ULTIMA: iOS needs better mouse control

[DominusExult]

Ultima 8 is controlled by the mouse by both left click, holding left click and moving by holding down the right mouse button. Also there is jumping that is done by holding down both mouse buttons (also a running jump by running via holding down the right button and then hitting the left one) or by hitting space (and that needs to be done faster than bringing up the onscreen keyboard :)).

With Exult (which uses the same movement scheme without jumps) we used the very new code in SDL2's mercurial to add a virtual joystick and a corresponding onscreen virtual joystick.
Perhaps ScummVM needs to do something similar along with an onscreen button to jump.

OR ScummVM already has something like this and I just don't know about it and it needs to be enabled for Ultima 8 :)

[larsamannen]

Virtual controller is on its way. This will require iOS 15 since it's implementing the Apple GCVirtualController
​https://developer.apple.com/documentation/gamecontroller/gcvirtualcontroller

[DominusExult]

*I* certainly don't mind the high iOS requirement, but otoh doing that via SDL2 as we do for Exult sets the requirement extremely low. But then I have no idea if you still use SDL2 on the iOS port :)
But anyway, I'm looking forward to this.

[criezy]

We don't use (and never used) SDL for the iOS port. And there is no plan to use it. So that rules out using a solution based on SDL2.

[DominusExult]

the virtual controler has been added but the keymapping is not optimized for Ultima 8 (or the Crusader games, I guess). Bug #14701 prevents the end user from using the keymapper in the settings.

[DominusExult]

If you use the dpad instead of the thumb stick, you can move the Avatar around.
There seems to be a bug that causes him to jump every other step. Disabling the game setting "jump to mouse position" makes it slightly better, but still the jumps happen.

Regarding the mouse, the missing part of it is a hold and drag action. For now you have to hold the button A when hovering over the mouse and keep the button pressed while you move the mouse pointer which at times works great, especially in direct mouse mode. But not perfect yet :)