Touchpads Overhaul Ideas

[FlameMan]

Hello,

In last few days I was doing research about the best usage of controller's touchpads in games. There are few gamepads which have good touchpads: OUYA Controller (non-clickable), DualShock 4 (2 point capacitive), Steam Controller, Nvidia SHIELD Controller, GameSir G5 (non-clickable), DualSense (2 point capacitive), Steam Deck and maybe every Android phone attached to any gamepad (non-clickable screen). Games did not use full potential of them, on PC touchpads are used mostly as mouse, but they can be used in many good/better ways. And I hope it is possible that reWASD can fix sooner or later this neglected part of many game controllers.

This is how we can use touchpads in creative way:

1. Map Navigation - pressing touchpad activates map, touch and swipe is letting to move in desired direction.
   • a) swiping map can work like: right click+mouse move,
   • b) swiping as direction button press for few seconds eg. every right direction swipe moves left stick right for 1.5 second, every left swipe does the same for 1.5 in left direction etc.
   • c) touchpad as d-pad: pressing touchpad zones (up/down/left/right) works as pressing arrow keys to navigate on the map.
2. Menu switcher - pressing touchpad as normal menu activator (works as start or select button), swiping left/right/down/up opens different menu: up opens map (like in The Witcher 3), left opens inventory, right opens character tab, down opens team tab etc. One touchpad gives access to 5 different menus. Adding long press on touchpad can give even six different menus. Useful.
3. Wheel menu for changing weapons, taunting, activating emotes:
   • a) pressing touchpad activates native weapon menu and moving in direction selects action eg. Fortnite touching touchpad pressing down-arrow button and swiping moves right analog stick, leaving touchpad presses A OR touching touchpad pressing B key and swiping moves mouse cursor, leaving touchpad click left mouse button.
   • b) [new option] touching touchpad is opening reWASD overlay wheel menu and allows select required action (can be weapon wheel or whatever).
4. Touchpad zones - divide touchpad on zones where touching/pressing is activating different action eg. activating photo mode like in Death Stranding or switching characters in RPGs, switching armies in RTS. Gran Turismo 7 using zones to activate indicators (left - left, right - right, middle - hazard light). DSAdvance tool has even 6 different activation zones.
5. Changing weapons/items.
   • a) swiping left activates previous weapon/item action, swiping right activates next weapon/item action (like in Star Wars: Jedi Academy).
   • b) [new option] reWASD queue container: selecting that we have in container keys 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 and swiping left or right changing weapon and position in the queue/container (the same behavior like next/previous weapon for games which do not have this option).
6. Examine items - touching touchpad activates right mouse button press and moving cursor in desired direction like in Zen Bound 2 game. We can examine item from every direction.
7. Hide HUD - swipe down - hide HUD, swipe up - show full HUD. Simple as that and very useful. In the same way in Tomb Raider we can fire torchlight.
8. Gyro activator - touching button is gyro activator like in Steam Controller or DSAdvance application.
9. Use as mouse. Default behavior and very useful in many games. It would be great to have trackball emulation for every touchpad, not only for Steam Controller.
10. DS exclusive: scroll down and scroll up (zooming in and out) for pinching touchpad or moving two fingers on the touchpad to emulate laptop touchpad moves. Having desktop config with the same gestures on DualSense like on laptop touchpad would be sooo cool and useful for office workers who are using this piece of technology every day (as they/we know touchpad gestures) and after hours are playing games.

Some actions it's possible to do now, but improving touchpads knowing one of the best use cases, can be easier. I've god inspired by PlayStation 4 articles about best usage of their touchpads. Some of them are too advance for reWASD (like Infamous: Second Son implementation), but for others touchpads are used for easy actions like activating something or switching. Swiping is crucial feature, but we have received trackball in Steam Controller, so maybe we are close to this solution implemented in different controllers.

For now end of my ideas. I hope this topic will help you improve touchpad support for current controllers and add support for few more devices like OUYA Controller, GameSir G5 and Steam Deck in the future.