As a Roblox player, it is currently too hard to play the mobile version with a mouse and keyboard, the android native pointer by default is limited by the screen borders, which causes the mouse to stop moving in that direction and inputting to the app. As a result, games that require freely rotating the camera, such as first person shooters, have limited user experience. The video below shows this behavior:
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my user experience because it would offer faster and more accurate movements like on the PC version rather than only using touchscreen, specially when I can plug my phone into a bigger screen.
Some apps, such as games, remote desktop, and virtualization clients, greatly benefit from getting control over the mouse pointer. Pointer capture is a feature available in Android 8.0 (API level 26) and later that provides such control by delivering all mouse events to a focused view in your app.
Gonna bump this cause I agree. If ROBLOX’s goal is to provide a cross platform experience which doesn’t matter what type of input you are using, then they should take a look into their partner’s (Microsoft) biggest game (Minecraft), specifically Bedrock Edition. Despite differences between Windows based products and Android, Microsoft has made Minecraft: Bedrock Edition steamlessly transition between inputs regardless of platform. Whether it’s a mouse/keyboard, XBOX Game Controller, or touch controls, if your device supports it, Bedrock handles it. Why doesn’t ROBLOX do this? Especially considering it’s their whole narrative when it comes to not wanting to give developers any identification to what platform they’re on
Just for clarifcation, do you mean using mouse/keyboard peripherals connected to a mobile device? Is this an issue for players, or developers simulating mobile experiance in development?
Yes, but not limited to, I believe it could affect chromebooks, android devices, which can include PCs, TV boxes, smartphones or tablets. These devices can be connected to mouse/keyboard peripherals and larger screens through HDMI/DisplayPort/VGA, provided you have the hardware or adapters, such as bluetooth or USB-C hubs if needed.
Waiting for a roblox engineer to reply and take notice.
I recently plugged my android phone into a dock and was pleasently surprised to find that once plugging in a mouse and keyboard roblox mobile acted 100% like the desktop client experience. However, as you mentioned there are severe problems with camera manipulation because of the lack of pointer mouse capture or cursor constraints.
I believe with a little work roblox can create better support for mobile mouse and keyboard support as it already 99% functional and performance wise runs exceptionally however mobile needs a fix for the cursor and camera turning before it is usable.
I have provided more examples of this pointer capture problem through some youtube videos below:
These videos clearly showcase the cursor hitting an invisible barrier limiting player turn radius, and makes most games unenjoyable to play. Whether the player is looking around in first-person or third-person, the problem persists.
The mobile version of minecraft used to have issues with mouse/keyboard support but they fixed it a while ago, there are clearly available APIs or solutions out there that can be easily implemented to Mobile.
I am really hoping a roblox engineer has been assigned to fix this bug especially since they promoted cross-platform compatibility so much at the RDC 2023 keynote and the biggest device demographic on roblox is MOBILE.
Everyone should be able to plug in a mouse & keyboard and use it seamlessly with any device that can run roblox since roblox was programmed to be universal and not designed per platform!
Android 14 has released very recently and Samsung’s One UI 6.0 is almost released as well. Has anyone been able to test on an Android 14 device if android mouse & keyboard experience on roblox has improved???
