Mouse car control (as Racer or Vamos)

[gianni]

What about implement a mouse car control for poeple who doesn't have analogic joystic like me?Joe, can you add it to your todo file?Thanks in advance!Gianni

[joevenzon]

Yep, already in a (more recent) version of the TODO file.

[thelusiv]

Yep, already in a (more recent) version of the TODO file.

Could you update the TODO on the web site? It's really old. There are a ton of things that have been added to the list as well as many that need to be checked off (well, *'d anyway).

[joevenzon]

Okee

[FFuser]

maybe you can link the TODO and Changlog on the website with the one in svn

[abs1nth]

thanks! it's great that vdrift has implemented mouse driving - even with deadzones. a feature i always wanted but never saw anywhere else.(it's a shame that nearly all racing games ignore this great "analog" input device every computer has)but why oh why do we hide the mouse pointer (while "mouse driving") and instead display those funny feedback widgets at the bottom? it is very difficult to look at both the car/track AND those widgets! why not just leave the mouse pointer displayed and use that as an easy visible and used-to feedback mechanism (i.e. poiner at top right is full force and full steering to the right). look at how it's done in racer (www.racer.nl). what would be über-cool is if the dead-zone would be displayed on screen so i can instantly see when i hit and leave the deadzone with my mouse pointer (ideas would be: horizontal or veritical lines or a different colored (overlay) area)

[abs1nth]

and it would also be great to be able to control the right-left steering with the mouse and brake-gas with keyboard...or is that already possible?heh you can look at (the latest) racer (beta) again to see an great control customization scheme that allows for every function to be controlled different (analog, digital, mouse, keyboard, etc)

[thelusiv]

Well, in my opinion showing the mouse pointer during gameplay ruins the immersion into the game world that the player should experience while playing. However, the fact that someone wants this feature tells me that perhaps we should add an option for it, as well as an option to turn off the on-screen mouse control indicators.What I'd really like to do most though is make those control indicators easier to see. I sort of borrowed the idea for those from Live For Speed. In this game when you use mouse controls it shows a white arc at the bottom of the screen with a black box in it that slides back and forth on the arc as the mouse moves left to right. They don't have an acceleration/brake indicator. Instead they use the left mouse button for gas and right for brake. I'd like VDrift to be able to use the buttons like this too, as well as shifting with the scroll wheel. I'd also like to have something easy to see while driving like their arc, but without totally ripping off the way they did it.

[abs1nth]

EDIT: patch removedintroduces the feature i wanted (currently disabled)whats left to do is make it depend on some gui-setable variable instead of the value 0 (which means it's always disabled)ANDalways (while driving) show the mouse when this feature is enabled and always hide it when not

[thelusiv]

Hmmm, OK, could you explain in detail what happens in your patch? This is how I understand it: instead of holding the mouse in the center of the screen and measuring relative changes and using that as input, you allow the mouse to go anywhere, and use the absolute position of the mouse as input. Is this right?

[abs1nth]

Hmmm, OK, could you explain in detail what happens in your patch? This is how I understand it: instead of holding the mouse in the center of the screen and measuring relative changes and using that as input, you allow the mouse to go anywhere, and use the absolute position of the mouse as input. Is this right?

yes exatly that was the idea behind my desired mouse-steering behaviour and also the patch - steering should be controled be the absolute position of the mouse on screen... (dunno if there is something more unclear about it) currently the vdrift-mouse-sensitifity is ignored in this path since the only way it would make sense in this case is if it would really set the mouse sensitivity - how fast the cursor moves on screen - and i don't know if i can set that from SDL.by the way since small horizontal changes seemed to affect the car quite much (more than in relative steering - maybe i've got something fundamentally wrong) and there is no horizontal dead-zone (would be dumb anyway) i've introduced an additional feature in my private build - the x coordinate is multiplied by itelf - leading to less drastic movemet changes in the horizontal middle area...nearly optimal now for me ;->

[thelusiv]

Joe and I were chatting about this and we both like the idea, but were thinking of approaching it a little differently. For instance, instead of using the regular mouse pointer we think it'd be best to replace it with something subtler. Also if we display an alternate mouse pointer we are able to move it around wherever we want, and we can change the sensitivity and things like that without worrying about changing the sensitivity of the mouse itself.

[abs1nth]

EDIT: patch removed

perhaps i shouldn't have thrown it away so prematurely since the mouse handling is still the same... ;-(

[thelusiv]

If you post the patch or rewrite it, I'll see if I can put together an alternate mouse cursor and an option to switch to this mode of mouse driving in display options or something...