User Input - Marmalade SDK Mobile Game Development Essentials - page 72

Property Description

S3E_POINTER_STYLUS_TYPE This will return the type of stylus our device

uses. See the next sub-section for more
information on this.

S3E_POINTER_MULTI_
TOUCH_AVAILABLE

If the device supports multi-touch (being able to
detect more than one press on the touch screen
at a time) the value 1 will be returned. Single
touch devices will return 0 .

For most game code, it is usually enough to first use the S3E_POINTER_AVAILABLE
property to see if we have pointer capability available and the S3E_POINTER_MULTI_
TOUCH_AVAILABLE property to configure our input methodology appropriately.

Determining the type of pointer input
When supplying the property type S3E_POINTER_TYPE to s3ePointerGetInt , the
return value is one from the s3ePointerType enumeration.

Return Value Description

S3E_POINTER_TYPE_INVALID Invalid request. The most likely cause is that the

s3ePointer API is not available on this device.

S3E_POINTER_TYPE_MOUSE Pointer input is coming from a device that

features an on-screen cursor to indicate position.
The cursor may be controlled by a mouse or some
other input device, such as a joystick.

S3E_POINTER_TYPE_STYLUS Pointer input is from a stylus-based input

method, most likely a touch screen of some sort.

In the majority of cases this distinction is not normally that important, but it might be
relevant if you need to track the movement of the pointer.

With a mouse, our code will receive events whenever the pointer is moved across the
screen, whether a mouse button is held or not. On a touch screen, we will obviously
only receive movement events when the screen is being touched.

This is most notable when running on the simulator, as we will receive
pointer events whenever the mouse pointer is moved within the bounds
of the simulator window.