CoolFontWin v0.2: Use Two Devices for Two Legs
Today we updated CoolFontWin to version 0.2. The update contains a few things we've been working hard on for the past few weeks. For one, we now have support for using 2 iPhones at once. This means that you can put a phone in your other pocket and track both legs! This greatly improves the tracking accuracy, and therefore the overall experience of using PocketStrafe. Borrow a friend's phone, put PocketStrafe on it, and give it a shot! Feel free to request another TestFlight account if needed. We also added some minor features like sounds effects to let you know if CFW successfully acquired a vJoy device, Xbox controller, or iPhone.
Two phones at once
This was a difficult problem but we think we solved it. I'll make a blog post soon detailing how I coded this in C#. It's pretty simple to use 2 phones for PocketStrafe (this requires the latest version of PocketStrafe ,v0.3):
- Choose to Add another iPhone in the CoolFontWin menu (CFW will remember this preference. To go back to a single device, select Remove secondary iPhone).
- Launch PocketStrafe on 2 phones
- Select the Primary PC on one phone, select the Secondary PC on the other phone
- Only the Primary device controls the current mode
- You can adjust the sensitivity and smoothness of each device separately (the phone in my left pocket tends to slip to the side, so I increase the sensitivity on it).
- You can still use an Xbox controller at the same time, if desired. Select Add Xbox controller in the CFW menu.
Better vJoy handling
vJoy is what allows the Joystick modes to function, so it's important that we handle the users' vJoy devices appropriately. In the latest CoolFontWin, we do not automatically acquire a vJoy device on installation. Rather, we leave it up to the user to select a vJoy device. If the user hasn't used vJoy before, there will only be 1 default device enabled. For users familiar with vJoy, there may be many devices with different configurations. After a vJoy device is selected, CFW remembers this choice and automatically acquires the device in the future. Our new sound effects alert the user whether the device was successfully acquired. CFW will alert you with a message box if vJoy is not enabled and you're trying to use a mode that requires vJoy.
The firewall saga goes on
Microsoft ClickOnce applications (such as CFW) have an annoying tendency to not prompt the user to allow the application through the firewall after an update. Because ClickOnce is designed for continuous deployment and constant updates, this can be a major problem for network-intensive applications like CFW. The latest version forces the firewall prompt to display by opening and immediately closing a TCP socket. It's a little hacky, but it works better than other solutions that I found, which require the user to have administrative privileges. Hopefully this will help cut down on some of the "no input getting through" issues we have seen pop up.
Miscellaneous
We added numerous code-level features that may prove to be the most important. These include better logging, exception handling, and code performance. In the future, CoolFontWin will be code-signed, reducing the number of annoying popups the user has to deal with on installation. One last note: please always make sure the game window on your PC is selected when using the app. Once again we would love to hear any feedback or questions so don't hesitate to contact us!
Mitchell and Roy