Endless Touchscreen: Running EL on a Tablet

[codemacabre]

4X games are ideal for tablets but strangely few of them work well. I installed Endless Space almost as soon as I bought my Windows tablet, which was better than many but still wasn't perfect. I've tried out Endless Legend and wanted to share my observations, In case anyone is curious.

TL;DR in advance, Endless Legend performs surprisingly well on a Windows tablet.

These observations so far are based on playing on my Microsoft Surface Pro 2:

Graphics

The graphics in EL are not particularly demanding. The main issue is with post-processing effects. Depth of Field doesn't seem to work at all, but having the option selected still causes a performance hit.

• Turning the main graphics settings down to Simple or Fast causes it to run pretty well without any major slowdown.
  
• Turning the main graphics settings down to Fastest causes the game to run really smoothly, but at the detriment to visuals. 'No shadows' makes a huge difference to the overall look.
  
• Turning off Post-Processing and Depth of Field in Advanced Settings gives a decent boost in performance with no noticeable change in visual quality (as mentioned, DOF doesn't seem to work on the Surface Pro 2 GPU anyway).
  
• Larger maps, busy areas with multiple units do cause minor slowdown, but nothing unplayable.
  
• Cutscenes are a little jerky regardless of settings.
  
• Big screen UI is perfect for small screens!

Touch Control

Despite not having a 'tablet mode' à la Civ V, Endless Legend works surprisingly well using touch controls alone. As you may know, touchscreens register taps differently to mouse-clicks so often cause problems in games that are normally fine with mouse-only control.

There are some issues, so I do recommend using a USB mouse or a keyboard with trackpad. I use the Touch Cover 2 with my Surface Pro 2; its trackpad works really nicely and solves all problems listed below.

• Single touch on units, terrain, etc. is the equivalent to hovering the mouse cursor - it proves information. This is not the case for buttons!
  
• Single touch on buttons selects the button's action. No problems at all. The downside is that tooltips only display after you've already selected the button.
  
• Double-tap to select units and cities. The double-tap seems to be the equivalent to single-clicking the LMB (left mouse button).
  
• For click-and-drag actions (such as changing equipped items or moving population in city view), double-tap then drag. Population is a bit trickier: you need to single-tap to select the specific FIDSI section of the population, then double-tap drag. It's fiddly and a bit awkward, but it can be done!
  
• Zoom gestures (pinch) work very well. It can zoom a little fast at first, but you quickly get a feel for it.
  
• Right-clicking is where the main problems arise. The only way I found of moving units was to touch-and-hold until the right-click box appears (a standard feature of Windows 8 touch control), then drag your finger. The movement dots appear. As soon as you lift your finger, the unit moves or interacts to the hex you lifted your finger from. If you want to cancel, just drag back to the starting hex. It's the most awkward aspect of touch controls in EL, but consider it like chess rules: once you've let go (of the screen), your move is final.
  
• The on-screen keyboard won't display whilst in-game, so forget renaming cities or savegames. I haven't done this in my desktop playthroughs though, so not a great loss for me.

Battery

No surprise that playing a relatively graphics-heavy PC game on a tablet with integrated GPU drains the battery a lot. Turning the Power Options to Highest Performance is best to keep the tablet working at it's most powerful, but that will drain the battery even more. I recommend using mains power.

On my Surface Pro 2 with battery at full-charge, I could run it (whilst multi-tasking) on the Balanced Power Option for around 4 hours. Not a very accurate test, but should give you an idea.

Windows 8 Integration

If anyone's tried playing Civ V in 'tablet mode', you might have noticed that the tablet's basic functions didn't work, such as swipe from the right for the charms or swipe from the left to show recent programs. Pressing the Start button didn't even open up the Metro start screen. Well, never fear! Everything works like a dream with Endless Legend.

It works as any standard desktop application, except it minimizes the game as soon as you use any of these Windows 8 functions. Perfect for multitasking or acting as a 'boss key'[en.wikipedia.org].

Conclusion (and Wishlist)

Endless Legend is not optimised for tablet, make no mistake. It doesn't run perfectly smoothly, even with graphics on minimum. But it is possible to do everything you need to play the game with just touchscreen controls.

However, features that would make the game even more touch-friendly would be:

• Unit action buttons to represent all right-click actions. There are currently some (such as parley or split army), but movement is the main one missing. This would make the awkwardness of right-clicking disappear.
  
• Minimal graphics mode (perhaps allowing an option to turn off 3D terrain, replacing it with similar visuals to the terrain in battle mode).
  
• Steam Cloud sync for savegames. Currently, I have two separate games on the go: one on my desktop PC and one on my tablet. It'd be great to continue the same game from either device.

Windows tablets and touchscreen laptops are not the future of PC gaming. They're a luxury, not essentials. However, when games like Endless Legend (and Endless Space and Dungeons of the Endless to varying extents) 'just work', it gives a glimpse of a market which hasn't been tapped. It's a real pleasure to sprawl on the sofa or in bed, contemplating how to expand my Ardent Mages empire.

[IamNabil]

Thanks for this. I have a Surface Pro 3, and am contemplating installing the game before my trip to the in-laws this weekend. What's your battery life like while playing?

[Aeriqui]

I have a surface Pro 1, I'm loving it

[codemacabre]

@IamNabil Battery life wasn't bad considering. With Power Options on 'Balanced', it lasted about 4 hours. I was multitasking, though so it's not very accurate.

[IamNabil]

That is pretty good, actually. Thanks, Eoph.

[Noxdormus]

Thanks for your feedback, its really appreciate

[codemacabre]

I'm really glad you find it useful.

If anyone else has tried it on their Windows tablet, please weigh in and let us know how it runs.

[Mr. Stimpson]

It's a staple on my SP2. Runs great on low settings.

[Noxdormus]

I've a surface pro 3, I bough the gazme 2 days ago but didnt play on the surface yet, I will try tonight and I will let you know

[Voodoo]

Thank you very much for such a comprehensive review, really appreciated!

[codemacabre]

You're very welcome. Glad it helped!

[June_Cleaver]

I just tried it out on my Surface Pro 3 i5 256GB HDD 8GB RAM and I had to turn the video settings all the way down to Fastest (the lowest setting, no shadows), and it's still sluggish while in the tutorial with very little going on on the map.

I'm running at full screen resolution (2160x1440) and I've disabled Depth of Field and Enhanced Elevation Animation. It could be that the Surface Pro 2 has better graphical performance in this game than my SP3. I don't actually mind the no-shadows, very basic look. But I can't play with the lagginess I'm getting. The intro screen looks like a slideshow - maybe 8 fps. The game itself is faster, with everything fancy turned off I'm getting around 15-20 fps. Still way too laggy for me, though.

I haven't given up yet. I'm going to try reducing the resolution and if that doesn't work, dig around a little more before throwing in the towel and only playing it on my desktop gaming rig. Just thought I'd post my experience for you other SP3 owners.

[mardavrio]

Yeah you're running at a high resolution, my guess is you should get a reasonable boost running @ 1920×1080 ... let us know please if has any affect

[June_Cleaver]

I was able to get the framerates up to around maybe 25-30 fps (just guessing based on how it looks) by reducing the resolution to 1440x900. Apparently, that's the same aspect ratio as the SP3's default, because nothing seemed stretched or warped, just not as crisp. But the UI was way more responsive. In 2160x1440 resolution, the UI would be about a half-second behind my mouse, which was driving me nuts. Also, the background video on the menu screen looks pretty smooth now.

So I think it's just a matter of reducing the resolution down on the SP3. Oddly enough, turning Depth of Field or Enhanced Elevation on/off didn't seem to affect my framerate at all. The hardware from the SP2 to SP3 must be significantly different in several areas. Seems like it's a matter of fine-tuning for your device.

In the end, I wouldn't say it runs great on my SP3 i5, but it's passable. It's odd, though, that Civ V runs great on it - super responsive and lag free (with fancy graphics options turned down, of course). I'll probably just play Endless Legend on my gaming rig and save the tablet for less demanding games, at least for now.

[asadex]

same here, sp3 is not a great gamemachine!

[{Wolfy2k++}]

I dont know about other devices, but at least on my Surface Pro 4 and with current version 1.5.12 the touch control does not seem to work. Pinch to zoom is definitely broken and the alternative way of using right click is a bit annoying. The surface pen moves the cursor, but does not register clicking. I would not recommend to buy the game for tablet playing.