Tell me more ×
Game Development Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional and independent game developers. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 7 down vote favorite

Im thinking of making a game that requires two mice to play. It needs to register the movement separately from one another. Is this possible? Or does the Windows architecture not allow for such things?

Thank you.

share|improve this question
I don't think its possible, when you plug a mouse to a laptop you only have one mouse pointer. – eiefai Feb 17 '12 at 2:43
I'm pretty sure I've seen demos using two mice. – jhocking Feb 17 '12 at 3:09
People don't have usually more than one mouse plugged on their PC, but good question. – Gustavo Maciel Feb 17 '12 at 3:42
I know it's possible because I have used an API that did this, sadly this was many years ago and I can't find a link. It allowed up to 4 mice and keyboards plugged in to the same machine and when your application detected inputs, it would indicate which mouse or keyboard did the action, and it also drew multiple cursors on the screen. – John McDonald Feb 17 '12 at 4:52

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Turns out you're in luck, kind of. http://superuser.com/questions/29432/using-two-mice-in-windows-7-dual-mouse-dual-cursor Because mice are just another kind of HID (human interface device) you can plug in as many as you want, but custom software is required to actually do anything with them. Beyond that link is a page to Microsoft's research called Multipoint and examples of how it was used.

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

Yes. Multiple mouse input is possible. Here are some example games.

Quick explanation:

You don't need any special API or code to use Mouse Party. You can implement it yourself using standard Windows APIs. Reflexive games use Raw Input which is a standard API built into Windows XP.

With sample code (zip file).

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

I found the library that I used back in the day. Yay!

http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/software/SDGT/

It's designed for use with .Net and XP, but the DLL works on my Win7 64-bit machine. The DLL has some quirks, but at a minimum, it's a proof of concept, and it's documented.

Edit: Not sure I'd recommend using this library these days, the other answers seem to provide some more recent, and probably cleaner results.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.