virtual keyboard windows version scummvm

Hendrik78 · Post by **Hendrik78** » Tue Apr 15, 2014 7:34 pm

Hi everyone

I cannot use the keyboard due to disability. Is it possible to activate the virtual keyboard in windows scummvm? I would love to play parser-based sierra games again.

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 6:31 am

I don't think this is possible in the standard release build.

However, if you compile from source, you can pass the --enable-vkeybd option to build virtual keyboard support in.

I will look at this further. Please standby.

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:05 am

Hendrik78: We are doing some work to enable this functionality in the latest daily builds.

The virtual keyboard is disabled by default as it required the F7 key to bring it up and this conflicted with several game engines which use the F7 key for restore game i.e. AGOS-FF, LURE etc.

I think I have found a solution which allows us to enable this by default without causing game breaking problems for most users. See:
https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/comm ... 1524ee86cf

We also need to switch this on by default and you will need to copy the default keyboard pack from here to use this:
https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/raw/ ... efault.zip

You need to put that in the same directory as the ScummVM executable to enable the functionality.

This should be in the next daily builds from here, but will advise when this is enabled:
http://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:08 am

Hendrik78: One question. Are you OK to use a keyboard for triggering the Virtual Keyboard with F7 i.e. is it full typing that is the issue?

We are looking at the possibility of adding a mouse "gesture" to bring up the Virtual Keyboard... but this will take some time to sort out.

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 12:17 pm

Henrik78: Just to update you. This will probably not be in tonight's daily build. There is some question over whether there are any "blockers" to enabling this functionality by default. See discussion here:
http://logs.scummvm.org/log.php?log=scu ... ormat=html

I have sent a message to our development mailing list on this... so we will see:
http://sourceforge.net/p/scummvm/mailma ... /32232766/

In the meantime, I will look at doing a one-off build for you to test with...

Hendrik78 · Post by **Hendrik78** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 12:29 pm

digitall wrote:Hendrik78: One question. Are you OK to use a keyboard for triggering the Virtual Keyboard with F7 i.e. is it full typing that is the issue?

Yes I have a device to do this. It's too slow though to type large amounts of text.

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 12:41 pm

Ah OK. Thanks for confirming.

You mentioned "parser based Sierra games". These would be the AGI engine mainly?
http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/AGI

If so, you should note that we already have a predictive text dialog specific to that engine, which massively reduces the required typing:
http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/AGI/Predictive_Dialog

From that link, to enable:
"In order to enable predictive input in AGI games, you need to copy the pred.dic file in the ScummVM extras folder or the folder of the game you wish to play."

You can also put this in the same folder as the ScummVM executable:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scumm ... s/pred.dic

Hendrik78 · Post by **Hendrik78** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 12:47 pm

digitall wrote:Ah OK. Thanks for confirming.

You mentioned "parser based Sierra games". These would be the AGI engine mainly?

yes and also early SCI games

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 12:57 pm

I'm afraid the SCI engine doesn't have this functionality:
http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/SCI

I think the issue is that the parser is implemented in SCI by scripts so hooking in the new code is difficult whereas in AGI, the keyboard parser is hardcoded into the engine so it was possible to add this fairly easily without breaking things.

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 6:24 pm

Hendrik78: Right.

As this is not going to happen tonight for the normal daily build, I have manually built a one-off special build for Win32 with the virtual keyboard enabled for you to use, test and give feedback on.

This can be found here:
http://buildbot.scummvm.org/snapshots/o ... edf353.zip

The source code which built it can be found here and can be compared to the master to create a diff for future usage if you want to make further builds from newer master source code:
https://github.com/digitall/scummvm/tree/vkeybdFixup

Post by **digitall** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 6:28 pm

Oh, some notes which should be in the README / for future reference.

I manually packed this from the current master daily build, overwriting the scummvm.exe and adding the virtual keyboard pack from the ${srcdir}/backends/vkeybd/packs/vkeybd_default.zip.

If we accept this to master, we need to update the packaging rules to add this.

Hendrik78: You need to push F7 to bring up the virtual keyboard. Not sure how well it will work with entering long strings of text compared to just key presses... Let us know how you get on with a early SCI game. In games where F7 is used e.g. as Restore in Lure of the Temptress, the virtual keyboard will appear and then the engine will get the same keypress, so you will need to dismiss the engine F7 action after you exit the virtual keyboard.

Larson · Post by **Larson** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 9:09 am

Now this is impressive support. A working solution within hours for a niche issue. Excellent service digitall!

CaptainJei · Post by **CaptainJei** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:00 am

This is just more evidence as to why the ScummVM developers are amazing. Truly awe-inspiring.

Hendrik78 · Post by **Hendrik78** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:05 pm

Thanks! Great job. I'm really grateful. I'm going to test it now.

Hendrik78 · Post by **Hendrik78** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:16 pm

works like a charm! Only thing I have is that the keyboard is little bit too large.