Request: Some more (possibly customizable) buttons on the UI

[Bearroneous]

Problem Description

Hello, firstly I hope this is in the right place and is ok to ask.

Would it be possible to have a few more buttons in the main UI, for things like boarding the nearest ship, stopping, targeting asteroids etc? Similar to the already present Attack, Deploy, etc buttons in the bottom-right. Like what gestures do, but for some on screen buttons.

If possible these buttons could be turned on/off in the options for those that use a smaller screen and want to avoid clutter, but still select the few extra buttons they want.

Or a default handful/placement of buttons which the user could choose the action for, just like setting a gesture.

I am playing on a tablet and while the gestures for some of these actions are fine, I feel like I am missing the precision that just a few more proper buttons could provide.

I don't mind the gestures and they are a great way to shortcut stuff on a touchscreen, but sometimes they do things like select ships if I finish the swipe over the ship, or if things are busy I might have to draw the gesture a few times to get right, and of course even just doing the gesture in the screen space makes my flagship want to face that direction.

One thing I continue to struggle with is directing my fleet to harvest flotsam, it turns off constantly while doing other things and then I need to gesture again to turn it back on. A button that changes colour when harvesting is on/off, and touch it to turn back on would reduce the amount of gesturing I do massively. Or even an option in the settings to 'force harvest flotsam to on' when there isn't combat happening (when the red alert symbol is on screen in the top left.)

Related Issue Links

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Desired Solution

A few more optional/customizable buttons for different actions would be greatly appreciated. And a 'force harvest flotsam' option.

Alternative Approaches

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Additional Context

By the way, thank you so much for making this port, I found Endless Sky a couple months ago and have been greatly enjoying playing it on a tablet.

The only other feature request I would like to make, but is probably something the main game would need to implement, is a half/25% speed mode, like the fast-forward speed mode. Because I do find combat rather difficult sometimes in the larger engagements on a touchscreen and slowing down a bit to better target ships and pilot my own would be a godsend.

[thewierdnut]

The buttons are fully customizable via plugins.

You may want to give https://github.com/zuckung/endless-sky-plugins/tree/main/myplugins/additional.command.buttons a try

[Bearroneous]

Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction! I will have to give it a try. I haven't used plugins yet and am not sure how to on android as I can't access where the game files are. But I will have a look! Edit: Woo! I didn't realise you had added an 'import' to the plugin screen. I was worried I'd be delving into the files but you've made it so simple. Thanks!

[thewierdnut]

on the preferences->plugins tab, there is an import button. just feed it a zip file containing your plugin, and it should import just fine.