Touch pad info

[Rockman87]

I can't find the thread this was discussed, but a few people were talking about how touch input sometimes becomes unresponsive. Ussually with quick swipes in opposite Direction. I reported this to microsoft via https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback.

This is what microsoft said

This may be a problem with Dead zones on the touch pad. Have you tried specifying the type of DeadZone to apply to the touchpad using the GamePad.GetState() overload that takes in a GamePadDeadZone enumeration?

I then changed the deadzone to circular. It was a lot better but still was unresponsive at times. However, the game I am creating(Xmonster) uses 4 directional sprites so I have to use Independent Axis Deadzone, else it doesn't reconize to draw 4 different directions. There is another option to set the deadzone to none so that it returns raw values and the programmer can set the dead zone. Though, I don't know how to accomplish that.

I think it is still an XNA problem, I think they could make it more responsive. Somebody else may have to figure it out.

Here is the link to the issue so you guys can follow up what he says next.
https://connect.microsoft.com/feedba...007&SiteID=226

[SimReality]

I've never had any issues with my touch pad. Have you tried using the None value for the dead zone? Sometimes I find that helps a lot with the touch pad. But even without it I rarely ever see issues with the input.

Also, Connect is not a forum; if you want to just discuss things, go to http://forums.xna.com. Connect is a place strictly for bugs; not for discussions. Lots of the XNA team read the forums so it's likely you'll still get good discussion there where it is a lot more appropriate for something like this.

Edit: Let me try rephrasing that since I don't think I did a good job. I'm not trying to say you shouldn't also file it on Connect, but Connect isn't really the place to have the discussion. So file it on Connect, discuss it on http://forums.xna.com. Not only then is it more appropriate for discussion, but then it is far more likely you'll get input from other community members (since very few ever go to Connect).

[Rockman87]

None works just as well as circular, but it doesn't reconize what axis it is on so it only draws my horizontal sprites because they are the last ones to draw. With the default... All four directions are drawn.

[The Undead]

one way to tell if it is going up is to have two variables and make the last location var2 and the new loc var1 then if var1 is less than var2 then it is going up otherwise it ios going down.

[CouchPotato99]

I'm not quite sure what your problem is... What is the touchpad not doing that you want it to?

And also, to set your own dead zone (although I have never done it) I would assume that you do something like this:

Vector2 touch = GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One, GamePadDeadZone.None).ThumbSticks.Left;
if (touch.X < 0.1 && touch.X > -0.1) touch.X = 0.0;

[Rockman87]

I use the touch pad to move a character in the game... Sometimes while moving and switching directions really fast it stops moving the direction you need to go. Then if you move your finger on that direction your character just sits there. You slide your finger to another direction before you can go the direction that stopped working.

[omegagames]

Why not dump the thumbstick data to the screen? Like print out "X: 0.0, Y: 0.0" and then when your game becomes unresponsive, you can see if the touchpad really stopped returning values. If it didn't maybe its just a bug in your code...

Since you keep describing the problems in relation to your game, I would say its at least possible that it is a program bug, and not a bug with the xna framework. Or, maybe it's just your zune... or maybe the game is lagging or something?

Anyway good luck fixing your issue!

[Rockman87]

Originally Posted by omegagames

Why not dump the thumbstick data to the screen? Like print out "X: 0.0, Y: 0.0" and then when your game becomes unresponsive, you can see if the touchpad really stopped returning values. If it didn't maybe its just a bug in your code...

Since you keep describing the problems in relation to your game, I would say its at least possible that it is a program bug, and not a bug with the xna framework. Or, maybe it's just your zune... or maybe the game is lagging or something?

Anyway good luck fixing your issue!

I will check the values like you said... that is a good idea

My game is not the only game with this problem. All the space shooters with touch have this same issue.

[EDIT] I had all the values display on the screen. When you loose responsiveness, the input coming from the zunepad is 0. I checked for lag...there is no lag. I did get it to recognize 4 different direction in circular mode. Thanks for the help.

[EDIT2]DISCOVERY...I think I found a way to make the zune pad more responsive. I changed a few things in my code, but this change seemed to make the zunepad 95% more responsive. Round the values that the thumsticks method returns to one decimal place. This fixed the problem in my game. There are still times it will loose it if you swipe extremely fast in opposite directions. But, we can't help that. I am still using the Independant Deadzone, but circular works great too.

gamepadStatus = GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One);
            yState = Math.Round(gamepadStatus.ThumbSticks.Left.Y, 1);
            xState = Math.Round(gamepadStatus.ThumbSticks.Left.X, 1);

[Rockman87]

We are tracking some bugs internally regarding input and the default deadzone and hoping to adjust it. Hopefully these take care of any issue you are seeing with the responsiveness of the input. Thanks again for your feedback.