Issue with pen tablet

[Papadopoulos]

Hi everyone,

I'm using one of wacom's pen tablets. When games made in ags are in full screen, the tablet only moves around the edges of the screen like crazy with the slightest movement.
In short, ags games do not have pen tablet support.

Now, I've searched the forum and the same issue was being discussed a few years ago but without solving the problem. People back then said it had to do with changing resolutions.

Also, this is a problem I encounter with various full-screen games besides ags. It's not a bug, it's a compatibility issue and it has to do with the way the program reads the mouse input.

The programs expect the mouse to move the cursor towards a direction, while tablets do not
"move" the cursor, they define the exact spot of the screen for the cursor to go to.
There is an option for these tablets to switch to "mouse mode" moving the cursor regularly, but that can be pretty uncomfortable.

Is there a way to fix this? Can it be fixed with a plugin? If not, is it too much trouble to fix this in a future version?

Thanks in advance.

[Wyz]

Yes, I know of this problem, I use a tablet myself now and then. My solution is setting the tablet in 'mouse mode'. What that does is instead of 'teleporting' the cursor to the right position it lets you move past the surface just as a mouse would. The convenient thing is that I can simply tap the 'mouse' icon that is on the tablet itself (I also have a Wacom) and it will go into 'mouse mode' and then I tap 'pen' and it goes back into 'pen mode'. I don't know if your Wacom tablet has these icons, if not there are settings if you go to the configuration panel. I hope it works for you, it work for me.

[hedgefield]

I generally don't have that issue, probably because I hardly ever run AGS games fullscreen, but what I do experience is that I have to tap twice to simulate a single click inside an AGS game. Somehow it doesn't detect the tablet's first click so I have to double up everything. Pretty tiresome after a while

[Snarky]

It sounds like something that is more likely to be a tablet driver issue than a problem with AGS. Possibly the tablet doesn't properly detect or comprehend the low resolution the game is running in, so the entire screen gets mapped to only a small part of the tablet (probably the upper-left corner).

I would try setting Windows to 640x480 first, seeing if the tablet works in that mode, and then run the game with 2X scaling (assuming it's a 320x200 game in the first place).

[Papadopoulos]

Wyz: Yes, I know about mouse mode(I don't have the icons though), I mentioned that in my first post too. But I find "Mouse mode" pretty uncomfortable. I'm trying to find a way to get the game to work in normal pen mode.

Snarky:
I tried what you said, it didn't work. Moving the pen in any part of the tablet gives the same edge jumping result(including the upper left corner). However, at the very center of the tablet for a very small area, it goes through the center of the screen.

I also tried building a game in my native screen resolution, 1024x768. It didn't make any difference.

[Anian]

I have absolutley nothing to contribute to this thread, BUT

I'm sorry, but you play games with a pen because...? I'm actually impressed, but also afraid to ask if you use it for stuff like RTS games.

I've been using wacom tablet for more than a year now (maybe even two), and I still am not used to it for any precise clicking (I still use mouse & pen combo for stuff like Illustrator, cause sometimes I just can't stir the pen correctly for fine bezier curve tweaks).
If you have the bamboo pen and touch (maybe some bigger models have it) then you just switch to "touch" interface by one click on the tablet buttons.

[Papadopoulos]

Well, for the past 7 years I have completely replaced the mouse with the pen. And yes, including RTS games(it's not so bad actually). I have tendonitis and I can't use a mouse. But it's not a penouch, just the pen(no touch interface you mentioned).

[Gilbert]

Actually this affects also touch screen systems, which are increasingly popular these days.

Unfortunately it's something like most tablet drivers working only with the native desktop resolution and the like (and that the recent trend of software is to stupidly reducing the support for full screen applications), and not much can be done apart from running the games in windowed mode.

[Papadopoulos]

So it isn't possible to make a plugin to change the way the game reads the mouse input?

[Wyz]

Yes, I think that is possible, although you need to know how to use the tablet drivers I guess.

[Papadopoulos]

How could one know (or learn) how to use the tablet drivers? It sounds too specialized to be possible for a non-expert.