Mouse Cursor onscreen even when using controller

[Deleted member 12790]

Would still be nice if steam added a toggle to hide the mouse cord or when a controller is detected, wonder if they will ever add such a feature

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The ability to hide the mouse from the display varies from OS to OS, to API to API, and even from Fullscreen to Boarderless fullscreen. That's why it's a problem. For example, if you're using SDL to write your game, you need to pass SDL_ShowCursor(SDL_DISABLE) to the init routine when creating your context, but if you pass SDL_SetWindowFullscreen(SDL_Window* window, SDL_FULLSCREEN_DESKTOP) to the video initialization method, it gets overriden and the mouse still appears. And if you use OpenGL or DirectX, it's different too.

So it's not a universal fix kind of thing, otherwise people would haved fixed it by now.

 

[ussjtrunks]

Wouldn't it be easy to program the toggle to change the mouse cursor to an empty icon thereby rendering it invisable and when you deactivate the toggle it would reload your mouse cursor icon. Then it would still be displayed at all times but you just wouldn't see it.

Doing it properly sounds so complicated

 

[Drain You]

I knew most of this functionality was built into steam but I still found myself using third party software. I guess I just never really thought about it before, old habits die hard I guess.

Thanks for all the info Krej

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Wouldn't it be easy to program the toggle to change the mouse cursor to an empty icon thereby rendering it invisable and when you deactivate the toggle it would reload your mouse cursor icon. Then it would still be displayed at all times but you just wouldn't see it.

Doing it properly sounds so complicated

Click to shrink...

it's funny you recommend this, because ages ago, when I started programming, I used to write Windows 95 programs that did this haha.

The problem is, what if your game crashes? Or someone has to alt-tab out? You wind up with an invisible cursor and it becomes really hard to navigate in windows 10 to the place you go to reset the mouse icon without seeing the mouse (in old windows, there used to be keyboard shortcuts for everything, but not so much in windows 10).

And, again, outside of windows, the methods you use to change the mouse icon varies from OS to OS and even Shell to Shell.

 

[ussjtrunks]

Microsoft really screwed the pooch on this it seems lol, suppose if there was someway to reactivate it when you moved the mouse it'd help, but I imagine the animation to change all that in a split second wouldn't look preatty

 

[Beekle]

Get controller companion on steam. It is life <3

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Microsoft really screwed the pooch on this it seems lol, suppose if there was someway to reactivate it when you moved the mouse it'd help, but I imagine the animation to change all that in a split second wouldn't look preatty

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I wouldn't really lay the blame with microsoft. Even ignoring the changes to windows 10 and potential problems the end user could have with an invisible mouse, changing personal user settings like that during runtime is really tacky and looked down upon. I would actually be pretty upset if a program I used actually went through windows and changed my mouse icon settings every time it started up or closed, even if it worked right.

As for the API changing stuff, that sort of organically grew through decades as standards change. It's kind of a complex problem because every single player in this equation has a different solution, and they all don't gel.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Get controller companion on steam. It is life <3

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Steam does everything Controller companion does and more, for free. Meanwhile Controller Companion costs $3.

 

[ussjtrunks]

Out of interest do you know how special k goes about hiding the mouse cursor?

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Out of interest do you know how special k goes about hiding the mouse cursor?

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It uses special windows hooks on a game by game basis. Essentially, game specific detection that go through and deactivate the mouse in windows. I pretty much just got through calling that tacky, haha.

The program has a whitelist. You can actually find games which don't work with it's mouse hiding feature, and the author asks that you email him that info so he can work it into the program.

 

[MMaRsu]

you don't need to use sketch third party drivers and programs like DS4 Windows to use the touchpad as a mouse pointer.

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But ds4windows is perfect and not sketch at all

 

[Deleted member 12790]

You know, I forgot to mention that there is also a way to specifically move the mouse to a position on the screen and map that as a button press.

Let's make it so that when we press the guide button + the A/X button on the controller, the mouse will move to the bottom right corner of the screen. Under the Controller config menu, under steam chords, select the button cluster that represents the A/X button:

Now, when the screen that lets you map the input pops up, select the icon with the mouse arrow pointing to concentric circles on the right:

select this icon and you will see the following screen:

Move your mouse to the bottom right corner of your screen, and press the A button to confirm. Steam will now ask what you want to do when you let go of the button:

Select "Remain in new position" to leave the mouse down there after we release the button combination.

Now lets give our little macro a name. In the key mapping screen, highlight the text space at the top and type in "HIDE MOUSE"

That way, when we look at the controller config screen (or share templates online) people will know the function of that button, rather than getting something vague like "Move mouse." By naming it "HIDE MOUSE" we can clearly see that pressing guide + A will hide the mouse in the corner of the screen for us:

 

[ussjtrunks]

what kind of black magic is that :o man you should make a thread with these tutorials they are really good :)

 

[BeI]

Don't bother with any of this shit. Just use the built in steam tools to move the mouse out of the way. It's amazing how people always recommend unnecessary 3rd party programs instead of just telling people to use the tools built into steam specifically for this.

it's in the steam controller config menus.

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Yeah, I tend to find it quite annoying when people always recommend other software for controllers on PC when Steam is just so much better at pretty much everything. With Steam being so widely used on PC, you'd think people would know more about the controller support it has. It's pretty amazing how much added functionality you can add to a controller on the desktop or in games thanks to activators, action layers, and more.

I often talk about Steam input when it comes to playing World of Warcraft, where people always incorrectly say that controllers don't have enough buttons for all the hotkeys you need. Thanks to Steam input though, you don't need a keyboard worth of physical buttons when you can use Steam's software to greatly increase what fewer physical buttons on a controller can do.

I just wish they would also officially add the functionality of GLOSC so that you can force a Steam overlay over the desktop and other things it might normally conflict with.

Also there probably should be a new Steam input mega thread here at some point.