Forums » Suggestions
(Android) - revisit mouse control
I know, I know, "it is Androids fault you cannot use a mouse" bollocks.
Plenty of other games support mice, Quake ports, Doom ports but not VO. And it is needed, especially if you are "working with nVidia" to support their new Android TV stuff.
Anyway, rant over. My idea is to make just mouselook work.
Lock the "Androids virtual mouse" to be the mouselook aiming reticule on 'droid devices. If I am in space, with no menu open, make the default Android mouse lock to the current mouse look's cursor. I dunno how hard it is for you guys, but LOTS of games on the Android market now support mice. It has always been a puzzle for me why you guys cannot..
Sure, on tablets and phones this isn't that much of an issue, but with the newer devices (Android TV, Shield TV, and soon the VIVE) I think it is about time you guys put more effort into making a mouse work.
Nuff said
Plenty of other games support mice, Quake ports, Doom ports but not VO. And it is needed, especially if you are "working with nVidia" to support their new Android TV stuff.
Anyway, rant over. My idea is to make just mouselook work.
Lock the "Androids virtual mouse" to be the mouselook aiming reticule on 'droid devices. If I am in space, with no menu open, make the default Android mouse lock to the current mouse look's cursor. I dunno how hard it is for you guys, but LOTS of games on the Android market now support mice. It has always been a puzzle for me why you guys cannot..
Sure, on tablets and phones this isn't that much of an issue, but with the newer devices (Android TV, Shield TV, and soon the VIVE) I think it is about time you guys put more effort into making a mouse work.
Nuff said
Which quake port supports mouse aiming on Android?
QIII4A
Not quake 1, it's quake 3, but it works with mice.
DoomGLES also works well with a mouse.
[edit]
There are LOTS of Android games that work with a mouse, Quake was just one off the top of my head. Especially with the new Android TV devices - one being Shield by nVidia - that the devs are kind of working with; it is more important that the devs work on this, do you not agree?
Not quake 1, it's quake 3, but it works with mice.
DoomGLES also works well with a mouse.
[edit]
There are LOTS of Android games that work with a mouse, Quake was just one off the top of my head. Especially with the new Android TV devices - one being Shield by nVidia - that the devs are kind of working with; it is more important that the devs work on this, do you not agree?
In order to be an approved app on AndroidTV, you must be controller-first (gamepad, Xbox style). Google does NOT consider mouse-input to be relevant, or even desirable.
NVIDIA had to hack their OS, explicitly for their products, to make mouse capture "a thing" on Android:
http://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/content/technologies/mobile/game_controller_handling_mouse.htm
Those functions are not available on anything but NVIDIA devices.
I know, I know, "it is Androids fault you cannot use a mouse" bollocks.
We burned a ridiculous amount of time on this issue, man. At one point, we had probably looked more deeply into mouselook than any other developer, as we spent a lot of time collaborating with NVIDIA trying to come up with workarounds. I also had a mildly heated discussion, in-person at Google, with the Android Input Framework Team, and they basically told me they didn't care about FPS input, and it wasn't a goal.
So, if you want my attention, dial down the ranty and give me some specific examples of mass-market, publisher-backed games that have good mouselook support on any device (not NVIDIA). I don't care about Quake3. There are various custom-USB-driver options they could be doing, which are possible, but are a freaking support-nightmare. I'm definitely open to hearing about this, but I'd like an assortment of at least 5 major games, with hardware/OS revisions (again, NOT nvidia) where this was working, and maybe details about how it works (can you also use the mouse buttons to do things, while mouse-looking?).
And it is needed, especially if you are "working with nVidia" to support their new Android TV stuff.
A lot of NVIDIA folks are friends of mine, and I'm all for supporting them. But to be clear, this has nothing to do with "AndroidTV stuff" as a whole. There is no big market-share advantage to our spending time on this.
From an economic standpoint, we're far better off putting the time into game-controller support, which is what Google actually wants (and what's expected by Bravia TV owners and others, who we're already supporting, and are a vastly larger market than NVIDIA).. or conversely just into improving the touch-only interface.
Mouse on Android is likely to continue being a weird edge case, because Google doesn't like it. NVIDIA may be trying to subversively prove the case to Google, and more power to them on that, but let's not pretend that this is currently some "pressing market concern".
NVIDIA had to hack their OS, explicitly for their products, to make mouse capture "a thing" on Android:
http://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/content/technologies/mobile/game_controller_handling_mouse.htm
Those functions are not available on anything but NVIDIA devices.
I know, I know, "it is Androids fault you cannot use a mouse" bollocks.
We burned a ridiculous amount of time on this issue, man. At one point, we had probably looked more deeply into mouselook than any other developer, as we spent a lot of time collaborating with NVIDIA trying to come up with workarounds. I also had a mildly heated discussion, in-person at Google, with the Android Input Framework Team, and they basically told me they didn't care about FPS input, and it wasn't a goal.
So, if you want my attention, dial down the ranty and give me some specific examples of mass-market, publisher-backed games that have good mouselook support on any device (not NVIDIA). I don't care about Quake3. There are various custom-USB-driver options they could be doing, which are possible, but are a freaking support-nightmare. I'm definitely open to hearing about this, but I'd like an assortment of at least 5 major games, with hardware/OS revisions (again, NOT nvidia) where this was working, and maybe details about how it works (can you also use the mouse buttons to do things, while mouse-looking?).
And it is needed, especially if you are "working with nVidia" to support their new Android TV stuff.
A lot of NVIDIA folks are friends of mine, and I'm all for supporting them. But to be clear, this has nothing to do with "AndroidTV stuff" as a whole. There is no big market-share advantage to our spending time on this.
From an economic standpoint, we're far better off putting the time into game-controller support, which is what Google actually wants (and what's expected by Bravia TV owners and others, who we're already supporting, and are a vastly larger market than NVIDIA).. or conversely just into improving the touch-only interface.
Mouse on Android is likely to continue being a weird edge case, because Google doesn't like it. NVIDIA may be trying to subversively prove the case to Google, and more power to them on that, but let's not pretend that this is currently some "pressing market concern".