[EM] Mouse cursor leaves monitor on two monitor setup *FIXED (Mouse Lock option added)*

[Cerxi]

I just picked up EM on Steam yesterday, but it's rendered almost completely unplayable by a small bug; I use two monitors, and I'm playing EM on the right one, but every time I move the mouse too far to the left, it reappears on the other monitor, and clicking anything forces EM to minimize.

I've tried everything I can think of; changing resolutions, windowed/fullscreen modes, changing all of it again without the Steam overlay turned on, changing it all AGAIN while running the .exe raw from the folder, with no Steam involved at ALL.. (I really thought Steam was the problem =P)

Before anyone makes this suggestion; no, turning off the second monitor is not an option.

[Dengar]

Cerxi

Can't help you here, but hang in there and somebody who uses more than one monitor will be along soon. Us old hands are a bit busy at the moment helping out the Steam guys!!!


See you out there sometime and be lucky!

[Maarschalk]

Hi Cerxi, welcome to the game and forum...Hope to see you out there some time!...

I'm not using 2 Monitors either. However I do not think you can have the game Maximized/Open and Browse the Computer or Internet at the same time! As soon as you try to open another application Evochron Mercenary will minimize! I think it is on Purpose this way to save resources and prevent the game from crashes and prevent people from using cheats to get an unfair advantage. Evochron Mercenary is one of the few games that does not have Cheats! So it all comes down to skills and tactics and experience! Even with one Monitor you can not have Evochron Mercenary Window Maximized open while browsing the Internet or your computer or running another application not related to the game!......

[bar10dr]

Hi Cerxi, welcome to the game and forum...Hope to see you out there some time!...

I'm not using 2 Monitors either. However I do not think you can have the game Maximized/Open and Browse the Computer or Internet at the same time! As soon as you try to open another application Evochron Mercenary will minimize! I think it is on Purpose this way to save resources and prevent the game from crashes and prevent people from using cheats to get an unfair advantage. Evochron Mercenary is one of the few games that does not have Cheats! So it all comes down to skills and tactics and experience! Even with one Monitor you can not have Evochron Mercenary Window Maximized open while browsing the Internet or your computer or running another application not related to the game!......

That works fine here, I just press F1 to bring up the cursor in-game and I can move the mouse over to my other screen and interact with whatever programs I have running just fine.

What he wants is the opposite, he wants the game to lock the mouse cursor inside the game so it cannot traverse into the other screen by mistake.

I don't know why it doesn't minimize the game on my end, I run the game on the main screen perhaps that's why?

[Jaga]

Only two ways I've found to accomplish this: a special piece of software that "locks" the mouse inside the designated display, or disable the second one while you play and enable it after. I use the latter - I don't like superfluous software on my system.

[Archy]

i wonder if this is by design or is it a bug waiting to be fixed.. it can be hair raising to find your mouse has taken off to the other screen during a battle...

[Alaric]

I have the same problem. I find the only way to alleviate a bit of the annoyingness is to circle your ship to the opposite side of where the monitor is. For instance I have my game on the left screen and a normal screen on the right. If i go into battle i line my ship on the right side of the battle and circle left so im always pulling the mouse towards the game monitor...hope that makes a bit of sense lol. It won't fix the problem but it should help a bit.

Believe me when I say I feel your pain, got blowed up a few times due to my mouse wandering away

[Vice]

i wonder if this is by design

If I recall correctly, this was by request for the 'point mode'. This allows the player to move the pointer off the screen to use it on another monitor. This behavior should not be the case with the 'direction modes' however (unless the game is minimized with Windows-D or alt-tabbed to another program).

[TJJ]

i wonder if this is by design

If I recall correctly, this was by request for the 'point mode'. This allows the player to move the pointer off the screen to use it on another monitor. This behavior should not be the case with the 'direction modes' however (unless the game is minimized with Windows-D or alt-tabbed to another program).

Could you lock it to the window in point mode, but only when the input is being used to control the ship? (i.e. when there isn't a menu screen up)

I use MouseClipmyself to achieve this manually, but the above solution would be superior.

[Vice]

It might be possible to trap the mouse, but I'm not certain it would work reliably and it would need to be optional (a number of players apparently expect to be able to move the mouse off one monitor onto the other at any time). One test that may help determine the effectiveness of a such an option would be to find out what happens when you drop the game to a reduced window, then move it over to the far right monitor (using the new options in the swscreen.txt file), does the mouse cursor then stay locked in at the minimum X position (far left)? If so, that would suggest an optional limit might work for the point flight mode.

MouseClip is probably one of the better options to use in the meantime.

[mantikob]

I'm still getting mouse drift with mouse direction (and locking the Vsync).

Just fyi. I'll be trying mouseclip or cursorlock later tonight.

[Ahhzz]

I'm sorry, but to dredge this back up, how in the heck does a game get set to fullscreen, and not lock the mouse in the game? I use a mouse, not a joystick, to fly. How in the world are we expected to fly in combat if the stupid mouse jumps off screen in the middle of battle? How in the world does this get set this way? And why would anyone want to lose control of their mouse mid-battle? Is there any logic to this at all? I want to like this game. I REALLY want to like this game. But this has got to be almost the dumbest thing I've seen in a game in a long, long time. Like before D3 and real money AH. Like before turning WoW into a playpen instead of a game. Like a LONG time, and really, really ludicrous. Is there any setting that fixes this?

[Vice]

Many games allow the mouse pointer to move from monitor to monitor in reduced or full screen windowed modes. And many players want to be able to move the pointer over to another monitor, using the 'Mouse Point' flight mode at least. There are several options available to you though. Efforts to try and trap it from within the game using a FSWM mode have produced little success without effecting/harming mouse functionality outside of the game (when minimized, task swapping, re-trapping from other programs, inconsistent behavior across display modes, etc).

Several options include the following:

- Switch to a Locked (FS) screen mode, which should lock the cursor to one monitor on most systems, but there are drawbacks and considerations as described elsewhere on the forum. The Locked full screen options are available for an in-game option though that doesn't require any external software. For Optimized (WM) modes, the following are options:

- Disable second monitor while gaming.

- Use Dual Display Mouse Manager: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ddmm/ (probably the most popular option gamers currently use)

- Use Mouse Clip: http://mc.gethyper.co.uk/

- Use Dual Monitor Tools: http://dualmonitortool.sourceforge.net/

[Ahhzz]

Many games allow the mouse pointer to move from monitor to monitor in reduced or full screen windowed modes. And many players want to be able to move the point pointer over to another monitor, using the 'Mouse Point' flight mode at least. There are several options available to you though. Efforts to try and trap it from within the game using a FSWM mode have produced little success without effecting/harming mouse functionality outside of the game (when minimized, task swapping, re-trapping from other programs, inconsistent behavior across display modes, etc).

Several options include the following:

- Switch to a Locked (FS) screen mode, which should lock the cursor to one monitor on most systems, but there are drawbacks and considerations as described elsewhere on the forum. The Locked full screen options are available for an in-game option though that doesn't require any external software. For Optimized (WM) modes, the following are options:

- Disable second monitor while gaming.

- Use Dual Display Mouse Manager: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ddmm/ (probably the most popular option gamers currently use)

- Use Mouse Clip: http://mc.gethyper.co.uk/

- Use Dual Monitor Tools: http://dualmonitortool.sourceforge.net/

A response from Vice : I feel honored I'm reading thru several different guides, slowly, and your name and input is all over the place. You've certainly put in more time to supporting this game than some community reps and dev teams I've seen in higher profile games. Appreciate the efforts you've made to make the game easier for the rest of us.

I have zero problem with a game running in windowed mode have a moving mouse cursor. That's not the issue. This is a game running in FullScreen, which allows the mouse to escape the focus. I have never played a single game that allowed that. I have played several that have issues when you alt-tab to a different window, Windows-D to the desktop, etc. That, I expect to run into. But programming which requires the player to deal with an escaping mouse during combat, without a simple checkbox to disable this function? Blows my mind.

I tried the LockedScreen modes, none of which actually locked the mouse to the game, and all of which crashed with various errors, to the desktop. Fine, crash to the desktop when I alt-tab. But simply when I'm trying to escape a dogfight, and click to fire, ending up on the desktop? Ridiculous.

Having to resort to third party tools simply to make the game playable after coming up on 4 years? Really just leaves me baffled.... In a click-RPG, or maybe even an FPS, I could easily see not bothering to put a focus-lock on the mouse, or at least one without a toggle or checkmark somewhere. But in a space sim, where your mouse is all OVER the screen for, what I assume in the higher levels will be, close to half the time you play? I really can't comprehend the logic.... It makes zero sense.

I'll load one of the player-provided fixes, and see how it does. It's not like it's the first time a player/team has had to mod a game to fix what the devs screwed up, or couldn't be bothered to fix before they deserted the project. But, by all indications (including an update, literally, days ago), this is still an actively supported game. And yet, this problem still crops up over and over, with people asking how to fix it, and the best the devs could hit upon was "Disable your second monitor"??? That's just weak.

Hopefully, the player patch will resolve and make it playable. Thanks for your response, Vice. I'm afraid it did very little but annoy me, but that was through no fault of yours, and I can certainly appreciate the effort and time, even if I dislike the content. Thanks again.

[Vice]

It may not be quite as easy as you apparently think it is to incorporate. Plus, the problem can surface and be caused by factors outside of the developer's control as well (3rd party overlay programs for example). I'll provide some more information, in case you are interested, on an alternate technique I've considered and tried in the past within the development platform I use.

To force lock the mouse cursor within a limited region on a multi-display setup required the use of a function known as 'mousemove'. The game had to poll mouse inputs and then re-center the cursor position within each loop. It then took the measured change and applied it to a fake mouse cursor using two updated integers for X and Y placement. This way, the mouse never actually leaves the center of the screen, but to the player, it appeared as though a cursor is moving where they point.

The main reason I have not used this approach involves the lower detail output result. Measuring movement has been much less precise than polling actual mouse position values. I suspect this is largely due to the polling measuring distance over static time (each loop) with forced centering after each sample compared to finer results provided by simply measuring distance over any rate of time, that is, whether the player moves the mouse quickly or slowly, every step is carefully gauged and received. When I tried such low sampling levels many years ago (Evochron Legends), it was almost unanimously negatively received and players wanted the more fine motor control provided by accurate 1:1 mouse sampling of the actual position rather than the low detail movement-to-position porting. Other problems associated with movement measuring and centering are that the mouse pointer will always want to lock to the center, even if the player tries to access another program or wants to move the cursor over to another monitor. Some players (perhaps like yourself) would gladly accept these limitations and reduction in control. However, many players want to access other programs while the game is running on another monitor. For example, there are 3rd party map tools and websites they like to have open and use while playing the game.

In a game where high detail control results are appreciated and in many cases, needed for mouse flight control, it's important to provide that level of control and detail. Another benefit of this approach is that the actual sampling system scales nicely with whatever screen resolution the player is using at the time.

Considering such factors, how would you like to see forced mouse limitations applied considering bounds detection generally doesn't work and auto-centering has its limitations and drawbacks?


Edit:

Tell you what, I'm willing to put some time into exploring what might be possible at this point. The game's codebase has changed a lot over the last 5 years or so since I started developing it and that could be a good thing. There may be some options/techniques available now that weren't as feasible years ago when I was developing and tuning/tweaking the mouse flight and input system.

Lets try this, send me a msinfo report on your system (steps available here: http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/faq.htm#8 ). Forget the save game, just send the msinfo report. I'll see if I can set up a system similar to yours to test on, then try out some ideas on limiting the mouse to the display field only. If I can achieve success, then I'll send you a test build for you to try on your system. Then if that works, I'll expand it out to the beta team for review and testing. Then if it all checks out, I'll incorporate the change(s) into a future update.

[Edited on 5-18-2014 by Vice]

[Ahhzz]

My understanding of your needs as a dev, and the restrictions on your functions imposed by too many things outside your control, could probably fill a thimble. Unfortunately, like so many, all I have to go on is voyeurism. When I play a game, I have little choice but to refer to previous incarnations of the genre, and reviews of what the "other people" say. Every RPG I've ever played gets held up to The Elder Scrolls: Arena, with some barbarian yelling "Squeaky wheel gets the Kick!" (Baldur's Gate), and the RTS group gets a mixed trophy wall of Age of Empires, Civilization, and Warcraft casting a golden glow to read by. Space sims? Elite, followed by Freelancer, with the first Wing Commander looking over my shoulder, asking about "Maniac". Then there's the elephant in the next room (you know who) saying "I'm coming.....".

So, when I played E:M the first time several months ago, I looked at the complexity, and said "Ok, got to come back to this one when I've got time....." Finding myself completely disappointed by the latest incarnation of the E* series, and unwilling to go back into Eve, but driven to distraction by a compulsion to fill a space trading/mining/etc void, E:M came back to mind. I'm just beginning to realize how extensive the "peripherals" are surrounding this game. Installed EM_Tools last night, and definitely appreciated being able to see how much hull damage I had actually done to the different fighters I was dodging. (For some reason, the targeting data in-game doesn't quite sink in for me). The guides for "how to" and "what not to" are beyond extensive. But the issue with the mouse was a rapid douse of cold water-filled "What the heck?!", only louder, with more expletives.

Eh, I wander. Final point being, the offer to not only re-evaluate a previously passed programming nuisance, but to specifically take a look at the system in question, is above and beyond. The extent that I can't believe the focus-lock is an issue in a game of this magnitude, is dwarfed by your proposal to look for a solution. I'll email the zipped info file your way (I assume the sw3dgames gmail account is where you want it). In fairness, I was able to get "mouseclip" to behave later last night, and it does indeed provide the needed restriction. So, while still a sunburn, I've got a t-shirt on it, and there's tons more to do at the beach to distract.

I sincerely appreciate your time responding, the explanation of how the cursor controls are managed at this level, and the willingness to re-examine what was obviously a well picked-at wound. Thanks for re-opening the scar. The effort speaks volumes, even if the surgery is a failure.

[picommander]

As it is now the game allows to Alt-Tab an editor window into the full screen game window which I can than make notes on while still seeing most parts of the game's surrounding. Surely not needed in combat but very useful for exploring if you prefer a table not going down under tons of written paper. So my conclusion is that Evochron is not using a 'native' full screen mode where this would hardly be possible. I'm just somewhat concerned that this discussion would probably lead to break this functionality. Hopefully not...

[Vice]

Ahhzz, thanks for the report, I've gotten started on prototyping and will you keep you posted.

picommander, I am taking that into careful consideration. My #1 goal is to not break current functionality as I am aware of the expectations and interests of many of the players and how they currently use the game regarding screen modes, task swapping, mouse control, etc. Ideally, any 'mouse lock' option will be a checkable option that can be enabled or disabled as desired by the player with existing behavior remaining as one of the options.

[Ahhzz]

Sorry, I thought it, but never made it to paper:
Obviously, any thing that I want, or the others that are commenting (or complaining, as I was) on the focus-lock, comes second to breaking something that many have gotten used to.
Ideally for me, would be locking the mouse to the focus screen, with the ability to alt-tab out to the desktop, leaving the game intact, somewhat as a "false background", much the way it does now, with the ability to interact with the second monitor, or an actual background task. I do like the ability to interact with the apps I have up in the background on the 2nd monitor (and my third, when I save for the 290 upgrade). I would love it if another game I frequent, Warframe, was as forgiving as this one when you DO go out of game. I spend a lot of time researching on that one as well. I just want to go off screen when I WANT to go off screen, not because I'm yanking away from a pack of "Gonna-freaking-eat-me-alive!!!"

Thanks again Vice. *cheers* Beer or wine of your choice, you ever get down South