mobile input limitation

[Conflux]

Mobile platforms have a severe input limitation, this is obvious, but how do you work around that problem? I don't play mobile games, played just a few long time ago, but i want to develop it because it's where the "easy" money is... 

Even the simplest mechanics seems like a puzzle, I want to create a game with 2 simple commands: change direction and jump. Then i thought: one tap for change direction and double for jump, but whenever i double tap, the player changes direction before jumping... Is input design for mobile games really a nightmare or I lost something?

[mattstyles]

11 hours ago, Conflux said:

Mobile platforms have a severe input limitation, this is obvious, but how do you work around that problem?

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, this is ridiculous. There is no input limitation (and I barely touch my mouse during the day, trying to keyboard as much as possible), its simply a different system that for many things is richer, more intuitive, quicker and a better input device.

11 hours ago, Conflux said:

but i want to develop it because it's where the "easy" money is... 

Nope, just nope. No such thing, and if you're stuffing JS into a native wrapper you're already at a disadvantage over the native peeps so certainly not easy.

11 hours ago, Conflux said:

don't play mobile games

Don't develop mobile games then. This leads to the next point...

11 hours ago, Conflux said:

Is input design for mobile games really a nightmare or I lost something?

Not at all, no more or less difficult than designing for other platforms. You've got to shift your thinking, this is probably because you don't play mobile games so aren't comfortable with a lot of patterns used there.

Your design is will become fundamentally different due to a different input system, of course you can try to get around it, but you'll have an inferior product, work with the input system and you'll have a better product at the end. Embrace swipes, flares, pinches, quick touches, all these things are super intuitive (I have two small children, both understood tapping and swiping from a ridiculously early age, as did most of my friends children too, it might more difficult for us adults having not grown up with such things though ) and you can develop some really nice and interesting game mechanics around them.

If your game (or game idea) relies on keyboard input then maybe a mobile port isn't worth it.

As an example of where a game matches well on keyboard and on touch check out Cardinal Quest 2. I play this most on my phone but the interface is good on both desktop and phone, not every game is so well designed to work with multiple different input systems.

11 hours ago, Conflux said:

Then i thought: one tap for change direction and double for jump, but whenever i double tap, the player changes direction before jumping

This isn't actually a problem with the input system, its your code that needs some work  When you register a tap you have to add an artificial delay before triggering an action (in this case, change direction), if another tap occurs in this delay then its registered as a jump action, if not then its a direction change action. HammerJS (I think it does double-tap) handles this for you and can emit various different types of user interaction to make recognising gestures a bit easier.