Limiting the speed of the mouse cursor

Posted by idlewire on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by idlewire
Published on 2011-11-14T18:38:57Z Indexed on 2011/11/15 2:13 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 276

Filed under:
|

I am working on a simple game where you can drag objects around with the mouse cursor. As I drag the object around quickly, I notice there is some juddering, which seems to be due to the fact that I can move the mouse cursor faster than the game's update/draw. So, although I maintain the offset from where the player initially clicked on the object, the mouse's relative position to the object shifts around slightly before settling as I move the object very quickly.

The only way I have found to get smooth, exact 1:1 movement is if I turn both IsFixedTimeStep and SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace to false. However, I'd rather not have to do that.

I have also tried making a custom mouse cursor, hiding the real mouse, taking the real mouse delta and clamping it to a maximum speed. Here is the problem:

  • In windowed mode, the "real" mouse cursor moves off the window while the custom mouse cursor (since it's movement is being scaled) is still somewhere inside the game window. This becomes bizarre and is obviously not desired, as clicking at this point means clicking on things outside the game window. Is there any way to accomplish this in windowed mode?

  • In fullscreen mode, the "real" mouse cursor is bounded to the edges of the screen. So I get to a point where there is no more mouse delta, yet my custom cursor is still somewhere in the middle of the screen and hence can't move further in that direction. If I wanted to clamp it to the edge of the screen when the real cursor is at the edge, then I would get an abrupt jump to the edge of the screen, which isn't desired either

Any help would be appreciated. I'd like to be able to limit the speed of the mouse, but also would appreciate help with the first issue (the non-smooth relative offset between mouse cursor movement and object movement).

© Game Development or respective owner

Related posts about XNA

Related posts about mouse