1 Topic by Dreamy

  • Dreamy
  • Dreamy
  • Member
  • Offline

Topic: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

I recently aquired a Wacom tablet. It's a surface and an electronic pen that can be used as a replacement for a mouse. It was originally designed for artist work, but personally I got one cause I was curious to see if I could achieve better speed and precision with it than I could with a mouse.

When considering ways to test it's effectiveness, this was one of the games that came to mind. Been a long time since I used to play Teeworlds, but I distinctly remember being a bit frustrated at my equipment towards the end, so it would be nice to revisit the challenge with the pen smile.

Sadly though, this manner of cursor input is very buggy in the game, so it's not really playable it seems. It is not unique to this game, it's the same way in Awesomenauts too, and probably some other games I havn't tried. Works well in StarCraft II though, and everything else I've tried so far.

The general concept of the control method is that there is a rectangle on the surface that corresponds to the screen. The surface senses where the pen is if you hover it close enough, and that determines the cursor position. In other words, it operates in absolute positions rather than relative movements like a normal mouse does. I suspect the game doesn't understand this.

What happens is that the smallest movement of the pen sends the cursor flying in the direction of the movement, and it continues to move for a while after the pen stops moving, usually ending up at one of the edges of the screen. It's possible to navigate the menus by moving it extremely slowly and try to make it land in the right place, but it takes me a minute or two to click "Quit" and "Yes" this way, so I havn't even bothered actually entering a game.

Does anyone have any idea how to resolve this issue?

2 Reply by BotoX

  • BotoX
  • Member
  • Offline

Re: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

I played teeworlds with a touchscreen once aswell. Was kinda horrible.
Set the mousense to like 10000 (inp_mousesense 10000 in the console [F1]) to get it working better.

3 Reply by Dreamy (edited by Dreamy 2013-01-10 23:56:02)

  • Dreamy
  • Dreamy
  • Member
  • Offline

Re: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

A pen tablet is actually not at all similar to a touch screen.

edit: second thought, I guess it is similar in the sense of using absolute positions. No reason the same solution wouldn't work.

Not sure what to write, sitting in the console now, and I get very little feedback when I try to write stuff. Just writing "inp_mousesens 10000" don't seem to do anything.

4 Reply by m!nus

  • m!nus
  • m!nus
  • Administrator
  • Offline

Re: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

A graphics tablet is in fact very similar to a touchscreen concerning how the input is handled. As you said, the tablet sets the cursor position absolutely whereas a mouse changes it relatively to the current position. The reason this does not work with most games is that the game forces the mouse cursor to be positioned at the center of the screen (usually be repeatedly setting the cursor position).
The ingame cursor is not your normal OS cursor but rather an emulated one. The game handles movement input by substracting the screen center of the new cursor position after moving (and then resets the cursor to the center) and uses that. Your tablet will of course always warp the cursor to the absolute position on screen which will seem to the game as if you moved the mouse extremely fast.
You can probably navigate the menu if you point your pen towards the center of the screen. You will notice that the cursor moves more slowly then (even if you don't move the pen of course).
For a game to be playable with such an input device it needs to support absolute pointing devices. You're welcome to add support for that to Teeworlds any time.

5 Reply by Dreamy

  • Dreamy
  • Dreamy
  • Member
  • Offline

Re: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

Aha, thanks for the explenation!

6 Reply by BeaR

  • BeaR
  • BeaR
  • Member
  • Offline

Re: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

Just tried it with my smaller wacom and a quick hack (using absolute mouse position) and for me it's harder too play with it than with a normal mouse, exspecially to hook and shoot (:
(also exhausting^^)

You can still set the pen to mouse mode in your settings, but well I dont think it's worth 'abusing' a wacom tablet for playing hmm It's not cheap and the surface will have much scratches and you will probably have to buy a new pen after a while. A normaler mouse is cheaper and more effective imho

7 Reply by Ryomou Hentai Girl

  • Ryomou Hentai Girl
  • Ryomou Hentai Girl
  • Member
  • Offline

Re: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

Have tw some project for smartphones / tablets or whatever ?
I think all players have tried this sometime xD
This would be really a nice idea to make some official app / version of the game for this i think, because everyone now cant live without this kind of stuff and with this maybe tw would become more popular.

*~°~~°~ Ryomou Wins... Flawless Victory ! ~°~~°~*
Support me: Subscribe!
[Fatality]

8 Reply by Dreamy

  • Dreamy
  • Dreamy
  • Member
  • Offline

Re: Pen tablet cursor wildly uncontrollable in game

BeaR wrote:

Just tried it with my smaller wacom and a quick hack (using absolute mouse position) and for me it's harder too play with it than with a normal mouse, exspecially to hook and shoot (:
(also exhausting^^)

You can still set the pen to mouse mode in your settings, but well I dont think it's worth 'abusing' a wacom tablet for playing hmm It's not cheap and the surface will have much scratches and you will probably have to buy a new pen after a while. A normaler mouse is cheaper and more effective imho

I'm using their cheapest model, Bamboo Pen, and it seems durable so far. Maybe the scratches thing is a problem with some other model, havn't noticed anything like that yet.

Mouse mode would kinda defeat the purpose I think, since it would ruin one of the main advantages a pen has over a mouse. Namely never running out of space to move physically in.

You say it was a quick hack? That's hope inspiring smile. Perhaps I could actually do it then. I havn't really contributed to any open source project yet though, so I don't really know how it works.