Mobile HTML 5 controls

[Solidus]

I hope this is the appropriate sub forum for this question.

 

I'm developing an html 5 game and I'm wondering if you thing a double analog stick control system would work well.  The left stick is for moving in a direction and the right stick would be for turning in a direction and firing a weapon.  It works quite well on android phones as a native app, but I'm not sure if this would work as well when accessed via a browser.

[Lowren]

If you put the virtual stick at the bottom of the screen, it could be not very ergonomic because of the browser bar (on safari for example). Anyway, I always though virtual sticks are not the best solution for any type of game. The player is often frustrated because his finger is not well positioned, etc.

Maybe you should think about another control solution

[remvst]

Some native games handle joysticks very well not matter where your finger is placed so it should be possible in JS too.

 

I'm currently developping a game with a single joystick, because I had no choice, but I have to admit it's hard to make it playable.

 

About multitouch, X-Type does it well, even on the Android browser. You just have to use some tricks, but it's possible.

[KyleNau]

I think the standard is to place the stick center wherever the user touches the screen, so they can use whatever their most comfortable position is.

 

My issue with dual stick controls on phones is that you lose a lot of screen space being covered by the user's thumbs, coupled with the browser bars and you're going to have a very small playable game window. The iPhone at least has "fullscreen" browsing in landscape mode but you can't force the mode and even then it still retains a few controls in the bottom left and right of the screen.

[ggvicviper]

Unlike others here, I think if you're looking to target just iOS, dual thumb controls would be pretty cool. How I would do it is to stretch the screen to fit your browser window virtually - I actually don't see an issue with this if you really want to try it.

 

I agree about older android OS versions with multitouch issues though.

[Solidus]

Thanks for the feedback. I will only be releasing on android and it was really more of a learning process. From now on I'll be focusing on html 5 games with a big focus on simple controls.