Running Fallout (1 or 2) on a tablet PC?

P

Pheener

First time out of the vault
Recently I had the brilliant idea to install Fallout on my tablet PC, since I thought that the heavily mouse-based interface would transfer well to the stylus. Unfortunately, when I try to run the game, it doesn't accept the correct input. Even the slightest movement of the stylus on the screen sends the cursor flinging wildly away, leaving the game completely unplayable. It works fine with the keyboard-nipple mouse, though.

At first I thought the error was due to something simple, like Fallout's dated fullscreen mode, but the program that forces it into windowed mode makes no difference.

Has anyone found a way to make this possible, or at least experienced the same errors? I know tablet PC's are rare, and troubleshooting is even more difficult, but I'd still like to see what a solid, professional game is like with a pen interface.

And though I doubt it possible, I'm sorry if this question has been answered elsewhere. Searches for "tablet" and "stylus" have turned up fairly dry, and I don't know where else to look.
 
I've tried and got exactly the same results with my wacom. I think it is all to do with the resolution underneath. When i tried it at 640x480 the cursor just flew around but at the top limit of my monitor (around 1248x1536) i got the cursor jumping a few cm at a time. Try boosting your res as high as it can go, but don't hold out too many hopes.
 
Hmm, the resolution of the desktop could indeed be the problem, although I'd think that changing the resolution of the desktop to 640x480 would make more sense than changing it to something high.

Also, you could check on the sensitivity settings of your tablet, and see if changing it to the absolute or relative setting makes any difference.
 
Sander said:
Also, you could check on the sensitivity settings of your tablet, and see if changing it to the absolute or relative setting makes any difference.
Click to expand...

The problem with this is that it's a tablet PC, in which you draw with a stylus directly on the screen, so aside from sensitivity in regards to the stylus height off the screen, there is no sensitivity option as there would be for a mouse. (Edit: It's also got a very limited resolution selection, which prevents me from upping the resolution too much)

If I would diagnose the problem with my lack of knowledge, I'd say that Fallout employs some odd mouse-tracking system that only updates the cursor info with actual mouse-movement, as opposed to a tablet-friendly coordinate system. When you press the stylus to the screen and make very, very minute movements, you have some control over the cursor, much like trying to control it with a loose joystick and insane sensitivity (and also no dead zone). I have no idea how accurate that analogy is, but I might as well try to help. If someone hexedited the Fallout 2 exe to run in different resolutions, maybe someone can narrow this problem down to something fixable, because Fallout was MADE for a touch-based interface.
 
Hex-edit the Fallou2 exe? Jesus Christ, no way.
There are some solutions available to run Fallout in different resolutions, though, so I'd suggest you do a quick search and try out some of those.
 
Sander said:
Hex-edit the Fallou2 exe? Jesus Christ, no way.
There are some solutions available to run Fallout in different resolutions, though, so I'd suggest you do a quick search and try out some of those.
Click to expand...

I mentioned that I had in my first post.

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12061&highlight=windowed
And this is the post about hexediting Fallout 2 to different resolutions, back in 2004. They got it working, and then someone found the DirectDraw scaling program, which is far more useful. It also didn't make a difference (for the tablet), which was a shame.
 
Heh... wonder if I can use my Panasonic CD-ROM/CD Player to load Fallout onto my IBM 730TE tablet PC... 640x480, 256 shades of gray! Don't think it has the HDD space though... in fact I'm sure it doesn't, it has something like 260 MB HDD space, and plenty of that is WIN95 with Pen Services...
 
Well, you could also try running it in DOSBOX, perhaps that will help.
 
Possibly, though I don't think that DOSbox would support outside stylus position like that. I do, however, think that running it in VirtualPC my work, though who knows.
 
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