isabella232 / shivamultitouch

Modern Alchemists' Maltitouch v1.3

  

Maltitouch is a library and library demo which provides real multitouch support for the Shiva 1.9 engine. The problem with Shivas onTouchSequenceChange is that the indices of the fingers change if a another finger is added or removed:

1. finger0 down => nTaps0=1 nTaps1=0
2. finger1 down => nTaps0=1 nTaps1=1
3. finger0 up => nTaps0=1(!) nTaps1=0
4. finger0 down => nTaps0=1 nTaps1=0 (nTaps0 tracks finger0 again though)

Our solution was to keep track of each finger position and if the number of fingers changes, calculate the distances to each tap and reassign the most likely tap index.

For easier development this demo also provides a simple Multitouch emulation via mouse and keyboard.

Usage

1. Add Multitouch.aim AIModel to your project and as user AIModel
2. user.setAIVariable( this.getUser(), "Multitouch", "sAiModel", "YOUR_AI_MODELNAME" )
3. Touches are sent to onFingerDown(), onFingerUp() and onFingerMoved() handlers
4. In onFingerDown() you have to set user.setAIVariable( this.getUser(), "Multitouch", "fingerName", "FINGER_NAME" ). This identifies the finger for subsequent calls and is used to differenciate between use-cases like "finger in scene", "finger on HUD" etc.

FAQ

Q: Why are the cursors lagging?

The multitouch update rate only runs on have the frame rate and the cursors are only updated on every onFingerMoved call.

Q: Why is the camera jumping when two fingers are quickly alternated for the first cursor?

The multitouch update frequency is very low thus it's very likely that the tap of a new finger is detected exactly one frame after the previous finger which causes a very large delta. See MultitouchDemo.onFingerMoved() how this special case is treated.

Q: Why is the multitouch misbehaving on Windows Surface when I'm using MultitouchEmulation for Desktop devices?

Shiva unfortunately fires the same input event once as a touch event and once as a mouse event. A workaround would be to immediately deactivate mouse events when the user decides to use multitouch, see MultitouchDemo.onTouchSequenceBegin().

Changelog

1.3

• Allow to disable keyboard or mouse input in MultitouchEmulation to make it useable on multitouch and keyboard+mouse hybrid devices (Windows Surface).

1.2

• fixed a bug in C++ when Shiva sends an additional onTouchSequenceChanged event with all nTaps=0

1.1

• C++ compatibility
• 3D camera movement demo

1.0

• Initial demo with 5 finger multi-touch support and RGB sliders for controlling the background color

Tested platforms

This library has been tested and works on the following platforms:

• Shiva Editor
• Android
• BlackBerry 2
• BlackBerry 10
• Windows Phone
• Windows RT

...but should work on any other platforms too.

It is currently used in our new game Sniper Ops 3D.

Related work

• JPMultiTouch - no C++ support
• JPMultiTouchSimulator - no C++ support
• Shiva Classic Additional Samples\TEST_Multitouch
• Samples\iPhoneCharacterControl
• Samples\iPhoneCameraControl