v3.1 (released 01/26/2023)

2 min read

Version 3.1 of Touch Interface Designer brings new features and welcome quality of life improvements. This new version is available for the Unreal Engine 4.27, 5.0 and 5.1. Finally do not hesitate to leave a review on the marketplace about Touch Interface Designer!

News

Virtual Control Event : Event class that can be called by virtual control. You can create your own event based on this class in blueprint. Use case : extend virtual control behavior like play sound, Hold event… In the next versions, you should be able to make changes like hiding or showing the visual layer, changing the scalar value of a dynamic instance material… You can find an example of its use in the Example folder of the plugin

Circle Hit Test : Until now, to detect if the user’s finger is touching a virtual control, you had to specify a rectangular/square area. Now you can define a radius from the center of the virtual control. This will avoid overlaps when the virtual controls are very close and will better fit the circular design.
Link : Group several virtual controls together in order to move them all at the same time. With the “RecenterOnTouch” function during the first touch, allows you to recenter the whole group. Useful for buttons placed near a joystick and which must maintain the same offset, regardless of the resolution/screen ratio.
Multiplayer : Thanks to the use of the new subsystem based on the LocalPlayerSubsystem, Touch Interface Designer is now ready for multiplayer.
Custom Scaling Rules : You can now define your own scaling rules.

Improvements

Device Mockup now in beta : The parameter “bEnableDeviceMockup” which was in the parameters of the editor has been placed in the parameters of the background. The display of the model of the device being previewed is now in beta and is therefore activated by default.
Shortcut : When you have selected a virtual control in the editor, you can now press F2 on the keyboard to rename the virtual control.
Touch Interface preview in editor was reworked : The preview in the editor has been reworked to ensure better consistency between profiles, to avoid large size differences between profiles and to take into account changes in device profiles, such as device content scale factor. The editor now provides much more information about the selected device profile such as GPU, screen definition, rendering resolution and device content scale factor.
Negative ZOrder : The touch interface widget is now created with a negative ZOrder of -99 to avoid conflicts with other widgets added to the player screen.
Scaling Mode Preview : The editor correctly supports different scaling modes as well as the multiplier.
Touch Interface Subsystem : To facilitate the use of the plugin, the Virtual Control Manager component has been removed and all these functions have been integrated into the Touch Interface Subsystem. The old Virtual Control Designer Subsystem (the name is much too long) has been replaced by Touch Interface Subsystem.

Deprecations

Compatibility with old Touch Interface Setup is dropped : The “TouchDesigner” and “TouchDesignerEditor” modules have been removed. Before upgrading to the 3.1 update, make sure you have converted your Touch Interface Setup to a Virtual Control Setup. You can always convert your touch interfaces integrated in the engine to the Virtual Control Setup format compatible with Touch Interface Designer.
Virtual Control Manager is deprecated : It is replaced by the Touch Interface Subsystem (previously named Virtual Control Designer Subsystem). Touch Interface Subsystem has the same functionality as Virtual Control Manager but it is easier to use and you don’t need to add any component to manage the touch interface. It is also multiplayer compatible since one subsystem is created per player.
SetVirtualControlVisibility function is deprecated. Use ShowVirtualControl or HideVirtualControl. These two functions take into account the related controls. When you want to show or hide a virtual control, you can also include virtual controls that are linked.
RemoveControl function is deprecated. Use RemoveVirtualControl. This function take into account the related controls. When you want to remove a virtual control, you can also include virtual controls that are linked.