Steam, Linux and tablet support

[Lyqide]

So I prefer playing my games with a drawing tablet sometimes (cth-480s for now) - before I switched - 6-7 weeks ago I could play with it on windows. Now for some time steam was only able to use the clicking of the pen as an input - not the movement of it though. So today I tried it again and it... works.... kind of.... - I can move the pen about 2mm before it goes crazy. these 2mm equal to 20ish pixels of movement in the game - after that the player just starts spinning. Is this a known problem or is there no solution to that yet? - Thanks for any answers in advance :)

[Marlock]

Origineel geplaatst door catbox:

doubtful. most tablets are ARM architecture
steam requires x86/x64 architecture

OP is talking about a digitizer tablet peripheral for PCs, not an iPad or Android tablet

OP wants the peripheral to behave (with a digitizer pen) in broad terms like a touchpad (following movement), while it currently behaves more like a touchscreen (only registering clicks at given positions)

[Marlock]

possible clues, but pribably not direct solutions (as I never had any such device):

https://linuxwacom.github.io/ (on Linux Mint a Wacom Tablet settings panel is part of the default OS setup, but won't show me any settings it would be able to tweak without a paired device)

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/64552/prevent-wacom-tablet-from-moving-mouse-pointer
(the opposite of what you want? maybe the methods are useful)

[thetargos]

Drawing tablets support is somewhat limited, which is why I have always bought Wacom peripherals (yes, they do come @ a premium), but work very well as well. I personally have two a Graphire 4 and a Bamboo which work really well and integrate with GNOME. The Bamboo also doubles as a touchpad, and I have the wireless kit for it, so very convenient.

Since Steam uses it as a mouse input source my first question would be: does it work in the desktop at all? Followed by Do you use it in 'absolute' or 'relative' mode? Does your pen have differenciated 'click' (tip and eraser, buttons for secondary and middle mouse buttons)?

I do not play games with my tablets regularily, but I have used them on occasion. I normally use 'relative' mode rather than 'absolute', as I do not require the tablet to scale the screen to the drawing area. Also wacom drivers for the most part have come a LOOOOONG way, but I am not familiar with other brands.

I did look up your device and it is an Intous, with touch capabilities, and should work reasonably fine. I'd assume you are using relative mode as well. What is your distribution and driver version?

[Lyqide]

Origineel geplaatst door Marlock:

Origineel geplaatst door catbox:

doubtful. most tablets are ARM architecture
steam requires x86/x64 architecture

OP is talking about a digitizer tablet peripheral for PCs, not an iPad or Android tablet

OP wants the peripheral to behave (with a digitizer pen) in broad terms like a touchpad (following movement), while it currently behaves more like a touchscreen (only registering clicks at given positions)

Well nearly - sorry, my bad - I want to use my cth-480 drawing tablet as mouse input - and it only clicks in the middle not where I point it at

[Lyqide]

Origineel geplaatst door thetargos:

Drawing tablets support is somewhat limited, which is why I have always bought Wacom peripherals (yes, they do come @ a premium), but work very well as well. I personally have two a Graphire 4 and a Bamboo which work really well and integrate with GNOME. The Bamboo also doubles as a touchpad, and I have the wireless kit for it, so very convenient.

Since Steam uses it as a mouse input source my first question would be: does it work in the desktop at all? Followed by Do you use it in 'absolute' or 'relative' mode? Does your pen have differenciated 'click' (tip and eraser, buttons for secondary and middle mouse buttons)?

I do not play games with my tablets regularily, but I have used them on occasion. I normally use 'relative' mode rather than 'absolute', as I do not require the tablet to scale the screen to the drawing area. Also wacom drivers for the most part have come a LOOOOONG way, but I am not familiar with other brands.

I did look up your device and it is an Intous, with touch capabilities, and should work reasonably fine. I'd assume you are using relative mode as well. What is your distribution and driver version?

I really don't know my driver version but mostly I use absolute mode and I'm on KDEneon 18.04 - though like I described I don't really get a movement out of it (well not a usable one at least) regardless which mode I use or what I change in the tablet driver itself - it semi works for osu! (thinking of getting another tab to try because touch on my cth480 is also buggy as hell - like lot's of random clicks everytime I want to use the touch feature - maybe I'll try out one with the digimend drivers but for now I'm out of ideas :)

[Marlock]

random clicks when using touch + moving is interrupted at very small lengths when mousibg with it...


It's a wild guess, but maybe you're having interrupted signal issues or usb power fluctuations...

(random insensitivity and even ghost inputs are common with bad usb power bricks and failing batteries or power regulators on other capacitive touch surfaces like smartphone screens, hence my guess)

can you try a new cable, other USB port, bot using an USB hub as intermediary, pluggibg into MoBo USB ports instead of frontal ones from the PC casing, ...?

Maybe another power source for the tablet if it has an independant powet source besides USB?

[thetargos]

Have you tried using relative mode? Could be a resolution mapping issue in the driver for absolute mode.

[Lyqide]

Origineel geplaatst door thetargos:

Have you tried using relative mode? Could be a resolution mapping issue in the driver for absolute mode.

I did but both modes just act like garbage in steam games (at least the ones I tried)

[Lyqide]

Origineel geplaatst door Marlock:

random clicks when using touch + moving is interrupted at very small lengths when mousibg with it...


It's a wild guess, but maybe you're having interrupted signal issues or usb power fluctuations...

(random insensitivity and even ghost inputs are common with bad usb power bricks and failing batteries or power regulators on other capacitive touch surfaces like smartphone screens, hence my guess)

can you try a new cable, other USB port, bot using an USB hub as intermediary, pluggibg into MoBo USB ports instead of frontal ones from the PC casing, ...?

Maybe another power source for the tablet if it has an independant powet source besides USB?

tried the thing with the usb ports and it wasn't changing anything - I use a powered hub on my desk as well - it won't even work correctly there

[thetargos]

Just to ruleout any kind of regressions in software (sadly a thing we have to consider), you have ruled out platform issues by using it recently in another OS (Windows/Mac)?

[Lyqide]

Origineel geplaatst door thetargos:

Just to ruleout any kind of regressions in software (sadly a thing we have to consider), you have ruled out platform issues by using it recently in another OS (Windows/Mac)?

I did and it works fine on windows (touch yes but you can't draw straight lines - rolls up your cursor at some point - Don't have that problem on linux but touch isn't working there)

[Nabi]

I know I am late for like 2 years but try opentabledriver, is designed mainly to use with osu but the relative mode for games is a heck of a lot better than what the built in can do, worked with a bunch of games that refused to behave with the default wacom module

[Marlock]

it's not everyday that someone ressurrects a 2-year-long abandoned thread just to let people know of a new way to solve their issues!!! Not only extra helpful, but a great find!!!

I took the liberty of adding OpenTabletDriver to another thread (and to give you credit for finding it):

FOSS gaming tools
https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1694969361100777223/

[Lyqide]

Origineel geplaatst door Marlock:

it's not everyday that someone ressurrects a 2-year-long abandoned thread just to let people know of a new way to solve their issues!!! Not only extra helpful, but a great find!!! :winter2019happyyul:

I took the liberty of adding OpenTabletDriver to another thread (and to give you credit for finding it):

FOSS gaming tools
https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1694969361100777223/

damn that was 2 years ago already - phew

[Lyqide]

Origineel geplaatst door Just a fox:

I know I am late for like 2 years but try opentabledriver, is designed mainly to use with osu but the relative mode for games is a heck of a lot better than what the built in can do, worked with a bunch of games that refused to behave with the default wacom module

might check it out some time when I have the time to do so - thanks for recommending it though