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Author Topic: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness  (Read 8897 times)

Offline Sean Mirrsen

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[UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« on: February 05, 2014, 08:54:51 pm »
Greetings.

I'm a somewhat proud owner of a Windows 8 hybrid tablet, and I found it quite surprising that, in its existing state, OpenXCom is tablet-friendly to an unexpected extent.

Menus respond perfectly to touch input, buttons are large so that missing is difficult, and even in Battlescape it's surprisingly easy to get around (though right-click-drag scrolling doesn't work for some reason, and left-click-drag denies the targeting preview, but it's workable). The only times you ever actually need to bring up the keyboard are when you're building a new base, and when you're saving a game.

But, typing a name of the savegame is one thing. A completely baffling oversight, however, is the lack of a "save game" button. Even if you're overwriting an existing save (playing "ironman", as it were), you still need that keyboard up to press "enter" in order to save.

When creating a new base there is a similar problem, though I guess it's expected. However, perhaps slapping a default name on the base according to its region, and adding a "confirm" button would be feasible? Not that it's actually required - the onscreen keyboard is a touch away and base-building is a fairly infrequent task - but it could be a neat thing to have.

There are probably similar issues elsewhere, where you can enter a text field with a mouseclick or touch, but can't back out of text entry without keyboard input. But those are fairly rare and not essential.

All in all, I was rather surprised at how X-Com's UI design would happen to be perfectly playable without a physical keyboard, with only a few hiccups.

Core of the suggestion:
Add a "Save Game" button to the save game screen, so that a game can be saved without pressing the enter key when a physical keyboard is unavailable.
Add a "Confirm" button and a (optional?) default name to the Base Creation dialogue, for the same purpose.

And before I forget, thanks for breathing new life into an old classic. ^_^

Offline hszp

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2014, 03:35:47 pm »
Maybe quicksave + quickload buttons on the options screen? (I mean both geoscape and battlescape options.)
The name would be generated from the actual time on quicksave and quickload would load the most recent savefile (regardless of name).

Offline SupSuper

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2014, 06:24:59 pm »
The Base Name screen already has a Confirm button (maybe it's not in the latest stable build, it only shows up if a name is typed in), I didn't think of the save screens though, I'll be sure to add one.
Quick Save / Quick Load shortcuts are also available but they were a third-party addition so I'm not sure how they work. :P

Offline Sean Mirrsen

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #3 on: February 08, 2014, 09:26:19 am »
Ah, so it is there on the base name screen. Me not noticing it probably stems from half the screen being hidden under the onscreen keyboard at the time. :P

And thanks! One less hiccup in the rapidly drying puddle of little inconveniences for pure tablet playing. ^_^

(your generosity wouldn't perchance extend to looking into the problem with tablet right-click-drag, would it? :hopeful:  not sure what goes on in there, but right-click works and right-click-drag doesn't... or else I fail at config file. Default is 2 for middle-click, right? That means 1 for right-click?)

edit: okay nevermind that last bit, that's just me. Set it to 3 and right-click-drag scrolling works too. Huzzah!
« Last Edit: February 08, 2014, 10:52:00 am by Sean Mirrsen »

Offline SupSuper

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #4 on: February 08, 2014, 09:26:35 pm »
Ah, so it is there on the base name screen. Me not noticing it probably stems from half the screen being hidden under the onscreen keyboard at the time. :P

And thanks! One less hiccup in the rapidly drying puddle of little inconveniences for pure tablet playing. ^_^

(your generosity wouldn't perchance extend to looking into the problem with tablet right-click-drag, would it? :hopeful:  not sure what goes on in there, but right-click works and right-click-drag doesn't... or else I fail at config file. Default is 2 for middle-click, right? That means 1 for right-click?)

edit: okay nevermind that last bit, that's just me. Set it to 3 and right-click-drag scrolling works too. Huzzah!
We do not maintain the Android port, it's third-party. We can look into these issues once it's brought into the main codebase and SDL2/mobile support becomes official.

Offline Sean Mirrsen

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2014, 11:49:59 pm »
We do not maintain the Android port, it's third-party. We can look into these issues once it's brought into the main codebase and SDL2/mobile support becomes official.
I'm not on Android. I'm on Windows 8, I believe I mentioned. ^_^

A slightly harder-to-fix problem is force-firing... but, well, it's not standard X-Com anyway. :)
Still, an option for, say, "double-click to force-fire" would be neat. ;)

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #6 on: February 09, 2014, 12:29:24 am »
A slightly harder-to-fix problem is force-firing... but, well, it's not standard X-Com anyway. :)
Still, an option for, say, "double-click to force-fire" would be neat. ;)

Try Ctrl + click. :)

Offline Warboy1982

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #7 on: February 09, 2014, 01:16:55 am »
i think that's the problem he's referring to, i take it there's no actual way to ctrl+click on a windows 8 tablet

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #8 on: February 09, 2014, 01:27:48 am »
i think that's the problem he's referring to, i take it there's no actual way to ctrl+click on a windows 8 tablet

...okay, I didn't know Windows 8 can be installed on a tablet... My bad.

Offline Sean Mirrsen

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #9 on: February 09, 2014, 10:00:53 am »
It's theoretically possible in portrait mode and with a window just narrow enough to fit, but it's far from simple enough to always use. Plus not many people know that little options switch to enable the full onscreen keyboard in Win8. Thankfully, force-fire's not an XCOM standard option, so it's very much possible to play without.

And yes, it's possible. The range of tablets that run full windows 8 isn't terribly wide, but it's growing. Granted, few of those are actual tablets - most are convertibles and hybrids. Mine is a hybrid, a tablet/UMPC with a detachable keyboard dock.

Offline Warboy1982

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #10 on: February 09, 2014, 10:33:43 am »
...okay, I didn't know Windows 8 can be installed on a tablet... My bad.

i thought one of the major complaints with windows 8 was the focus on the touch interface, leaving desktop users feeling alienated and confused.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #11 on: February 09, 2014, 01:36:35 pm »
i thought one of the major complaints with windows 8 was the focus on the touch interface, leaving desktop users feeling alienated and confused.

Yeah, now I remember... I was really tired yesterday.
Though in my defense, I have never seen this OS at all and I don't know anyone who would tell me about it. I guess in my world Windows 8 was universally ignored. :P

Offline SupSuper

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Re: [UI] Some final touches on touch friendliness
« Reply #12 on: February 09, 2014, 05:11:27 pm »
I'm not on Android. I'm on Windows 8, I believe I mentioned. ^_^

A slightly harder-to-fix problem is force-firing... but, well, it's not standard X-Com anyway. :)
Still, an option for, say, "double-click to force-fire" would be neat. ;)
Oh sorry, got threads mixed up. :-[ Anyways we'll look into making the modifier keys customizable in the future.