Touch Screen Demo

D'oh - just realised this is a re-post

*sigh* !

It's ok Maitrek. Just glad you're posting here again [;)]

Glad this place is still around ;)

Just wondering with all of this touch-screen gaming tech coming out (well that Nintendo thing anyways) does that mean that we'll see some interesting games made for tablet PC's? I've got a nice new tablet now and it would be cool to have some games that take advantage of the pen interface.

After-all, the pen is mightier then the sword. :-)

Why don't you make your own game for yer tablet PC ya slacker :P

I think in reality, if touch screen gaming was going to be a big thing, Palm would have hit upon something that works already :) There are tuns of games on the Palm, and many that take advantage of the pen, but the thing is that it makes more use as an office tool (the touchscreen interface). You can do many more simultaneous things with buttons and joysticks, than you can with a pen. And thats usually the main limitation in gaming interfaces - multiple input controls.

While multi-touch point touchscreens are great and improve upon that, there is still the issue of control. Being able to hold a device and control it at the same time. Its just not well suited to touchscreens on handhelds. I think the larger touchscreens are likely to be a boon for designers and architects though - esp car designers and so forth.

I can see your point, handhelds are probably not going to be able to take advantage of multi-touch in a gaming context. But having said that, with the right combination of touch screen and current 'ordinary' interface tools there could definitely be an improvement made in the gaming experience

I realise there are physical limitations, holding arms up (if the screen was vertical) for any extended period of time is going to be tiring. Also looking 'downwards' if the hands are to rest on the screen (mounted on an angle) is probably not preferable either. But then, the way computers were originally set up wasn't very ergonimical either, and a multi-tude of improvements to keyboard, mouse and even desk/screen design has ensued to ensure that they are more comfortable.

Also the reason i think this could be bigger in the future, is because there *will* be a demand for development of multi-touch technology and interfaces due to the (likely) demand from - as you said - architects, designers, artists, engineers etc. If there is a demand at the upper level of the market, then there will be money spent on research and development, and the technology will gradually filter down to the lower-cost end of the market and the general consumer level.

Maybe I will attempt to make something for a tablet PC. Though in reality I have to make something first, then port it to use a pen input.

A milsim would be an ideal candidate for using a pen input don't you think Grover?

Look at Warfare Incorporated for the PalmOS/PocketPC for a great example of milsim with pen interface.

However you just can't simulate npen input with a mouse. For example, playing Bejewelled on Palm vs PC is amazingly different. The pen input is far more natural.

Yeah. So true mcdrewski - the actual experience of palm games vs their PC counterparts is substantially different. I still think personally, with handhelds, the best bet is buttons (for gaming). Close and many accessible buttons allow for varied input control. I also agree with Maitrek, but there are some classic examples where input has remained constant, and most of these input devices are hand/finger input only devices.

Keyboards for example have been touted as becoming obselete for many many years.. yet they remain. Even speech recognition was going to dent this input device heavily. It didnt - and mainly because of the flexibility of input combinations and simultaneous input combination. (Also doesnt help speech recog still has a fair way to go yet :) ).

Individually speech recog and other systems, cant replace the simultaneous input approach of the keyboard (although that multi-touchscreen can!). What I mean by this, is that with a keyboard you can easily and very quickly do many different seperate operations within a single set of keystrokes. Even mouse oriented input is limited to a smaller subset of individual inputs. Its a combination of various inputs that can improve overall input systems, but there simply isnt a general replacement of keybased input.

Of course for handheld game systems, you have the added problem of control and handling the device itself. In some ways you get an advantage with the pen/touchpad interface, letting you do accurate control input - for example fine writing, pixel accurate placement, and so forth. But in doing so, you then reduce your ability to have complex simultaneous input like a keyboard or a multi-button device. To be honest it surprises me handhelds dont have more 'shoulder' type buttons, or even joysticks/control slides for fingers other than the thumbs, although there is a limit to the amount of buttons/elements you want a user to have to 'learn' how to use.

Im not sure but I think Daemin was referring to Mil/Sim industry type apps rather than actual RTS games or the like (Although Warefare Inc looks awesome!). A couple of systems I have looked at and worked on, actually do use touchscreen interfaces. Things like radar tracking, IR recog systems, flight simulations all often have an array of touchscreen input devices (although not often pen like). For a milsim strategy app (Defense related), you are much better targeting PC/Workstation. The sorts of machines those things run on, will not yet fit in your hand, let alone your house :) .. but if you were referring to a RTS type game.. sure.. give it a whirl, like Mcdrewski mentioned Warfare Inc looks like a great example - I also once played a TA-like copy on a Palm, it was pretty enjoyable.

To raise another point though, and this is perhaps a little 'flakey' - I would kind of prefer if games used less 'different' inputs, and focussed more on being able to experiment and 'play' in the game world with the inputs already available.

I mean, what *improvements* have been made to the first person genre (not just shooters) by adding extra inputs? We just have extra buttons for crouch, lay prone, 'scrolling' through weapon choice, maybe grenade, bleh. In short, very little has actually been added to the experience, yet in Half-Life 2 an extra weapon that was added totally changed the dynamic of play, without having to add another extra input. (not that i really want to talk up Half Life 2 much, because i thought it was a little dull).

Yep. Definitely. Its really a combination, but that goes for all software development. Finding that ideal balance between gameplay, graphics, audio, input(control), longevity and immmersion (im sure theres probably more to add to that list too). And usually its highly dependant on the game itself - Tetris really doesnt need 15 buttons, two joysticks and a mouse to play :) And like Maitrek mentions, the addition of a single ingame feature can enhance the gaming experience much too. One game I think that really shows off the simplicity of input, is eye-toy. While it is technically a complex input device, it really has very limited input capabilities (see rant above). But some of the inventive uses of that device are quite fun games to play (baseball is brill :) ).

However, I think in overall terms, you need to scope input for the 'worst case scenario', where you expect an application that needs to have many inputs. A handheld really needs to have this - maximise the number of possible uses, rather than limit to specific uses. Imho (and I know some dont share this opinion) the Palm series of handhelds are a perfect example of this. Had the Palm Pilots been given a little more ergonomic thought to its use in gaming, it would have easily become a gaming handheld giant. However, it was squarely targeted at office use (which is entirely fair enough) and so its applications developed more along that path.

I guess the interesting question is whether such a device can cross both areas of use with office and gaming applications being able to be comfortably used/played. NGage was a horrible failure at this (I did a racing game for it, man talk about a design hell).. but I wonder if something like the NDS can cross over into office use readily? I suspect its limited mem (internally) and processing capabilities are not ideally suited to things like spreadsheets, and such (you really need an FPU). Will be interesting if any products manage to make this crossover.

I think it's generally assumed that the only piece of technology that can cross-over between gaming and work is the 'PC'/laptop. Which, i agree, is a bit narrow-minded.

Here's another touch screen demo (well, they use a projector to get a bigger screen, and the pad is touch sensitive). Using hand gestures and voice commands to play Warcraft 3, which seems to be a pretty cool way to play rts's.

http://hight3ch.com/post/new-game-panel-warcraft/