Some players do not use a mouse while playing Roblox and to further improve their experience in-game, I think developers need an efficient way to detect if players are truly using a mouse or a trackpad accurately.
I’m not sure about the statistics of how many players do not have a mouse or prefer to use a trackpad for gaming, but I’d still prefer to enahance their experience regardless.
Proposal
UserInputService.TrackpadEnabled
With this addition, it would allow developers to create an experience specific to trackpad users with several scenarios such as:
Games with interaction keys can set specific keys depending on whether the player is using a trackpad or mouse. To put this into perspective, if a player is using a mouse, I would make use of the left and right mouse buttons, but if a player is using a trackpad, I would make use of left and right alt keys instead.
Location of interaction keys can be placed closer to the trackpad/mouse depending on which they are using.
Implementing a camera behavior specific for trackpad users can be difficult. If I wanted to make trackpad users have mouse lock so their camera can follow their cursor, I won’t be able to do this without mouse users having this behavior as well.
Trackpad users may have a hard time in games that are combat based, time based or accuracy based. Being able to detect if they are using a trackpad would allow developers to tweak their gameplay.
I don’t want my game’s configuration or setup to be sophisticated so if this issue is addressed, it would allow me to overcome these sophistications.
In my game, I display to the player their “best” keys depending on their input device. My game is a shooter, and so laptop users can not aim and shoot at the same time. This is because it would require you to hold MouseButton2 and MouseButton1 at the same time. I have an alternate aiming key set up because of this.
The main issue here is that without being able to detect a trackpad, I can not visually tell this player that they should use the alternate aiming key. This is poor for user experience and should be addressed.
I’d also like to shut down the idea that this should mean players should be able to rebind their key controls. Yes, they should. However, this doesn’t fix the problem because the default controls will still be a key they’re unable to use.
Even though my use case is minor, this is a necessity for developers and should have been added ages ago.
There is currently no way of telling whether or not a player is on a laptop device or using trackpad.
This creates an extremely confusing experience for players in games where you must hold right button and then left to perform an action. This is the case in SCP: Roleplay where you must aim your weapon in order to fire it.
Since we cannot detect if the user is on a laptop or using trackpad, we also cannot provide a workaround to this issue.
I don’t know how difficult it’d be to implement a property like TrackpadEnabled to the UserInputService, but this would go a long way in making experiences easier to understand and play.
Not to my knowledge, there are some cases where in major Linux distros, Windows, or MacOS (I think I’ve never used MacOS) where programs can detect if it’s a left or right click on a trackpad, however it can also be a hardware limitation, some keypads just don’t right click unless you hold down 2 fingers on the trackpad at once. Although I’m not a programmer I just like messing with OS’s, I could be dead wrong here so please correct me if I am.