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[Windows Touchscreen] Overlays all the way down
Justice
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Introducing: The TABlet and Stylus or PEn in Windows gaming thread! TABSPEW---with vigor!
Justification
Technical Challenges
Tricks
Touch / Stylus Games! Or not!
Justification
This thread is for discussing Windows touch-friendly games: games that can be played with only the touchscreen or a stylus / pen, tricks for making games work with only touch or a stylus, recommending games that work, and cataloguing games that look promising but unexpectedly do not work.
This thread is not for iOS or Android games, which have their own threads filled with handsome people. This thread is also not meant as a general dump of Windows store games or mobile ports of, e.g., Bejeweled, simply because most of those are terrible. On the other hand, if you would actually recommend one of these games, then let's add it to the list.
Why play PC games with touch or a stylus? For one thing, you might have a disability, in which case mouse-only controls becomes an accessibility issue. Or you might simply prefer chilling out on your couch rather than returning from the life-grinding jail of your office only to bind yourself eagerly again to a desktop and chair. Or maybe you really like the metagame of making games work.
This thread is not novel. Other threads, in other places, have been attempted; but they were abandoned, unreliable, or strayed from their purpose. But where others have failed, the Penny Arcade forums will succeed, like the poisonous mold whose blooming foretells new life in a blasted landscape. Here are some of those threads: reddit, reddit, steam tags, this, reddit, steam group, and GOG. These threads are a good starting point but are abandoned and also tended to rely too much on second-hand reports or speculation; if you find something that really does work and is good, post it.
This thread is not for iOS or Android games, which have their own threads filled with handsome people. This thread is also not meant as a general dump of Windows store games or mobile ports of, e.g., Bejeweled, simply because most of those are terrible. On the other hand, if you would actually recommend one of these games, then let's add it to the list.
Why play PC games with touch or a stylus? For one thing, you might have a disability, in which case mouse-only controls becomes an accessibility issue. Or you might simply prefer chilling out on your couch rather than returning from the life-grinding jail of your office only to bind yourself eagerly again to a desktop and chair. Or maybe you really like the metagame of making games work.
This thread is not novel. Other threads, in other places, have been attempted; but they were abandoned, unreliable, or strayed from their purpose. But where others have failed, the Penny Arcade forums will succeed, like the poisonous mold whose blooming foretells new life in a blasted landscape. Here are some of those threads: reddit, reddit, steam tags, this, reddit, steam group, and GOG. These threads are a good starting point but are abandoned and also tended to rely too much on second-hand reports or speculation; if you find something that really does work and is good, post it.
Technical Challenges
Compatibility for touch and stylus is kind of random. Games that have been ported from a mobile version are not always compatible with touch on the PC. Games that can be controlled with only a mouse are not always compatible with touch and stylus. This appears to depend on the graphics engine and does not appear to be an old-or-new thing; some old mouse-controlled games work without a hitch, whereas some new mouse-controlled games can't track the stylus cursor correctly and spaz out when you try to use it. Unity 5 appears to have gone through a period, now frozen in time with some published games, where it would recognize the position and hover of a stylus but not its clicks.
Games are generally not purely touch compatible unless they were designed with touch in mind, like Civilization V or the Shadowrun series. Most games use mouse hover to show important information. Touch games build in an extra click: the first touch reveals the information that would normally be shown with hover, and the second touch performs the action. For this reason, a stylus or pen is usually needed for tablet gaming.
Steam's return policy is helpful to the PC tablet gamer.
Games are generally not purely touch compatible unless they were designed with touch in mind, like Civilization V or the Shadowrun series. Most games use mouse hover to show important information. Touch games build in an extra click: the first touch reveals the information that would normally be shown with hover, and the second touch performs the action. For this reason, a stylus or pen is usually needed for tablet gaming.
Steam's return policy is helpful to the PC tablet gamer.
Tricks
If a game can be controlled mostly with a mouse, and it properly recognizes the stylus cursor position (even if only in windowed mode), it can usually be made to work one way or another:
At worst, you can probably use a controller with Steam's gamepad customizations, but at that point you're just using a controller with your tablet, and you've acknowledged that the game isn't touch / stylus compatible.
- Windowed mode: sometimes allows the game to properly track the cursor
- Lower resolution: allows a game to be played enjoyably in windowed mode or the weaker hardware specs of a tablet; for Surface Pro tablets, you can make customized resolutions with the proper 3:2 ratio by installing the Intel driver as instructed here and using the installed Intel graphics utility to create a custom 3:2 resolution, with a list of 3:2 resolutions here;
- Software hacks by brilliant people: this is a DLL purporting to allow old games recognize touch; and this is a modified SDL file to make DOSBox games recognize touch
- Gesture software: often, a game has full mouse controls except for a couple keys like space or escape; solve this by using StrokesPlus or similar gesture software; Windows has limited built-in gestures called "flicks," but in my experience they don't work as well; if using StrokesPlus, experiment with the "cancel delay" setting under preferences---I use 250ms---because it allows you to very intuitively use the stylus both to do gestures as well as drag-and-drop or select multiple things by holding and dragging
- Keys overlay: if a game has mostly mouse control but requires quite a few keys in discrete situations, you can use customizable overlay software like RadialMenu (free); if using RadialMenu, I ignore the actual "radialmenu" control and just use the toolbar to put some key presses on the screen
- Touchpad/gamepad overlay: there are several utilities to put a translucent touchpad or gamepad overlay on the touchscreen, but I haven't enjoyed using these; if anyone has had luck with this kind of thing, let us know
- Windows on-screen keyboard: for the desperate; if you really need an always-on-top, resizable keyboard (e.g., the game won't advance without a player name and you don't have a physical keyboard) or want to tackle the challenge of setting up window sizes and trying to play a text game by poking at the screen, you can enable it at Settings > PC Settings > Ease of Access > Keyboard
- AutoHotkey: using a three-line AutoHotkey script to map the left and right mouse buttons to themselves can be a workaround for some Unity 5 games that don't recognize stylus clicks, (see here); maybe a more complicated AHK script could similarly be used to pass stylus click locations through to the game, for games that can't track the cursor correctly with a touchscreen, but I haven't tried it
At worst, you can probably use a controller with Steam's gamepad customizations, but at that point you're just using a controller with your tablet, and you've acknowledged that the game isn't touch / stylus compatible.
Touch / Stylus Games! Or not!
Recommended games with native touch :
Recommended games with stylus for hover:
Recommended games with stylus plus tricks:
Games that surprisingly don’t work:
- Artifex Mundi hidden object games
- Civilization 5
- Crowntakers
- Desktop Dungeons
- Don't Starve
- Guild of Dungeoneering
- Legend of Grimrock
- Organ Trail
- Reverse Crawl
- Shadowrun Returns
- Shadowrun: Dragonfall
- Shadowrun: Hong Kong
- Shattered Planet
- Sproggiwood
- SteamWorld Heist
- XCOM (note high hardware specs)
Recommended games with stylus for hover:
- Baldur's Gate EE
- Baldur's Gate 2 EE
- Monster Slayers
- NEO Scavenger
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri w/ Alien Crossfire expansion (GOG version)
- Tales of Maj'Eyal
Recommended games with stylus plus tricks:
- Convoy: works well in windowed mode with StrokesPlus gestures for menu (esc) and pause (space), although I found some of the text to be too small for a Surface Pro 3 and could not make it larger by fiddling with DPI/resolution/etc.
- DoomRL: with a RadialMenu toolbar for keyboard commands, config file available here
- Dungeons of Dredmor: in windowed mode at a low resolution with flicks or StrokesPlus gestures for resting (space)
- Dungeon of the Endless: in windowed mode (or maybe just with display scaling disabled), with StrokesPlus and AutoHotkey (see here) (NB: this game has an impressive number of video and mouse problems wholly apart from, though probably exacerbated by, the stylus issues; I'm not yet certain it's going to work 100% for me, but things seem initially stable running on a Surface Pro 3; with updated video driver from Intel itself; at 1920x1080 48hz resolution; Intel's 3D settings are disable app optimization / use app settings for multi-sample anti-aliasing / turn off morph anti-aliasing / and using "balanced mode"; StrokesPlus and AHK loaded with AHK loaded last; launching program using its default Steam shortcut, with Steam big picture running in background; with the DotE exe file set to disable display scaling on high DPI settings; and the game's own graphic options set to full screen mode,1920x1080, with v-sync unchecked)
- FTL: works well in windowed mode with StrokesPlus gestures for menu (esc) and pause (space)
- Halcyon 6: with StrokesPlus and AutoHotkey (see here)
- Pillars of Eternity: is very comfortable to play--arguably as good as with KBAM--with a lowered resolution and using StrokesPlus gestures for zoom in (-), zoom out (=), show interactive objects (,), center on character (.), quicksave (Q), and pause (space), with a 250ms cancel delay
- SpaceRogue: with StrokesPlus and AutoHotkey (see here)
- Wasteland 2 Director's Cut: with StrokesPlus and AutoHotkey (see here); VERY high spec requirements, not really playable on a Surface Pro 3
Games that surprisingly don’t work:
- Banished (too many keys, too kludgy)
- Space Grunts (cursor spazzes)
- Sword of the Stars: The Pit (right click doesn't register, also uses WASD/mouse move/look)
Justice on
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I uploaded my RadialMenu config; the link is in the OP. I also edited the DoomRL config.lua to set the resolution to 960x670, in windowed mode, with a default player name.
Ignore the entry for Dungeon of the Endless. DoE doesn't work with touch/stylus. I think I set up up this config in eager anticipation and then tried it and was cruelly disappointed. As with so many things.
The only place in them where they want any keyboard input is at the very start, where you enter your profile name - and if you're fine with "Player" you can click the OK button and get to playing.
Hey, if you'd recommend them and they're playable, that's absolutely welcome. Give me some names that work; I'll create a subheading in one of the lists for hidden object-style adventure games. It might inspire me to play one... I'm not even really sure what they are, whenever I see the tag on Steam I assume it's like Where's Waldo, which probably isn't true.
Edit: added Artifex Mundi games to the OP
Nice; added to the OP. I forgot that I actually own this--the Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack--and have played it. It had better reviews than Beyond Earth, and wasn't bad.
I'm moving away from GOG lately. In theory, I like buying a DRM free game that can run cleanly (and presumably faster) without Steam behind it. But in practice, because I'm so picky about my UI and controls, I like Steam's 2-hour refund better.
Anyways... it hits the same sweet spot of easy flow as the developer's other game, Reverse Crawl, which, if you haven't yet played it, is pretty awesome and can be played with purely touch controls. Reverse Crawl is a light-hearted, relatively easy hexagonal-field strategy game. You're a king who's been usurped and killed but raised from the dead by his necromancer daughter. You control squads (the king, his daughter, a pet crow, and some undead are one of the squads) composed of melee or ranged characters. You play through chapters, unlocking different squads based on your story choices, and you collect permanent buffs. It has three endings. The writing's alright, the graphics are adorable. I played through it five times.
The dev's good people. He just released a big free content update that adds a bunch of post-game new classes, and he's still updating it and fixing the few bugs that crop up. His games exemplify polish. The touch/stylus UI is transparent; there's absolutely nothing getting between you and the game.
Edit: I also edited the OP to add the Windows on-screen keyboard as a "trick," although I haven't really found a use for it. I tested it for Sanctuary RPG but decided it'd be too painful.
It's definitely more fun with a stylus than on a laptop or even full computer, but its touch compatibility has been overrated. You absolutely need the stylus for hover, and then you'll also need gestures or an overlay for casting spells. With gestures, it's great. But even then, you'll need something for a control+click to remove learned spells; my workaround is to flip the Surface keyboard out, delete a spell, and move on, but a pure touch version could be worked out with a RadialMenu toolbar. Anyone not play this yet? It's pretty good. Just don't play on "normal difficulty," I broke the game almost immediately and there's no option to change difficulty. My mage is just walking through the mines with an army of minions, mowing down every new instance of the corruption of whatever ur-darkness awaits at the bottom of the mine to be mowed down in its turn.
The workaround is to install AutoHotkey and make a two- or three-line script:
For Steam games, find the .exe file at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\[game].
This script remaps your left mouse button to... your left mouse button. And similarly with your right mouse button. This uses AutoHotkey to convert stylus clicks to mouse clicks for games that do not recognize stylus clicks as mouse clicks.
The problem is that Unity 5, after some update, stopped recognizing stylus clicks, as recognized by Unity developers. I don't know how many published games this has affected, but they include Wasteland 2: DC, Halcyon 6, Space Rogue, Dungeon of the Endless, and possibly a bunch of others.
I've tested this workaround with Wasteland 2: Director's Cut, Halcyon 6, SpaceRogue, and Dungeon of the Endless (need to use windowed mode), and I would bet that it works for the others as well. The downside is that, since you probably need to use StrokesPlus to fill in some keyboard commands anyway, this puts you at two overlays, which presumably slows down your already weak tablet hardware.
This guy thinks so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ich2t0SLVyw
The SP4 stylus is good. It has only one button on the body (the right click button), which isn't a loss, because, although the SP3 stylus had two buttons on the body, the one that didn't do a right click didn't do anything. At all. No exaggeration, but even with all the time and research I've put into figuring out how to use these fuckers to emulate a mouse, I never have once seen anyone explain what that button does or in what context it performs any function whatsoever. It sure as hell isn't a middle mouse button, although we could use one of those. And there's absolutely no way to map the stylus buttons, despite years of woeful groans from the tablet-gaming community.
I dislike the placement of the right-mouse button on the SP4 stylus, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. It's too close to the tip, and it's designed not to be a "button" so much as a subtle rise in the pen body. Any discomfort is more than made up for by the pen tips; the rubberized tips are so comfortable that using the old hard-plastic tip is running your nails on a blackboard in comparison.
I predict that, as touchscreens and convertible laptops become the norm, we'll start seeing more sophisticated pens with multiple buttons, function-switch abilities, and proper mapping.
We may be getting closer. Tablets now use Active Electro-Static (AES) technology, but there has been no universal protocol across computer brands for implementing AES. Wacom has announced a "universal" pen with programmable buttons. Wacom and Microsoft are apparently working together on this project, so the pens should work on Surface Pro computers. The new tech was supposed to be released by the end of 2016; it doesn't appear to be dead, though, because in January Wacom announced that it's still working on it.
Just being able to program two buttons on a stylus would be a big leap forward. Currently, SP styli have the right-click button and the eraser button; the eraser button can be programmed only to launch programs. The missing piece is a middle mouse button. Hopefully the new tech will provide for that.
I don't know how this works with, e.g., Lenovo's Yoga line. If I were to buy a new convertible laptop or Windows tablet, I would be strongly inclined to buy a product with the most stylus buttons and re-mapping capability.