It’s no mistery, people are accessing the internet via mobile devices more than via desktops or other kind of computer. And more so for leasure time, since desktops are mostly used for work and study.
This means that mobile is not an area to be ignored when developing game platforms like lit-up.io.
However gameplay is somewhat different. On desktop, you move pieces with your keyboard, whereas on mobile you swipe, keeping an eye whether you’ve achieved the effect you were after. From this point of view, the desktop use seems to be a bit slower, but more precise, while mobile is faster, but error prone. I say this because if you miss the correct rotation on mobile, it takes time to re-do it.
All in all, the mobile play for lit-up.io seems to be a bit at disadvantage over desktop play. When I play with the same user, I tend to achieve higher ratings on desktop then on mobile, on both Knockout and Pursuit.
This raises the question – should mobile and desktop play each be classified differently, with their own different rankings? There are surely merits in doing this – you compare yourself fairly against users playing exactly the same way.
But then, again, there will be users who will prefer playing on tablets or mobiles using keyboard devices – nothing prevents you from doing this. Of course, I can restrict this in the code, but what if someone really wants to play on tablet using a keyboard?
For now, I’ve decided to keep both mobile and desktop in the same category, but I am willing to re-visit it again. I’m trying out some alternative controls for touchscreen, aiming to reduce the error rate.
What about mouse on desktop? The same sort of question comes around keyboard vs mouse. With the mouse, you can achieve lightning speed when moving pieces across the board, and also be precise when rotating. The default keyboard repeat rate is now set at 40ms, with the longer delay coming after the keystroke being 150ms. When moving the mouse across the screen, the events are being sent at under 2ms, leaving the keyboard player at great disadvantage.
For this reason, I’ve decided not to allow mouse controls on desktop for now, but am thinking about enabling it at some point, with some caveats – either a league of it’s own, or to have movement limitation similar to the keyboard one. Let me know what you think.
Stay tuned.