Forums » Games » Drugrunner, touch controls in-canvas for ipad 2

using this blog post by Seb Lee-Delisle about dual-stick controls (http://seb.ly/2011/04/multi-touch-game-controller-in-javascripthtml5-for-ipad/), and the the touch controls used by the ios game Geometry Wars: Touch, i created a plugin that lets you create and use buttons/joysticks inside the canvas. Here's the progress on it so far:
http://slouchcou.ch/beta/robocop5/
Basically you touch the left half of the screen to create the "joystick" and drag your thumb left or right to move left or right. Then pick up your thumb and place it somewhere else at your leisure and the joystick follows you. Then hit the right side of the screen with your left thumb to jump/double-jump. Also there is a pause button.

So far i the only mobile device i have it tested on is ipad2, and I statically set the screen resolution if it detects you are using an ipad 2. Other mobile platforms might work, but i haven't tested them so i'm not sure.

This is in exreme prototype mode, so please don't knock my graphics/gameplay :)

Once i flesh the bugs out of the touch controls i'll put the plugin on github with like an MIT license or something. The only bug i notice so far is that jump only fires during onTouchRelease if you are also holding the joystick at the neutral position, but any other time and it works fine.

-Dave

also sound is disabled at the moment, but i have some bitchin music loops from luckylionstudios.com that i'm using.

Really cool plugin! That's way smoother than I thought'd it'd be. Great job!

thanks tyler. i'm looking forward to getting it to work with appmobi and direct canvas. i plan on throwing it on the ios app store and google play, but i'm waiting for in-app purchases to be a thing on playmobi before moving forward with that development branch.

Nice, Slouch. Looking forward to that plugin.

nice one :) i like it :)

Thanks! I wasn't really happy with previous html5 controls i had seen. namely the ones where you had to lift your thumb up to create a new onTouchStart event if you wanted to move left or right. I grew up on sliding/rolling my thumb across NES control pads and wanted to stay true to that experience :)

still working on getting that joystick/touch set up as a plugin. I have higher priorities right now like finishing the scene-transition state machine and working on achievements/store.

-dave

Just FYI, I created a set of controls from his a while back and made it a plugin. Go to the Point of Impact site and feel free to grab from where I got and make it into even more. They work great for me on IOS, but I've had some issues on Android. I need to get an android device to really get any further on them.

Just for a link : http://www.pointofimpactjs.com/plugins/view/1/thumb-joystick-control

@ashkettle: It's a shame this doesn't work with iOSImpact. I've been trying to find the best joystick/thumbpad plugin to implement for my platform game.