TankPit touch screen

[SW]

Brainstorming for TankPit touch screen support. This means the current game pretty much unaltered, but with touch screen support added.

Here is what I've thought up so far.

Tap = touch area of screen and quickly release it.
Second tap = tap an area of the screen that a touch recently ended on. (Note: Not necessarily double tapping! Either double tapping, or tapping after you touch and drag)
Touch and drag = move your finger around the screen.
Long touch = hold a touch within an area of the screen.

1. The game screen.

- Display what is at a tile on the info bar: tap it or touch and drag to it.
- Move or shoot tank/mines: second tap on a spot.
- Shoot a tank continually: long touch on it.
- Grab fuel/EQ/obstacle: second tap on it.
- Deposit fuel/drop obstacle: long touch on a spot.

One advantage to touch screens is that you can touch mulitple spots at one. For instance, you should be able to touch and hold on a tank to shoot them, and use another finger to tap a fuel can to see how much is there, while still shooting the tank. Similarly you can toggle EQ during a fight.

One possibility is to graphically highlight a spot (ie, put a circle over the ground or such) when it is selected. This circle would be useful for second tap, as you tap inside the circle again for the action to occur. The circle could fade after a second or two.

2. The controls.

- Map/Radar/Mine: tap their buttons.
- Scope: tap the scope arrows OR tap and drag from the "center" scope in the direction you want to scope.
- Toggle EQ: tap their symbols.
- Display how much EQ you have: long touch or touch and drag over them.

3. The map.

- Show coordinates: long touch or touch and drag.
- Drag map view: touch and drag with 2 fingers.
- Zoom map in/out: touch and drag 2 fingers apart or together.

Zooming in map size will allow more accurate teleporting.

The game can automatically help players by adjusting their touch a few spaces towards a big fuel can, if the zoom on their map is small.

4. The hotkey-only stuff.

- Statistics: second tap on your own tank.
- Top10s: tbd
- Nearest enemy: tbd
- Active players: tbd

May need to add some buttons or such to the inventory for some of these functions.

[CoolkylemaC21]

Sounds cool!

[-Kirby-]

- Top10s: tbd
- Nearest enemy: tbd
- Active players: tbd

May need to add some buttons or such to the inventory for some of these functions.

You know how in Battlefield there used to be the big "I" symbol to the right of the equipment where the promo-bar is now? Perhaps tapping the promobar (or whatever will be in its place) could act like a shift key and change the equipment symbols into information symbols, and then if you want to check active players or certain lists you would then tap the appropriate symbol. After this it would automatically revert to displaying the equipment symbols. Doubletapping the promo bar could lock-in the information symbols (so you can mash infobuttons to view lots of lists more quickly) and basically act like capslock; tapping the promobar again would then return you to the equipment symbols.

The "I" could simply be returned and used to mean "information" rather than "inventory."

[lollerfries]

- Top10s: tbd
- Nearest enemy: tbd
- Active players: tbd

May need to add some buttons or such to the inventory for some of these functions.

You know how in Battlefield there used to be the big "I" symbol to the right of the equipment where the promo-bar is now? Perhaps tapping the promobar (or whatever will be in its place) could act like a shift key and change the equipment symbols into information symbols, and then if you want to check active players or certain lists you would then tap the appropriate symbol. After this it would automatically revert to displaying the equipment symbols. Doubletapping the promo bar could lock-in the information symbols (so you can mash infobuttons to view lots of lists more quickly) and basically act like capslock; tapping the promobar again would then return you to the equipment symbols.

The "I" could simply be returned and used to mean "information" rather than "inventory."

Kirby wins lightbulb. I as thinking about something very similar to this while reading SW's post. thumps up for the idea!

[SW]

I've thought of that too... main problem with that route is that the "i" symbol is a very small button to tap, also very small to hide so much information behind it. Still a good possibility.

[The_Revelation]

[tournamentJESUS]

[SW]

Forgot about quitting the game, which currently requires a hotkey. Hmmm

[003]

Cool idea. I love touching screens.

[Erock]

Forgot about quitting the game, which currently requires a hotkey. Hmmm

Pressing the home or back keys on your cell phone or tablet?

[SIX DAY WAR]

Your gunna make me get that touch screen now . Peace, love, and hippie grease.

[snow]

Since it is touch screen, could you just make the bar so that if you swipe it up or down it spins the bar to show say the backside which could contain many more options? It would act like going from left to right on screen changes but this would be up and down and only on the bar. Might also answer and give you a lot more options for the touch screen player and keep the buttons larger in size.

[Ms_Lucy]

Tap
I believe the tap would not work. As we know the game does work on androids, very smoothly. Using your finger to tap on a location can become very tricky since our fat fingers would only click on relative area vs a specific point of interest. Think about mapping out and attempting to map on a ferry, impossible.

Solution:
1) In game pointer.
• Accuracy
2) Quick actions.
• Hold down on ferry and quick release. Game action would be tank mapping to the ferry. Similar to DTT function of mapping within the same screen.





The Controls
All keys currently work: Map/Radar/Mine. The focus should be on release actions which are:
• Picking up eq,
• Depositing fuel
• Holding down on tank to shoot rather than tapping
• Picking up obstacles
• Actions keys, T,Q,? etc.
Solution:
1) Fixed screen. When you log in the game identifies the user is on a mobile device hence, a mobile version of the game. A fixed screen that has a toggle screen which consists of Keys: ALL actions (ex Q,T)
2) Double tapping on obstacles, equipment and fuel vs traditional hold and release
3) Mapping needs to have a new approach for mobile devices. Zoom in can be a start for accurate teleports. However, I believe there should be a an assistive touch. Co-ordinates should not be specific 125.124 coordinates (specific) vs Block A( co-ordinates range from 125.000-130.000 . Hence, a section of the screen and map should be broken into blocks
_____________
|A | B | C | D |
|E | F | G | H |
|I | J | K | L |
____________

[TM3]

Besides accurate teleporting/moving which is obviously a huge factor for this game, one difficult thing is having to constantly tap your screen to shoot. I feel like touch screen you should be able to que up moves only 1 turn in advance or something. Its difficult to keep timing when to tap the screen to shoot where PC is just holding a button down. So much more effort needed for tablet/phone. I would think holding something down on tablet, constantly giving the device input would cause battery to die fast too but that's not your problem I guess. Without an app for the game its needed to be played through a browser which you can zoom in and out on(not the game but the browser window). I had a couple instances where i went to click on something and the browser zoomed on me instead of taking the action I wanted in game. Agreed there needs to be a fixed size somehow.

The buttons in general are just tiny for touch screen and the only way I see it working well is making them bigger but then that makes the screen size even smaller. Hide-able buttons in theory is good but think how many turns would be lost for a touch player vs. someone on pc where we have 100 buttons we can push in 1 second.

I was thinking making the game screen wider and more like this for new button locations.



Again space is the issue though. Tablet is probably a bit easier but I don't have one to test on. Phone is quite tricky.

[shermanfrombf]

just tap any spot on the screen 5 times in quick succession to quit out of the game?

[SIX DAY WAR]

1 other thing I noticed is the screen doesn't lock in place. So your game screen is constantly moving around. How about a button to press that full screens the game display on your phone or tablet, or just a lock in place button to press. Peace, Love, and hippie grease.

[PRIDE]

so much effort will be put into this app and no one will play it lmao. you need to redesign the game completely to make it appealing to phone users

[SW]

Supporting touchscreen is not the same as an app. Nowadays they make touchscreen monitors for computers and laptops.

The game probably wouldn't need much redesign for a tablet. A phone of course would be more tricky.

[Jordann]

the game will definitely need a decent amount of alterations to really work for tablet. a copy/pasted version of tankpit to tablet will be fairly frustrating imo and essentially too hard/inconsistent to really work.

[SIX DAY WAR]

I noticed a option from a phone...View as desktop. Basically it goes to a site on a phone, but tells the site your on a desktop instead. Also, Can't you use a USB keyboard on a tablet? Peace, Love, and hippie grease.