The number of times a run gets ruined or I just die outright because I accidentally tap the wrong place or just accidentally tap the screen at all is making me want to stop playing entirely.
Nearly every time it's entirely out of my control and something causes it to happen.
That gap between the search and quick slots? You can click there and your character will move. Many times I will be trying to search and my character will go kill themselves instead.
I desperately need to be able to select a tile and confirm the action to move or attack.
Edit: Another small thing this would resolve is when I intend on examining something and I thought I hit the examine button but apparently missed, then I end up doing something I did not intend on doing. This literally just happened to me where I was trying to examine the two crystal chests in a room to determine what kind of items are inside, and instead of examining one of them I just opened the chest.
I have rarely mistapped, but it hasn't really been enough to be an issue (with me, it's usually mistargeting a wand by a square). I don't think I've ever had a zoom turn into a tap. That might be just the touchscreen in question.
So, couple things you can maybe do.
You could use a device less-prone to it. I assume that you don't want to get a new device just to play SPD (though I can imagine that if you get mistaps in SPD, there might be other apps where it's also frustrating).
You can try cleaning the device screen. Probably won't help, but won't hurt much either. It'd be the first thing I'd try.
You can tap to interrupt movement. That's not gonna help if even one step is enough to do you in, though.
You can use a USB or Bluetooth pointing device, like a mouse or trackball, if you are willing to carry them.
You can use an attached USB touchscreen, if you are willing to carry one. That will have different touch detection hardware and can be larger, easier to avoid mistaps in gaps.
You can use a USB or Bluetooth keyboard, if you're willing to carry one. There are some small, folding keyboards the size of a smartphone, and they provide some perks, like the ability to do reasonable text entry. That has a physical key for search, and quickslot hotkeys. I don't know whether there is (currently) a keyboard binding for zooming and panning other than default zoom, going off the wiki keybindings page:
https://pixeldungeon.fandom.com/wiki/User_interface
If you also have a laptop and are willing to carry one, you can play there (and it has some nice perks, like physical keys). SPD is not a terribly resource-intensive game, and a used laptop can be had on eBay fairly inexpensively -- it doesn't need latest-and-greatest hardware.
It might be possible for developers to change the SPD interface to deal better with touchscreens that are a little twitchy (maybe have an alternate zoom method?), but I don't know if there's going to be a fantastic solution...confirming each move is gonna be agonizing. Right now, the only option is to adjust interface scale (which might help with mistaps hitting the gap). You can also reposition the toolbar -- I don't know if that helps with mistaps in the gap for you at all.
EDIT: Touchscreens work via capacitance, so how moist your fingers are is a factor. My phone has impressed me with how well it works even when my fingers are outright wet (though not as well as if I dry them), like with condensation from a drink, but according to this, for people with dry hands, this can be an issue:
https://www.macintoshhowto.com/iphone/ipod-or-iphone-difficulties-with-dry-fingers.html?amp=1
I've never done that, but I suppose it might be worth a shot -- or, if you're in a very damp environment, getting condensation on the screen or something, could try wiping the screen or fingers dry with a shirt.
I think you missed a core part of my post: sometimes in life an external force can cause me to tap on the screen when I did not even intend to. It's not really an issue of my touchscreen being 'twitchy'.
All of your suggestions are missing the whole point. Though, I appreciate the intent to help. I want to play on my phone because of the convenience of the fact I always have it on me. If I need to carry an external device to solve the problem, I'd sooner just not play.
I believe my suggestion is a good solution: tap to select and an extra button to confirm the action.
Specifically for the "zoom being detected as a click", I don't click when trying to zoom. So there has to be something different between your situation and mine. It isn't going to be SPD's code.
So either your phone or you are a factor. I appreciate that you don't have a switch to just magically fix it, and if you did, you'd have switched it. But point is, this isn't some kind of fundamental issue with touchscreens.
There are many, many apps on Android that use pinch-to-zoom. There isn't anything there that's specific to SPD.
Does it make sense to build a workaround into SPD for it? I mean, maybe. But if you have the problem in SPD, you're going to have the same issue in every app that uses pinch-to-zoom -- the code that deals with detecting touch isn't in SPD. Say you get a patch for SPD. Then do you go to the next app and say "I need a workaround for flaky touch detection in this app too"? That is, the more-reasonable thing to change is going to be in hardware or possibly systemwide, not to add a feature in every app using pinch-to-zoom to try to mitigate the problem.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-available-applications-in-the-google-play-store/
I don't know what percentage of those uses pinch-to-zoom or similar gestures that rely on finger-down detection, like dragging or swiping. I'd guess that 10% is probably conservative. That's gonna be something like a quarter-million apps that would need to be patched.
Patching on a per-app basis isn't a super-efficient way to solve the problem.
I had a keyboard once that had wonky debouncing in its controller (that is, some keyswitches would occasionally send a double keypress). I eventually stopped using the keyboard, but because I happened to like this keyboard, I wrote and for a while used something to debounce the keys at a higher level. Eventually, tossed the keyboard.
But I'm not gonna go out and ask every software package out there that takes keyboard input to implement a workaround for the keyboard. It just makes no sense -- it's not a sane use of developer time. The problem I have is a hardware problem, and even if I'm gonna work around it, it makes sense to do at a systemwide level, where the input is being processed. If it can't be worked around systemwide at a software level, I'd replace the hardware.
Now, if you want to go implement this feature and nurse it to inclusion, I bet that you can get it in. But I'm assuming that you're not asking because you are interested in implementing it yourself and want approval or guidance -- you're asking because you want someone else to implement it.
Is someone else gonna implement it? Maybe. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. I've seen many, many people try and get people to implement features on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, a game whose development I've followed and which has a lot more people contributing code, and even there, there is always a huge disparity between people who want someone to implement features and people who have time and are willing to go implement them. You said that you're ready to just stop playing the game because it makes you that upset, that you're "desperate". I'm looking to provide ways in which you can help yourself, where you're not gonna be sitting and hoping that someone is gonna go out and add that, because I think that you've got good odds of being disappointed.
If you don't consider any of those acceptable, if I were you, I'd go try and file a feature request on the GitHub issue tracker. That'll probably maximize your chances of keeping developer eyes on it; they'll either leave it open as something to do or close it as "won't do". But I'm gonna be blunt: I think that the odds are probably against someone going and implementing it, and I think that the more-likely-route-to-success is going to be an action that you can take yourself.
You seem to be focused on the wrong thing. Mis-clicking is an issue in Pixel Dungeon on mobile, period. Simply because a simple tap or click can have drastic consequences. The issue of pinch zooming being registered as a click is most likely just due to not getting both fingers on the screen at a close enough time for it to register as a pinch zoom or something along those lines. It's not super common, but it happens sometimes. This chance circumstance would increase if I have to zoom in and out more often to try to reduce mis-clicks. However, I only mentioned this as an aside to another comment and is not really a part of the main issue at hand, so I don't know why you're so focused on it.
I made this thread to just simply reach out and talk to other people about this issue. I am interested to know if this issue is more common than it seems simply because no one really called much attention to it yet, or something like that. I just wanted to have a discussion on the subject. Maybe someone else has another idea to help mitigate the issue that is much simpler. Perhaps it could lead to a dev of one of the versions would see the discussion and a suggestion and think it's a good and simple enough idea to implement, or maybe someone else attempting to implement the feature. That would be fantastic. Or just maybe I might find the time to try to implement it myself.
Ultimately, I think it is useful to open a conversation about it, because nothing will happen without it. It's also nice to just vent about the issue and would be reassuring to hear when other people also encounter this and are frustrated by it.
Now, on a separate note. I would like you to understand that your comments, while I assume are well intended, still come off as both condescending and dismissive of these struggles I am expressing frustration over. That's just not a nice thing to be on the receiving end of and I'm assuming that was not your intent, so I think it's important to communicate.