Playing mouse era games with a touchscreen or pen

Hankering after a little Space Colony nostalgia, I thought I would have a go at playing Space Colony HD on my touchscreen Windows 8 convertible.

Apart from scrolling around the map (pushing the mouse beyond the borders of the screen), the interface appears to be ideal for it (the basic operation is click to select then click elsewhere to interact with another game element). The trouble is I'm having the same problem I had trying to play it on another convertible with a pen interface.

In both cases (touch, or pen) a single tap does nothing other than move the pointer. A double tap acts like a single tap, and the normal tap and hold for right click does nothing (on the pen you can tap while pressing the side button, but on the touchscreen there appears to be no way to get it to recognise a right-click, so once something is selected it stays selected).

Is this a general problem with pen/touch in games which don't explicitly support it, or is the problem specific to Space Colony?

Is there a way to get Space Colony (and possibly other games) to recognise single tap as a single left mouse button click, and a tap and hold as a right click?

Are there any other options I should consider? Since the game is 4:3 and my display is 16:9 there is plenty of blank screen real-estate, so is there any way to have that touchscreen space populated with virtual buttons for left click, right click, and arrow keys etc?