Analog mouse joystick (Blobby Volley / DX-Ball)

Local implementation, 2026-09-10; not deployed to production.

Both desktop registry entries use touchControls.mouseJoystick on the left and mouse button 0 on the right (Jump / Launch). The joystick sends mouse motion, not arrow keys. Both axes remain available for menu navigation; gameplay predominantly uses horizontal motion. Direct canvas touch remains available. Blobby keeps its shipped player-2 mouse scheme.

The fixed 112px circular pad has a radial 15% dead zone. Outside it, speed is maxSpeed * ((tilt - .15) / .85)^responseExponent guest pixels/second, with both profiles using maxSpeed: 900, responseExponent: 3, capped at full deflection. Fractional movement is accumulated, diagonals are normalized, and elapsed frame time is capped at 32ms to avoid a catch-up jump. Speed does not depend on browser refresh rate or Fit/Fill presentation scaling.

Phone precision follow-up: exponent raised from 1.7 to 3, reducing half-tilt speed from about 199 to 63 guest px/s while preserving 900 at full tilt. Quarter tilt is about 1.5 px/s, accumulated fractionally rather than rounded away each frame. The profile can tune speed and exponent independently. The stick integrates velocity into a guest cursor position and supplies its delta alongside it; this is not a mapping from stick position directly to paddle position. Absolute-position games use that cursor; relative-input games can interpret deltas with their own sensitivity. These two profiles remain cursor-oriented; this change does not introduce an FPS-look mode.

Only a held, deflected stick schedules animation frames. Center, release, cancel, blur, resize, hidden document, layout replacement and teardown stop movement. One touch owns the stick; a second touch can hold Jump/Launch. Coordinates are converted from the current native guest cursor through the existing inverse presentation mapping before normal mouse event delivery.

Fit uses the shared board-area geometry: 148px landscape side rails, or a 200px portrait bottom control band, respecting safe areas and keyboard freeze. Phone spacing follow-up: joystick/action bottom clearance is 36px plus the bottom safe area (formerly 18px). Portrait controls follow the actual game bottom with a 24px gap when space allows, rather than hugging the phone bottom. The primary Jump/Launch button aligns with the joystick top; Fit/keyboard sit 18px BELOW the primary action. The group is clamped above the safe bottom when space is tight. Landscape retains the outward 8px side placement and also puts the primary action above its utility pills. Fill retains full-screen coverage and translucent overlays. No extra fullscreen-close control is introduced.

Regression coverage: test/test-touch-controls.js (speed response, dead zone, mapping, ownership, simultaneous click and release/cancel/teardown), test/test-single-app-keep-aspect.js (native-surface Fit rails / portrait band and unchanged Fill). A local Chrome touch probe at390x844 and844x390 exercised both real apps; before the precision follow-up, half deflection moved roughly54 guest pixels per250ms versus roughly245 at full deflection. Phone speed/precision and extended gameplay remain manual acceptance checks. A second probe entered a Blobby match and a DX-Ball level via the right action button, repeated the steering/action checks in both orientations, and captured visible gameplay without page errors. This is Chrome touch injection, not a real iPhone acceptance pass.

Follow-up: canvas touch is explicitly direct for both profiles, independent of software-cursor/relative-mouse heuristics. The DOM bridge publishes mouse position at touch-down and before a tap/drag/right-click button event; Blobby menus hit-test their cached WM_MOUSEMOVE position (see test-blobby-volley.js), so button coordinates alone are insufficient. Empty overlay areas remain pointer-transparent.

Mouse-joystick profiles send left-button down at touch-start and up at lift or cancel, just like a physical mouse. A deferred instantaneous down/up at touch-end was missed by Blobby's frame-based button polling even after the cursor position was corrected. These two profiles therefore do not turn a stationary canvas hold into right-click; ordinary app tap/long-press behavior is unchanged. A100ms direct touch on the visible Start label in the800x600 browser menu started a match before any joystick or Jump interaction.

On the live iPhone without viewport-fit=cover, Safari supplied a712px-wide landscape viewport and the controls added its50px side inset a second time: joystick x68..180 overlapped game x148..564. Mouse-joystick landscape corner padding is now8px within that already-safe viewport. Explicit cover viewports retain their notch insets; portrait layout is unchanged.

Pointer lock policy

Browser mouse input defaults to absolute coordinates. relativeMouse: true explicitly opts a game into pointer lock and relative deltas; Quake II, Half-Life Uplink and Deus Ex carry that declaration. ShowCursor and ClipCursor do not imply relative input, and cursor visibility is mirrored independently. Diablo variants use direct touch and retain absolute input. There is no cursor-state capture latch. Other games needing relative input must declare it after their input path is confirmed.