Are mouse aim plugins still being worked on?

[Terranigma]

I'm curious. does anyone know if there are any new better mouse plugins for N64 emus? I know there are some old ones, but they have strange issues. Considering all the great FPS on N64, I'm surprise there aren't more mouse plugins for the emus.

[rabiddeity]

The "strange issues" are a direct result of trying to output a wide range of mouse movements to a fixed small range of N64 joystick movement. Most mouse plugins (NRage included) spread out large movements over a period of time, so that for example if you jerk the mouse to the right, the joystick registers as being moved to the right for five frames. For games like GoldenEye, we can only turn as fast as the game lets us. But it means that when you jerk the mouse and expect an immediate response, you can't get it.

This isn't a problem with plugins. Rather, it's a limitation of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

[Terranigma]

I wasn't really talking about that. I was concern with the mouse cursor freezing on my desktop.

[rabiddeity]

That would be an issue with your plugin... hmm, try NRage 2.1 DEBUG and see if it fixes things. If not, post in the stickied thread above and I'll fix it.

[Mattster_99]

any plugins like this for mac?

[rabiddeity]

any plugins like this for mac?

Unfortunately, not that I'm aware of... :( It became apparent when looking through the NRage code that trying to make a cross-platform joystick plugin would be damn near impossible. I don't have the slightest clue how joystick input is handled in *nix or OS X.

It would be fantastic if there were an open-standard portable way of dealing with input devices on different systems. Something like QT or wxWidgets but for joysticks/mice/keyboards... I don't know if a system like that exists, but if it doesn't I'd think there would be a demand for it.

[smcd]

I don't have the slightest clue how joystick input is handled in *nix or OS X.

It would be fantastic if there were an open-standard portable way of dealing with input devices on different systems. Something like QT or wxWidgets but for joysticks/mice/keyboards... I don't know if a system like that exists, but if it doesn't I'd think there would be a demand for it.

in *nix (linux at least and probably bsd, thus macintosh maybe) there is /dev/joystick - also could SDL perhaps be an option?

[Sirmatto]

in *nix (linux at least and probably bsd, thus macintosh maybe) there is /dev/joystick - also could SDL perhaps be an option?

I'm going to have to ++ SDL, it can handle a bunch of different input types

[rabiddeity]

/dev/joystick is right out, because I'd have to write separate code for Win32 and *nix/OSX. I'm worried though that if I switch to SDL it will break rumble support again. One of the hardest things to keep working has been the DirectInput rumble support, and I'm afraid that adding another layer on top of that will break more things that I can deal with. Plus so much of the existing code is Win32 based... all the interface code, the resource files, the 16-bit Unicode strings, all the _T macros strewn all over the place. At this point I feel it would be a better idea to code a new SDL plugin from scratch, pulling in the relevant NRage stuff when it would be helpful (transfer pak support). There are a lot of things I couldn't change in NRage when I was overhauling it, because of restrictions in how the data structures were laid out. But that's a much bigger project than I can handle right now...

[smcd]

I just try to offer somewhat helpful suggestions - I'm not saying I could do better, and I appreciate the work of people who continue where others left off. When gaming picks up decently on non-Windows, I'll be leaving it for good :)

[rabiddeity]

When gaming picks up decently on non-Windows, I'll be leaving it for good :)

Hehe, you and me both! Let's hope that enough people feel screwed over with the Vista switch that the publishers will see the merit of cross-platform development. It can't be that hard if you design from the start with compatibility in mind.