Bit Blot Forum
Aquaria => Support => Topic started by: Kal on December 10, 2007, 03:17:51 am
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Hey, I've been trying the demo on my new shiny tablet laptop, and...needless to say, it doesn't work. It's impossible to get the mouse to move beyond the border of the screen, in full size or windowed, 800 or 1024 resolution. I've been forced to use...the knob.
I can year your shrieks of horror from across the continent.
So yeah. Is there support for tablets in the works or not?
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Tablet PC support would be really great for this game. It would be even more elegant to play the game with the stylus than with the mouse.
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Yeah, when I try it, the cursor always stays at the edges. I don't know why, it should work just like a mouse... :(
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Yeah, when I try it, the cursor always stays at the edges. I don't know why, it should work just like a mouse... :(
Yeah, it should. I remember trying it with Derek's tablet once.
Hrm.... If I had my own tablet I could try it out, but I don't atm.
Might have something to do with locking the cursor to the window or sommat?
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Hmm, I havn't bothered to try with my tablet, but if/when I do I'll let you know how it goes. Although I'm guessing that my tablet is nothing special and wont work either. I can see the mouse-gesture based gaming being cool on stylus. :)
So let us know if you figure something out.
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I think the only function you can't do with a tablet is look, which I don't have a third mouse button so it doesn't matter. For the record, I did try playing with a keyboard nub.
It went...as expected, nothing more. *shudder*
Wait, if Derek has a tablet, could he test it out? I mean, it's not a glaring issue that must be resolved immediately, but it's an inconvenience.
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Yeah, it has everything to do with locking the cursor to the window. The cool thing about a tablet is how "this point on the tablet is always this point on the screen" which makes it really easy/natural to snap the cursor around. (well, at least for those of us who grew up holding pens and pencils in school...) However, it also means the tablet keeps telling the game "cursor is over here" making the game think "oh, the person must have moved the cursor all the way from the locked position to there. Now I'll re-center it" after which the tablet again says "the cursor is over here" and the cycle repeats, making the game register HUGE cursor movement when you're actually holding the stylus in one place.
You can tell your tablet to use relative tracking for the stylus, (or use the mouse, which generally tracks that way,) but then you lose the thing that makes it so great in the first place. So with most games you usually just end up putting away the tablet.
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Tablet controls would be quite identical like in Wii, just with a simple difference then you don't point with controls but with a pen. The tablet reasembles screen size, so it's very convinient and natural way to control a mouse pointer with the pen, although some people might have problems with using it, but it's a matter of a habit :)
I didn't tried to play Aquaria with my tablet, but now I'll try ;) Maybe it will work pretty well...
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actually, the point is that I have a tablet PC, so I can't exactly put it away for the game, but I can at least still use my mouse.
IceD, I would be very happy if you found a way to get it to work with tablet controls. I have no clue where to even look, so...
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Yeah, I tried with my tablet while I was on holiday in Australia. everything works the same but the curser is always stuck to the outside edge of the window (I was playing in windowed with all the settings on the lowest so my tablet could run the game reasonably ;) )
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Wow, I had the SAME problem when I first ran the game, but I found out how to fix it. The pen actually works pretty good.
Not sure what type of tablet/tabPC you guys have, but I have a Wacom pen tablet. So I'm guessing that some variation of this should work for other pen tablets too. If you go into the Wacom Tablet Properties, or the setup menu for your tablet, you should see a section for setting the "Mapping" of your tablet. If you make sure that the Mode is set to "Mouse" and not "Pen", then everything should start working. This fixes the arrow being stuck in the corner thingy. Heh, I guess the one-to-one point mapping setting on the tablet throws things off a little bit. Hope this helps!
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Wow, I had the SAME problem when I first ran the game, but I found out how to fix it. The pen actually works pretty good.
Not sure what type of tablet/tabPC you guys have, but I have a Wacom pen tablet. So I'm guessing that some variation of this should work for other pen tablets too. If you go into the Wacom Tablet Properties, or the setup menu for your tablet, you should see a section for setting the "Mapping" of your tablet. If you make sure that the Mode is set to "Mouse" and not "Pen", then everything should start working. This fixes the arrow being stuck in the corner thingy. Heh, I guess the one-to-one point mapping setting on the tablet throws things off a little bit. Hope this helps!
A YouTube video of playing the game with a tablet would be sweet. ^-^
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I imagine boss battles may require something additional, cause right clicks with a tablet pen can be a little irritating (and you can't right click and left click at the same time, we'd have to stand still while charging). Everything else seems natural for a tablet, like a DS with a bigger screen.
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*late post alert*
COOL
Kal:
And don't forget about changing to Naija's original form by right clicking and tapping the tablet (left click) at the same time. argg!
Alec:
Thought I'd have the video to post by today, but it's coming out weird. I think I'll just have to borrow a usb cam, and do a little demo that way.
For now, I'm just posting a couple of screenshots of the wacom tablet setup menus. These should help explain things a little bit more. The first option screen shows what I meant by the tablet to screen mapping. The ENTIRE tablet drawing area is mapped to your computer screen. When you touch the upper left part of the tablet, the mouse pointer appears on the upper left of your screen, etc, etc. The second option screen makes the pen tab act like a regular mouse. I'll try to have a vid up on YouTube verrry soonish, guys.....
This option maps the pen tablet drawing area to the computer screen:
(http://www.geocities.com/newbyjuice/pen_tab_pen.jpg)
This option makes the pen act like a regular mouse (this is the good option 8) ):
(http://www.geocities.com/newbyjuice/pen_tab_mouse.jpg)
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I don't think I have that menu...I have a tablet PC, so the touch screen is...well, the monitor, and I don't think it would normally need to change the mapping of the monitor to itself. :) I'm curious, though, how do you right click with a Wacom tablet?
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I have a trust TB-4200 and my pen has a button with two sides - one for left click and another for a right. It matches the hand perfectly, so I think it would be great to play it. I'll try this within next few hours ;)
btw, you don't have to spent loads of $$$ to buy a good tablet. Wacom is perfect but you mostly overpay because of the company. Wacom also puts loads of expensive graphic programs into the pack, so it's obvious that it will cost far more than any other tablet. Pentagram and Trust tablets are far more cheaper and also consist to be very good.
I'm happy with my one :)
EDIT: 5 mins later
I finally tested it. The same problem occured as above, but it's all because of a wrong pen relativity. You have to change tablets pen relativity from "pointer" or "pen" into a "mouse" one. And it works perfectly after that, the rest depeneds on the tablets quality ;). Mine works fine and I have to tell Aquaria was meant to be played by this kinds of control devices!. Propably Wii is fun too ;)
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As I stated back towards the top, relative (mouse) mode removes a lot of what makes a tablet great. (and it sounds like that doesn't work for a tablet PC according to the thread originator)
So now I'm here to ask: would it be too big a hassle to add a tablet checkbox to the config that would unlock the cursor, and poll the mouse position that way?
edit for kal: with a wacom, any tap is a left-click, and then the stylus has a button on the side fo right click. Basically you hold the stylus just over the surface while you use it. (which actually makes double clicks hard sometimes, since the motion of tapping or pushing the button can cause the cursor to wiggle enough that some programs register it as two separate clicks)
Also, if you're steady handed, and want to try something quite different with the game, keep your pen in the middle of the screen/tablet, and use it like a joystick to control the cursor. (the further from the center you move, the faster the cursor will go in that direction)
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haha, good idea except for the steady-handed part (I'm not!) So the tablet stylus, other than the options menu, behaves the same as the stylus for my lappy (tap = left, hold button and tap = right, plus an eraser for no purpose outside of OneNote :D)
The issue with that check box, though, is that they may have to go through the ENTIRE code, depending on how they have it programmed. All for a relatively minor feature (I don't know anyone who has a tablet and doesn't have a mouse just in case).
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Good Stuff!
That all pretty much sums up how my pen works.
It has just one thumb button. So you rock one way for button 1, and the other way for button 2. I tried setting one button to right click, and one to middle click. That made the boss fights HORRID. ???
little side note:
There are also buttons on the tablet that you can setup. I finally just set one to middle click, and one to ctrl/right click. It makes things a little bit interesting, and annoying since the buttons make a *click**click* sound. (I get the cam today, so the video of the mouse vs. pen mode is still coming)
Some screenshots for reference, incase someone has this same prob in the future.
Stylus/pen setup
(http://www.geocities.com/newbyjuice/penshot.jpg)
Pad button setup
(http://www.geocities.com/newbyjuice/padbuttons.jpg)
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I've got this problem too, with my Wacom tablet. I doesn't look like it'd be hard to fix; they just need a checkbox like someone mentioned in the settings to turn off the locking of the mouse to the center of the screen. The functionality is already done; it's what they use for the Wii controls.
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Astrylian: Hey, that's a good point. I'm thinking checkbox too. This video should at least show what's going on with both modes.
YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZPba3-4InU
OK. This took LONGER than expected. >:(
Finally got some reference video of the differences between the "mouse mode" and "pen mode" tablet settings.
Mouse mode:
Works perfect with Aquaria, of course.
Tablet mode:
errr.
If you try and move the cursor to the center of the screen, it will immediately seek the edge of the screen. The cursor stays along the edge until you touch the tablet to try and move it. If you try to balance the cursor in the middle of the screen ( I tried that at about 2:18ish) you can get it to almost stay on Naija. But as soon as you try to click, it'll shoot to the outer edges of the screen. And it just stays there. You can see the times when I tried moving the cursor to center of the screen, and it just seeks the opposite side of the screen. (around 2:27 & 2:40). It's kinda frustrating but it makes for some good laughs! There's probably some trick to convert pen to mouse coordinates or something like that.
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Apologies for bumping. Felt there was still some need to solve this.
At least my Thinkpad does not contain similar setup wizard (Plus Wacom's drivers break its pressure sensitivity for some reason) so the pen -> mouse solution doesn't work for me (And other thinkpad users I guess). Also I'd think the Wacom solution is prone going out of sync if the pen is lifted too far from the surface.
Fortunately Aquaria uses open source library for input, so changing the source and recompiling it isn't that hard.
For those who want to do it themselves:
Get sources from SDL homepage. The mouse handling is located in src/events/sdl_mouse.c. Changing the pointer is moved by incrementing its position on each update:
x = SDL_MouseX + x
y = SDL_MouseY + y
To make positioning absolute, removing these lines works. This stops mouse from staying at edges, but makes it misaligned. Origin of mouse is in middle of screen and origin of cursor is at top left. Changing the two above lines into
x = x + (SDL_VideoSurface->w /2);
y = y + (SDL_VideoSurface->h /2);
fixes the problem. Worth mentioning though, that after this using normal mouse is not possible.
Copy the SDL.dll into Aquaria directory (Backup original, so you can switch it for when you want to use normal mouse!)
Compiled library: http://jubjub.homeip.net/www/files/SDL.dll
Changed source: http://jubjub.homeip.net/www/files/SDL-1.2.13-tablet.rar
The source is under LGPL.
Note: I haven't given it very extensive testing, and only with the demo (Wah! Wants working credit card!). And in case this has been fixed in one of the patches for full version, it can be ignored. Also tablet clicks are sometimes too quick for Aquaria to register them, atleast for me. So if you have difficulties clicking with tablet, try clicking slower.
- Wace
Edit: I hope this doesn't needlessly bump the post. Saw some 404's in web logs and figured the urls here weren't updated. Fixed now.
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Wace, that's a pretty good idea. I also have a Thinkpad tablet PC (probably should've mentioned that in the first post :D). However, I also use a mouse a lot whenever I'm sitting at a desk, along with the tablet for taking notes, so having to change the SDLs whenever I want to switch back and forth isn't that fun. Do you have a pointer nub on your laptop? If you do, can you see if it will still work with the modified SDLs?
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So I read this thread, and tried the SDL file linked here with the demo on my Dell Latitude XT tablet PC, and it worked pretty well. Instead of single clicking on menus and things to click them, I had to double tap them with the pen. In order to double click (for example to pull up the world map), I had to quadruple tap with the pen.
I figured this was fine, a slight inconvenience, but entirely fine. But now, I've bought the game and progressed further with it. To revert back to normal form you need to tap left and right on the mouse at the same time, which is entirely impossible with the pen. Its a shame, because otherwise, the game plays great with it. (Unfortunately too, the Dell comes with a two button pen. One button is hard coded to erase, since there isn't an eraser at the opposite end like the Wacom pens generally have.)
It really is too bad there's no official support, it really seems like the perfect control method for this game.