like walking to something beside the thing you meant to touch. Browsing scenes is difficult also, since using the buttons to move the pointer is slow and slightly frustrating, you are always clicking instead of just looking.

The only problem I can foresee is that the pointer is smaller than my finger, so that sometimes I can't see exactly where the pointer is. I suppose the pointer could be offset from the touch pos, or made bigger, but this is another suggestion I think.

[singalen]

This would make drag-n-drop more complex (down, up, down, drag) and make an excess mouse-down when releasing.
Doesn't Kyrandia use d-n-d?

[moclei]

Thank you for posting, singalen. It's great to see movement on the forums, even for as minor a suggestion as this.

) and make an excess mouse-down when releasing.

Yes, that's entirely the point! Rather than make the excess mouse-down when pressing, do it when releasing, to allow the user to hover the mouse before selection occurs.

If the hovering and selecting could be seperated all-together, now, then we'd have a proper solution.

Saying that, I haven't used ScummVM since my last post. If this is already possible, please excuse me.

I believe a new version is on the verge of release? I greatly look forward to it. Thanks to Gus and co.[/b]

[das_weezul]

Hi Guys!

I just registered to say "Thanks" for this great port and to make some suggestions regarding usability.

I played around with ScummVM on android for a bit and found it difficult to click the right spot, as my finger is always obstructing the display (of course ;o)). What do you think about a touchpad-style of control? By that I mean if you touch the display and move your finger, the cursor should not snap to the position of the finger, it should rather follow its movement relative to its own position. That way you can move the mouse-pointer without obstructing it.

For clicking I second a suggestion of another member of this forum (Sorry can't remember the thread) that the click should be fired when receiving a "finger-up" event but ONLY if the finger has not been dragged along the display (One could set a threshold for that) AND that the "finger-up" event followed the "finger-down" event quickly (Another threshold).

For right-clicking you could define a hardware-key that, when pressed, turns a click into a right-click (If multitouch is unavailable).

For dragging I suggest a tap-lift-tap-hold gesture. For ScummVM to be able to tell apart a click from a drag, the click should be fired with a minimal delay (during ScummVM is waiting whether the finger is being put down again (drag) or not (click))

Sorry, for writing so much, but I just wanted to share my thoughts

Keep up the good work gus!

[bgoblin]

I have suggestion to mouse movement. Maybe alternative input method.

Touchscreen should act like a touchpad in laptop. Touching screen wouldn't move cursor into that position. If you move your finger left, cursor moves left from it´s current position and so on. Cursor wouldn't always be under the finger and texts would be actually readable quite easily.

My remote desktop client works pretty much that way and I think it might work with scummvm too.

Mouse clicking needs to be done a bit differently. Current method gets a bit annoying in the long run.

Keep up the good work!

[das_weezul]

Hi!

I decided to try out the ideas regarding a touchpad like control of scummvm. Check out my mod:
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?p=63439

Cheers,
das_weezul