When using DirectInput, it is my understanding that the mouse wheel delta should be stored in DIMOUSESTATE objects lZ variable. However, when I am scrolling with my laptop touchpad instead of an actual mouse with a wheel, it seems like the scroll is not being recognized since 1Z remains zero always. Is there a better solution than using WM_MOUSEWHEEL if that will even work? Since I am currently using DirectInput for the rest of the input I would like to stay consistent and use that but how can I get the scroll information from the touchpad?
Thanks!
Related
I searched, but most posts are just telling me what I already have, so below is basically my code right now:
DIKeyboard->Acquire();
DIMouse->Acquire();
DIMouse->GetDeviceState(sizeof(DIMOUSESTATE), &mouseCurrState);
DIKeyboard->GetDeviceState(sizeof(keyboardState),(LPVOID)&keyboardState);
MousePos.x += mouseCurrState.lX;
MousePos.y += mouseCurrState.lY;
Any post telling me how to get absolute position just says to use those last two lines. But my program is windowed, and the mouse can start anywhere on the screen.
i.e. If my mouse happens to be in the centre of my screen, that becomes position 0,0. I basically just want the top left of my window (not my screen) to be my 0,0 mouse coordinates, but am having a hard time finding anything relevant.
Thanks for any help! :)
Following the discussion in the comments, you'll have to decide which method works best for you. Unfortunately, having never worked with DirectInput, I do not know the ins-and-outs of it.
However, Window Messages work best for RTS-style controls, where a cursor is drawn to screen. This is due to the fact that this respects user settings, such as mouse acceleration and mouse speed, whereas DirectInput only uses the driver settings (so not the control panel settings). The user will expect the mouse to feel the same, especially in windowed mode.
DirectInput works better for FPS-style controls, when there is no cursor drawn, as window messages give you only the cursor coordinates, and not offset values. This means that once you are at the edge of the screen, window messages will no longer allow you to detect the mouse being moved further (actually, I am not 100% sure on this, so if someone could verify, please feel free to comment).
For keyboard, I would definitely suggest window messages, because DirectInput offers no advantages, and WM input is easier to use, and quite powerful (the WM_KEYDOWN messages contains a lot of useful data), and it'll allow you (via TranslateMessage) to get good text input, adjusted to locale, etc.).
Solving your problem with DirectInput:
You could probably use GetCursorPos followed by ScreenToClient to initialise your MousePos structure. I'm guessing you'll need to redo this every time you lose mouse input and reacquire it.
Hybrid solution (for RTS like controls):
It might be possible to use a hybrid solution for the mouse if you desire RTS-like controls. If this is the case, I suggest, though I have not tested this, to use WM for the movement of the mouse, which avoids the need for workaround mentioned above, and only use DirectInput to detect additional mouse buttons.
Now one thing I think you should do in such a hybrid approach is not directly use the button when you detect it via DirectInput, but rather post a custom application message to your own message queue (using PostMessage and WM_APP) with the relevant information. I suggest this because using WM you do not get the real-time state of the mouse & keyboard, but rather the state at the time of the message. Posting a message that the button was pressed allows you to handle the extra buttons in the same state-dependent manner (I don't know how noticeable this 'lag' effect is). It also makes the entire input handling very uniform, as every bit of input with this enters as a window message.
DirectInput had an option to have exclusive mouse/keyboard access. I'm now moving away from using DirectInput and was wondering how I could achieve the same behavior by just using the winapi?
Edit: I guess I could just use SetCursorPos() to the middle of the window and hide the cursor via ShowCursor()
In the case of the mouse, use the Windows raw input API.
Use the flag RIDEV_CAPTUREMOUSE in your RAWINPUTDEVICE structure for the call to RegisterRawInputDevices. This will prevent mouse clicks from activating other windows. In combination with that, use the ShowCursor function to hide the mouse cursor. Those 2 things will reproduce the DirectInput exclusive mouse behavior. In its later revisions, DirectInput (for the keyboard and mouse) is just a wrapper around the raw input api.
I don't believe there is any equivalent control over the keyboard (and I don't think there was in DirectInput either.) However, this is generally not a problem since the user won't be able to get the input focus onto another app unless they specifically want to with alt-tab or ctrl-alt-dlt.
Have you looked at SetCapture()?
It would help if your question were clearer. A lack of mouse input (ie WM_MOUSEMOVE messages) to an app is generally something the app is robust to. After all, a perfectly stationary mouse won't generate any such messages. So I'm guessing that you're doing something a little unusual.
There is also a mechanism for tracking the mouse leaving your app's window(s) - see here. It involves setting up a TrackMouseEvent structure which is a little painful but it does all seem to work in my experience. I'm wondering if in fact it is this mechanism which is pausing your app?
Can't help much more than that on the info provided I'm afraid.
Use ClipCursor() to confine the mouse within a specific rectangle of the screen, such as the rectangle of your window.
Reading this article "Taking Advantage of High-Definition Mouse Movement" - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee418864(v=vs.100).aspx, I surmise that one should use raw input for more precise readings from input devices.
The article states that WM_MOUSEMOVE's primary disadvantage is that it is limited to the screen resolution.
Upon close inspection of the RAWMOUSE structure I see that lLastX and lLastY are long values and you get the delta via them.
To me it looks like WM_MOUSEMOVE and WM_INPUT is the same except with WM_INPUT you do not get acceleration (pointer ballistics) applied.
Are both WM_MOUSEMOVE and WM_INPUT limited to the screen resolution?
If so, what is the benefit of using WM_INPUT?
RAWMOUSE gives you logical coordinates for the mouse based on the mouse's native resolution.
That is, you see the actual movement of the mouse.
Windows will use the mouse speed and acceleration (ballistics) settings to update the cursor position. Because of course the two are not linked - the apparent movement of the mouse must be interpreted to generate a cursor movement else how can more than one mouse be supported?
If you wish to control a pointer, as far as I can tell there is no reason to duplicate the Windows mouse ballistics calculations. Just let windows do it. Therefore for controlling the pointer, you should just use WM_MOUSEMOVE. That is, unless you wish to disable the mouse acceleration settings in your application.
However, if you want to control the player's POV (point of view), or use the mouse to control an in-game object such as a spaceship flight yoke, then the RAWMOUSE data gives you the best possible access to the movement of the mouse, and you can implement your own algorithm to convert that into flight yoke/POV movement.
The main benefit and reason to use it is that that with rawInput you can use two mouses or more. Presently I write small game prototype which is designed to be played by two players with two mouses/mices - It is more complicated but It works and it is not bad because I do nod need to link external libs.
I'm currently writing a c++ console application that grabs the mouse position at regular intervals and sends it to another visual application where it is used to drive some 3d graphics in real time. The visual app is closed source and cannot be altered outside it's limited plug-in functionality.
Currently I'm using the GetCursorPos() function which is easy and fast enough, but I'm running into the issue that all of the data is clipped based on the current screen resolution of 1920x1600 so that all x values are between 0 and 1920 and all y values are between 0 and 1600 no matter how far the mouse is physically moved.
I need to get the mouse position before it's clipped at the edge of the screen, or possibly the deltas which I could use to calculate the current position.
I've seen some references to the windows MouseMove event but I would really not want to implement a window to make it work or especially have it as the active to receive those events.
I'm working in a windows environment and a language change is not feasible.
I might be wrong, but in Win32 land you don't get mouse move messages when the mouse is at the edge of the screen because, well, the mouse isn't moving. The usual way to get an infinite mouse area is to do the following:
Hide the mouse, get exclusive access and record position
Centre mouse to window
When mouse moves, get delta from centre of screen to current position
Centre mouse to window again
The next mouse move should have a delta of (0,0), so ignore it
Go to 3 until end of mouse move operation
Reset position, show the mouse and release exclusive access
If you didn't hide the mouse, then you'd see the mouse moving a small distance and then snapping back to the centre position, which looks nasty.
This method does require a message pump for the mouse move messages so the console application idea probably won't work with this. Can you create a full screen invisible window for grabbing the mouse?
Just get the position, and move it to the center and return the delta yourself
This is how FPS games do it
I don't have any direct experience with raw input, which is probably what you need to tap into. According to MSDN, you have to register the device, then setup your winproc to accept the WM_INPUT messages and then do your calculations based on the raw data.
Here's another relevant link.
I would like to be able to display some dynamic text at the mouse
cursor location in a win32 app, for instance to give an X,Y coordinate that
would move with the cursor as though attached. I can do this during a
mousemove event using a TextOut() call for the window at the mouse
coordinates and invalidate a rectange around a stored last cursor position
to clear up the previous output. However this can suffer from flickering and
cause problems with other things being drawn in a window such as tracker
boxes. Is there a better way to do this, perhaps using the existing cursor
drawing/invalidating mechanism ?
You can do this via ToolTips - check out CToolTipCtrl.
If you want flicker free tracking ToolTips then you will need to derive your own classes from CToolTipCtrl that use the trackActivate messages.
You may want to consider a small transparent window that you move to follow the mouse. In particular, since Windows 2000, Layered windows seem to be the weapon of choice (confession: no personal experience there).
You can overwrite OnSetCursor to get a dynamic mouse cursor. I just found a German tutorial.
German tutorial
English translated tutorial