Forums » Suggestions
Remove the Mobile Keyboard
I've made a few posts to this extent before, but in light of the recent bugs (http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/29982) created by the new update, I suggest you (finally) kill off the mobile keyboard or allow a user to choose.
Every other mobile game I've played on android uses the default keyboard app as input which makes complete sense because I spend 90% of time using a keyboard that is not the VO keyboard. I've been using Fleksy for so long I've discovered I even try to use its shortcuts on even a normal pc keyboard! I shouldn't be forced to store two sets of keyboards into my brain or get caught trying to swipe left to delete a word, only to be disappointed. Or try and long press q to get 1 to enter.
Addittionally, the VO keyboard is missing out on straight forward features that every touch keyboard should have. For instance, there is no way to turn caps lock on. Or the fact that long pressing does nothing, let alone input multiple characters like it should (considering the formerly mentioned problem).
These gripes don't need to be here. Its not your job to make a stellar touch keyboard, especially when the mobile platform is literallly drowning in them. Some of them are amazingly well designed and took lots of time, money, and intelligent people to create. That's their job. I'd argue it's yours as a game developer to make sure their keyboard application plays nicely with your game.
The one thing I'll miss from this suggestion is the shortkey row at the top. But you know what, I really don't see myself caring if it means I type twice as fast with twice the accuracy. It's a trade off that needs to happen.
Maybe this wasn't always the case. Maybe it was too hard to make android keyboards to play nice with VO back in the day, so you decided to make your own. Kudos to you! I'm so happy to be supporting devs that would rather code their own keyboard than see a shitty jerry-rigged implementation of a keyboard pollute their quality game. But times change, and thus, the keyboard has served its purpose, and should be placed to rest.
Every other mobile game I've played on android uses the default keyboard app as input which makes complete sense because I spend 90% of time using a keyboard that is not the VO keyboard. I've been using Fleksy for so long I've discovered I even try to use its shortcuts on even a normal pc keyboard! I shouldn't be forced to store two sets of keyboards into my brain or get caught trying to swipe left to delete a word, only to be disappointed. Or try and long press q to get 1 to enter.
Addittionally, the VO keyboard is missing out on straight forward features that every touch keyboard should have. For instance, there is no way to turn caps lock on. Or the fact that long pressing does nothing, let alone input multiple characters like it should (considering the formerly mentioned problem).
These gripes don't need to be here. Its not your job to make a stellar touch keyboard, especially when the mobile platform is literallly drowning in them. Some of them are amazingly well designed and took lots of time, money, and intelligent people to create. That's their job. I'd argue it's yours as a game developer to make sure their keyboard application plays nicely with your game.
The one thing I'll miss from this suggestion is the shortkey row at the top. But you know what, I really don't see myself caring if it means I type twice as fast with twice the accuracy. It's a trade off that needs to happen.
Maybe this wasn't always the case. Maybe it was too hard to make android keyboards to play nice with VO back in the day, so you decided to make your own. Kudos to you! I'm so happy to be supporting devs that would rather code their own keyboard than see a shitty jerry-rigged implementation of a keyboard pollute their quality game. But times change, and thus, the keyboard has served its purpose, and should be placed to rest.
Here, here!
You know there's a checkbox in the settings to turn it off if you don't want it, right?
ARF, he is suggesting that the users' default keyboard be used instead. If you turn it off, will the native android keyboard replace it?
ARF, your suggestion ONLY turns the touch keyboard off. It does not allow the user to set their default keyboard app as a replacement.
The devs didn't write their own on-screen keyboard because they had tons of time to waste duplicating existing functionality. They did it because they had to.
Vendetta is hard enough on most mobile devices that there's not a lot of spare CPU/GPU power to run another app (your input method of choice) over top of the game and still have both of them be responsive.
Ray or Inc could probably get deeper into the technical details about it, and who knows, maybe new APIs in Android 5.x make things like that work better, but in 2010 it wasn't really an option.
Vendetta is hard enough on most mobile devices that there's not a lot of spare CPU/GPU power to run another app (your input method of choice) over top of the game and still have both of them be responsive.
Ray or Inc could probably get deeper into the technical details about it, and who knows, maybe new APIs in Android 5.x make things like that work better, but in 2010 it wasn't really an option.
Yeah, when we first brought the game over, the Android keyboard-overlay had a huge framerate impact. That has probably been reduced now (I hope?). We need to move in this direction anyway, for reasons of localization, so this requested change is something we've been considering for awhile.
ARF, I'm not disagreeing with you there. Read my post again. I did acknowledge that that was probably the reason why the devs made the keyboard. It served its purpose.
But when phone these days are shipping with 3GB RAM and Quad-cores, the game runs wonderfully. In fact, my Note 3 is 18 months old and I can play the game on full settings with amazing framerate.
The time has come to retire the keyboard. It did a wonderful job, but just like an old PC, it can no longer keep up and needs to be replaced.
But when phone these days are shipping with 3GB RAM and Quad-cores, the game runs wonderfully. In fact, my Note 3 is 18 months old and I can play the game on full settings with amazing framerate.
The time has come to retire the keyboard. It did a wonderful job, but just like an old PC, it can no longer keep up and needs to be replaced.
as a note 3 user i second this notion
It should be noted that some aspects of this are not trivial. Some of the mobile platforms make the assumption that if you take input from them, then you will process input in any language they support. This could be Tamil, or Chinese Simplified, or whatever. We don't have fully UTF-8 language input processing, yet. It's something we intend to add, but obviously we have a lot on our collective plate.
(Even if we did support the language input, we sure as hell don't have fonts for everything, and that's a whole other ball of wax.. so then you'd be able to handle people typing, but not seeing what they're writing, or auto-blocking them from input, and other challenges).
Some platforms do not allow you to limit the types of languages and keyboards that you accept. Also, different mobile platforms have different sets of requirements and methods of dealing with these issues, which is a headache for us in terms of making sure it all works.
We side-stepped this whole issue by just using our own keyboard, and doing that universally (even on iOS, where it isn't officially supposed to be "possible"). This has created other issues, some of which are mentioned above, and some are not (bluetooth keyboard support on iOS, other things), but, all that being said..
This is still not trivial for us to fix. It is not as simple as just "removing" the built-in keyboard and "allowing" the user to enable their own. At least, not as a default option.
It is on our radar, and we're moving in the direction of localization, etc. But this isn't simple.
(Even if we did support the language input, we sure as hell don't have fonts for everything, and that's a whole other ball of wax.. so then you'd be able to handle people typing, but not seeing what they're writing, or auto-blocking them from input, and other challenges).
Some platforms do not allow you to limit the types of languages and keyboards that you accept. Also, different mobile platforms have different sets of requirements and methods of dealing with these issues, which is a headache for us in terms of making sure it all works.
We side-stepped this whole issue by just using our own keyboard, and doing that universally (even on iOS, where it isn't officially supposed to be "possible"). This has created other issues, some of which are mentioned above, and some are not (bluetooth keyboard support on iOS, other things), but, all that being said..
This is still not trivial for us to fix. It is not as simple as just "removing" the built-in keyboard and "allowing" the user to enable their own. At least, not as a default option.
It is on our radar, and we're moving in the direction of localization, etc. But this isn't simple.
Understood. I'll still continue to hope that issue remains near the top of the priority list, especially considering that much of the growth in player base comes from mobile at the moment. The keyboard remains my only constant, daily frustration with game play.
As always, thanks for the update!
As always, thanks for the update!