The Effect Of Touchscreens On Console Emulation

[JakeK]

If a handheld was meant for gaming in anyway it will have buttons. It it is just intended to be a media player etc and not intended to play games it would rely on touchscreen as that is the easiest way to navigate the interface.

Saying all handhelds will go to touchscreen as the only form of input is silly as that won't happen, if the handheld was designed partially for gaming it will have to have buttons.

well all tho my point is pointless saying now, seeing as Arialia already stated that it may work well for point n click games, i shall now ask a question: how many of u would lyk to see touch screen support on emulated games as the mouse in simon the sorcerer , beneth a steel sky , manic masion ect (forgive my spelling).

So if exist for NDS why not for Pandora ?
http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/

so the question would be more : who want made a port of Scummvm on Pandora ?


It is already being done. Most of the supported games in ScummVM has touchscreen as mouse.

 

[Arialia]

It is already being done. Most of the supported games in ScummVM has touchscreen as mouse.



Great

 

[Racemaniac]

maybe with the proper use of multi touch and haptics, future touch screen only systems can provide a reasonable solution for emulating old consoles.
with multi touch screen they could emulate the needed buttons on the screen, and with haptics (feedback you can feel), the can give it enough sensation to make it good to play with.
ofcourse, things like haptics are still in the research phase (except for some very basic things), so it's hard to tell how far it'll get, but it does seem promising. the point of it would be to have a sensation similar to pressing a button, even though you're simply touching a screen

 

[christo930]

It seems that today's devices are going more for intuitive interfaces like touch and movements, leaving buttons and sticks in the dust. If this trend continues, it would seem that devices that are available to be hacked for good console emulation would be dwindling. I'm also kind of asking this to ask how people feel about what the pandora offers from another perspective.

Mainly, I'm interested in people's opinions of touch interfaces on console emulation. For instance, I owned an iPhone before I had to sell it for the money to move, and I couldn't stand to use the touch screen to emulate old games.

So, my question is what is everyone's opinion on this? Touchscreens allow for more natural movements and larger screen real estate, but make it clunky for old system emulation. Buttons and sticks can inhibit screen size, though. The Pandora gets the best of both worlds with the clamshell design. If things go like they seem to be going, more pmps and mobile gaming devices will resort to things like this as main sources of input. Where does that leave people who want to use good ole' buttons for their games? Would everyone be satisfied with an external controller plugged into a USB port? (That's seem inconvenient for travel and tight spaces).

Rayman for the iPaq uses the dpad for uplr and the has 2 on screen action buttons, but it tends to get the screen all smudged up. Non gaming systems usually make poor gaming devices. Even with the ipaq;s dpad/speaker, it still sucks and gets "stuck" a lot. I don't think game systems will be dropping buttons and dpads any time soon. The touch screen can make for some novelty, but it certainly won't become the main input device on a game console. There are about 3 million games and emulators for the iPaq, yet I use mine for e-books and media because of that very reason. There are no proper game controls.

Chris

 

[anexanhume]

maybe with the proper use of multi touch and haptics, future touch screen only systems can provide a reasonable solution for emulating old consoles.
with multi touch screen they could emulate the needed buttons on the screen, and with haptics (feedback you can feel), the can give it enough sensation to make it good to play with.
ofcourse, things like haptics are still in the research phase (except for some very basic things), so it's hard to tell how far it'll get, but it does seem promising. the point of it would be to have a sensation similar to pressing a button, even though you're simply touching a screen

Very good! This is one of the things I was getting at. (And thanks to exophase for providing an answer).

I think people underestimate what kinds of non-button solutions we can come up with. Accelerometers, touch sensors, haptics and all of those could get rid of the need for buttons. (flick the wrist to reload instead of A, for example).

I also think people underestimate the strength of this movement. A lot of people dismissed the Wii as a gimmick, and it is doing great. Microsoft and Sony have been saying they planned this kind of stuff all along with the 360 and PS3 controllers. With this world, it's about large numbers, because that's how you turn a profit, which breeds a lot of monkey-see-monkey-do philosophy.

I do not think buttons are going anywhere soon either, but I think how we interact with games may be redefined sooner than some may think.

 

[chad78]

(especially when you consider one day we'll be emulating the psx and n64 on handhelds)

Um - "one day" is now. I play Playstation games on my PSP all the time.

To answer what I think is the original question. If somehow all devices become touchscreen only - (which is highly unlikely, since never have all devices been anything - not all devices have wifi, not all devices have QWERTY keyboards, not all devices have Dvozak keyboards, not all devices are in English, not all devices are clamshell....) But if somehow the iPhone ushers in a horrible / wonderful era of all devices being exactly alike - then you should use older systems (like the ones available now, and up to the moment before the iTouch signularity) to emulate systems that need buttons. That, or use a USB 6.0 Wireless add-on, or a BlueTooth 4.5 HyperCard controller, or whatever connection they use.

This is all very silly, of course, becuase it will never happen. The existance of this forum and the device that it was created to talk about proves that. There is a market for classic gaming. Classic gaming uses buttons. Someone somewhere will want to make money by proving a way for those classic games to be played. They will make the buttons. Whether it's the Pandora 360, the DS Air Classic edition, the Sony PSP 5000, the Nokia NGadget, or the Sega GameGear 2 - someone will make buttons for you to press.