HTML builds with onscreen controls [SOLVED]

Questions
#1

With the recent announcement in relation to Poki and web games I wonder if making web builds work on PC and mobiles in the same way Pico8 does would be though.

If you have ever tried a web build of a Pico8 game, you’ll find that it works great on PC - you just see the game as is. But when you try on mobile, out of the box, pico8 makes it work full-screen and adds some game-boy like controls!

Here’s a game of mine as seen on my phone:

Screenshot_20231125_161236_Chrome
Screenshot_20231125_161236_Chrome1080×2400 169 KB

You see the game on the top of the screen and these controls (a d-pad and some buttons) on the half bottom part. It looks like a game boy. And these buttons are automatically mapped to the buttons that pico8 recognizes.

Sure enough, it works like a charm on that fantasy console because, by design, it works with dpad and two buttons in mind (or arrows and z/x on PC).

Still… could something like that be done on defold web builds? I understand it requires defold talking to the javascript of the html container.

#2

Does the on screen controls really have to be made as JavaScript/html controls? Could you not make these controls as Defold components and let your game cover the entire screen?

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#3

That would more like the on-screen joysticks and buttons of mobile games, right? Sure I could, but it’s not the same.

When you play a pico8 game on a PC browser you don’t see these controls, you play with keyboard arrows and z/x keys. Only when you play on a mobile browser you see them, making them playable on touch screens.

It’s so handy! It makes releasing and showing HTML5 games so straightforward.

If you try this game on a PC and a mobile phone you’ll see what I mean: Rampaging by PlayMedusa

It’s the index.html file that pico8 generates what does it, not the game :slight_smile:

#4

Getting those controls to show up only in html5 should be trivial checkin sys.get_sys_info.

Once you know the platform you can easily show or hide the on screen controls.

4 Likes
#5

Ah, that could do the trick too, right. And would be probably easier!

1 Like