I can't zoom with a mouse wheel because I have a laptop

[KoolKat]

Satellite Reign (and other Steam games that I own) is asking me to zoom in with my mouse wheel. I don't have a mouse wheel so if I use my keyboard up down arrows to zoom it just makes me go up and down in the screen on the game and if I zoom on my mouse pad by spreading two fingers it doesn't zoom either. There must be a setting for my mouse pad to do this. How do I get around this and be able to zoom in my game? I can zoom no problem outside of the game using my laptop, but not in certain Steam games. I have a brand new windows 8.1 laptop.

Thanx

[BlackHorse23]

Well, my best suggestion to you would be to invest in a mouse with a scroll wheel and use it with your laptop. Depending on your pad, the right side should have a scroll option ot using both your fingers to scroll. Trackpads are a pain when enjoying PC games though, so if you have the means to save up $20 bucks or so I recommend just getting one. Goodluck!

[KoolKat]

Yeah, thanks but I really don't want an external mouse. I was reading on the internet that you can download some program to make your laptop mouse scroll like a desktop mousewheel and was also youtubing some stuff about how to do it in windows 7. I was hoping someone out there new of how to do it in windows 8, or an option on your keyboard that will zoom in on games like Satellite Reign. I just want to zoom, I don't really care how I do it. I just don't want to use an external mouse with a laptop.

[𝓑𝓁𝒶𝒸𝓀𝓅𝒶𝓌𝓃]

Originally posted by KoolKatKilla:

I just don't want to use an external mouse with a laptop.

That's not a realistic desire.

Touchpads are pretty variable in their behavour, game developers can't deal with them all. Maybe they might do something for a standard mac touchpad but all the thousands of PC ones? Fagedabodit. Especially in a bare-bones operation like 5lives, they don't have the staff to do it. Even mac gamers almost always use an external mouse.

Buy a gaming mouse, they're cheap enough if you don't want anything fancy. I'm a backpacker who owns nothing that I can't carry and even I have a gaming mouse in my pack.

Satellite Reign runs reasonably well on a laptop if you compromise on graphics slightly, plugging in a mouse is not a big burden. Save the touchpad for email.

[KoolKat]

Yeah, thanks. Could you please give me a suggestion on a gaming mouse?

[Bigbangtheorm]

This game looks like it would be fun if I could actually MOVE my character?!?!?

[iampaulh]

Strange that zooming is one of the few controls that can't be assigned to keys!

[TwistedMinds]

I know it's possible to bind keyboard keys to mouse function with software like AutoHotKey, but I'm not really familiar with it. A quick google showed me plenty of result for AutoHotKey Mouse Scroll Script and other similar search.

[KoolKat]

You know what? I was really hesitant to buy a mouse just to zoom in this game but I did. It's a microsoft bluetooth mouse called a sculp. It has 6 buttons. Buy this! The middle button you use to scroll, when you click it, it puts a button on your screen (outside of gaming) and the farther you move your pointer from it the faster it scrolls. It's really smooth. Cheap too.

Anyway right after I got it, I realized that Satellite Reign can be zoomed in windows 8 by spreading 2 fingers on your screen or touchpad, it's just really hard to do and didn't work very well which is why I couldn't zoom. The bad news? Since the updates it can't be scrolled with my fingers at all, so I'm going to write them and see if they can fix it.

[Disky]

Our code just checks for mouse wheel, using two finger on the touchpad will be a laptop feature that pretends to be a mouse wheel.

[voorsk]

Why isn't there at least an option to map zoom to the keyboard? Seems a bit unfair to touchpad users.

[dingbat]

Originally posted by KoolKatKilla:

You know what? I was really hesitant to buy a mouse just to zoom in this game but I did. It's a microsoft bluetooth mouse called a sculp. It has 6 buttons. Buy this! The middle button you use to scroll, when you click it, it puts a button on your screen (outside of gaming) and the farther you move your pointer from it the faster it scrolls.

Hehe, mouses have worked like this for many many years mate

Originally posted by voorsk:

Why isn't there at least an option to map zoom to the keyboard? Seems a bit unfair to touchpad users.

I'd imagine you'll run into more problems that this using a touchpad. Mouses aren't expensive

[voorsk]

I've got two spare mice that I haven't used in 5 years - it's not about buying a mouse, it's about playing the game on a laptop, or on the sofa using a keyboard/pad combo. I thought PC gaming was supposed to have escaped the ball and chain of desks.

[KoolKat]

I know what you mean. I refuse to own a desktop, and I was determined to not buy a mouse, but there is just no way to zoom in Satellite Reign without one. The developers don't seem to want to put a pinch zoom for windows 8.

[Spinbox]

They have now fixed this. Hold Spacebar down then use W & S to zoom in and out. You have to be looking straight down to the ground.