Re: Fwd: [Enigma-devel] TiltStick, USB based tilt sensor

[Ronald Lamprecht]

Hi Till,

The challenge of using other input methods than a direct mouse based 
force to control Enigma has been taken into consideration and is 
partially prepared since Enigma 1.00. The XML level declaration contains 
an attribute called "control" in its modes element (see refman 3.3.7). 
What is called "balance"-control is a tilt control. All parts that have 
been reengineered like the score recording, the level inspector habe 
been prepared, too.

The concept includes the support of levels that are written especially 
to balance a marble through a given world. A tilt stick would be an 
optimal device to play these levels. But of course a mouse or a joystick 
can be used, too.

Of course a tilt device can be used to play force based levels, too. 
Clarence's suggestion to use two additional keys to modify the 
"mouse"-force factor on the fly should make a tilt stick a much better 
input device than a pad.

Concerning your remark on reflections on obstactles please note that all 
current stones do reflect actors perfectly (besides a number of bugs and 
algorithmic problems in 1.01 that I did address for 1.10). Collisions 
with other restitutions factors are prepared and may be used for a 
balance mode.

Any experimental patches for input devices should be limited to basic 
event loop in game.cc to be taken into consideration. Note that after 
release of 1.10 the classes client.cc and sercer.cc will be rewritten 
from scratch when I will start to prepare the event system for 
networking. The event polling paradigm will be changed completly down to 
the basic SDL poll call.

Greets,

Ronald

Till Harbaum / Lists wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> ok, it's working. It actually works quite nicely. But there are some glitches,
> the major one probably is the fact that the physics were never meant to 
> be used this way and if you tilt the device such that the ball rolls against
> an obstacle and should just rest there after bouncing some times, it just 
> keeps jumping around ... Mulg did the same, although not that obvious ...
>
> Anyway, i'll clean things up a little bit. I wonder if it's ok to keep these 
> routines in client.cc as this is not specifically client related. Or is it?
>
> I'll keep you updated.
>
> Till
>
> Am Montag 04 Februar 2008 schrieb Till Harbaum / Lists:
> > Hi,
> >
> > i agree that there may be unsolvable levels with a tilt sensor. But at
> > least it's able to provide permanent acceleration ... that's exactly what
> > keeping the device tilted does.
> >
> > BTW: I am the author of mulg and the creator of the "tilt dongle" for
> > palmos. The tilt sensor may not be able to solve all levels, but it's plain
> > fun since it's very natural to use for a game like mulg or enigma. Some
> > people wrote special levels for mulg to be played with a tilt sensor.
> >
> > I am adding tilt stick support to enigma in this very moment.
> >
> > Till
> >
> > Am Montag 04 Februar 2008 schrieb Erich Schubert:
> > > Ooops, only sent it to him in private.
> > >
> > > ---
> > > From: Erich Schubert <address@hidden>
> > > Date: Feb 4, 2008 4:17 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [Enigma-devel] TiltStick, USB based tilt sensor
> > > To: Till Harbaum / Lists <address@hidden>
> > >
> > > Hi Till,
> > > Note that I'm not speaking on behalf of the developers; my focus is
> > > solely the Debian package.
> > >
> > > In my opinion, both the gameplay and probably the code is designed to
> > > be used with a mouse.
> > > I tried playing enigma with the trackpoint of my old IBM laptop, it was a
> > > pain. Enigma often requires you to do certain mouse accelerations that
> > > work well with a mouse (though mouse quality and settings can make quite
> > > some difference I guess) that you might not be able to reproduce with the
> > > tilt sensors, thus making these levels even unsolveable. This
> > > especially means rapid and forceful acceleration to push stones around
> > > and continuous strong acceleration to defeat gravity and other
> > > constant acceleration in some levels. Therefore I wouldn't assume it
> > > can easily be made playable with either joysticks or tilt devices, but
> > > I might be wrong.
> > >
> > > But in the end it all boils down to needing someone to do the actual
> > > work. I'd guess the enigma developers would accept a patch that adds
> > > special support for your tilting device.
> > > ---
> > >
> > > best regards,
> > > Erich Schubert
> > > --