Implementing a Custom Mouse Cursor in XNA

Question

I have 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.

Answer 1

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way, the tool is there: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.xna.framework.input.mouse.setposition.aspx

In fullscreen it is easy to use, just do some controlled repositionings and the edge problem is gone. For some other games this could lead to the problem of a trapped mouse in windowed mode, but if you do it just right I think you may solve your problem without upsetting John McDonald:

Whenever the player has moved the mouse too quickly, reposition it to where the game cursor ends up, this way the player can actually still drag the mouse outside the window if so desired, and you don't get the clamping problem until you'd have to cap the cursor movement anyway.

Answer 2

Your object should follow the cursor...

Vector2 MousePos = Mouse.GetState().Position;

if (dragging)
{
   YourObject.Position += 0.1f * (MousePos - YourObject.Position);
}