[Android General] Guru Zeb:
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Read if your interested in some one else's whining, but as far as sixaxis use is concerned, most of the issues i complained about have been resolved by Dancingpixels the developers of sixaxis in the 0.5.2 release, now includes a touch emulation system that is just Sheer Genius, and resolves most of the issues i complained about with games devs having to get their finger out at all ......... typical.

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Hi folks

Been kind of goaded into this rant due to mounting frustration with the general direction most (almost all) Android games developers seem to be taking :mad:. I love my phone (HTC Desire Z) and am now a confirmed Droid Zealot (I'll side with ANYONE against Apple :D ) But i am getting increasingly frustrated with droid native games, crappy touch controls without any keyboard options. I wanna use my PS3 pad !!!

I cannot be the only one who feels this way?!?!?!

My basic point is 'Touch controls suck for games'!!!!

IMHO much like the gamepad verses mouse argument, for me its not even a debate. Touch controls are ok until you need to make fast precise movements of some kind (usually involves not dying), or you need to make a highly coordinated movement involving changing position and changing POV at the same time.Then it usually all falls apart.

Fingers leave the digitiser, interface routines get confused as thumbs get too close to each other, digitisers just plain ignores some inputs, or your thumbs just end up meeting in the middle !!!!!! :eek:

I know touch has the advantage of reconfigurability, and convenience but for games those are its only good points, it scores very low on speed and precision in almost all situations.

Now am not naive i completely understand most Androids have few hardware buttons these days, so it makes sense to develop for the one guaranteed interface device all Androids have. But the problem is that almost the entire Android games dev community seem to suffer from the same problem what i call 'Touch screen Myopia' in that they develop solely for the touch screen, completely ignoring the fact a lot of serious smartphone gamers deliberately choose phones with QWERTY hardware keyboards and standalone Bluetooth controllers are becoming way more popular ( BT controllers usually need native support or a t least a set of keyboard keys that you can config the pad driver to use). So it seems to me about time developers added one or two small additional element to all Android games.

#1: A set of hard coded keyboard keys for all games controls (very simple)

AND/OR

#2: A simple, robust, full controls config system (not that much harder)

Now why this wasn't established as a best practice way back in Android history is beyond me, but maybe it leads me onto another pet peeve. I can't help the suspicion that part of the reason these kind of more adaptable control schemes are rare on native droid games is the rather unfortunate 'Apple Aping' that seems all too common around droid dev.

'Apple does everything with touch (indicative of how seriously Apple take gamers IMHO) so we should too' SCREW that !!!!!!! :mad:

Yeah am aware that many devs develop for IOS too and often port to android, but what am talking about isn't hard to implement its less than a days work for a competent programmer. Its a bog standard function in just about every emulator in existence.

Last i want to point out how awesome games like N.O.V.A, Destroy Gunners, ShadowGun, and so many others could be if they had one or both of my suggested control improvements implemented.

There are some games already that implement keyboard keys scheme like 'Turbo Fly 3D' (awesome future racing game) its not technically difficult, its just a matter of devs doing it.