Feature Request: Remap mouse movements

[Rekrul]

You're probably wondering why anyone would want to remap mouse movements. Well, I'm thinking that this could come in handy when playing some old DOS games in DOSBox. For example, Star Wars Dark Forces doesn't provide any way to look up/down using the mouse. Instead, the default mapping for mouse forward/back is to move forward/back. Not only is it very inconvenient to use the keyboard for vertical aiming, I find using the mouse to move completely impractical. So it would be nice to be able to send simulated keypresses when I move the mouse forward or back. Then I could make it send the keys for looking up/down, and have a semi-working version of mouselook.

I've looked for other programs to do this, but they all assume that nobody would ever want to re-define what the mouse movements do.

[phil]

I can see your point, but I dont think it will be feasible, at least not in XMBC...
For starters, its only going to be of any use for games that dont have ANY mouse support (so that's dos box only?) and its only going to work if said windows will work with simulated input (I'm not sure they will)..

I think to be honest, its outside the scope of XMBC. It might be an interesting thing to try standalone, but it would not fit well in the XMBC code, even if it is possible.

Have you looked at autohotkey - maybe you can write a little script in that to do the job (I'm not sure if it can get mouse movement as input but I dont see why not).

Thanks,
Phil

[Rekrul]

I can see your point, but I dont think it will be feasible, at least not in XMBC...
For starters, its only going to be of any use for games that dont have ANY mouse support (so that's dos box only?) and its only going to work if said windows will work with simulated input (I'm not sure they will)..

XMBC seems to work in games running in DosBOX. I mapped the mouse wheel to the up/down keys and when rolling the wheel, it caused me to move forward/back in the game. Granted, it wasn't perfect, but it did work.

I think to be honest, its outside the scope of XMBC. It might be an interesting thing to try standalone, but it would not fit well in the XMBC code, even if it is possible.

Are mouse movements handled differently than the mouse wheel by Windows?

Have you looked at autohotkey - maybe you can write a little script in that to do the job (I'm not sure if it can get mouse movement as input but I dont see why not).

I looked at it, but it doesn't seem to provide any way to remap mouse movements, just the wheel and buttons.

Of course such a thing wouldn't be necessary if DOS programmers hadn't been so dumb. People will defend them and say that since FPS games were so new, it's natural that they didn't think of using the mouse to look up/down. Personally I think that's crap. The games already used the mouse for turning/looking left/right. When vertical aiming was added, you now have two directions of movement. How much of a leap of logic does it take to think of using the same controller that you use for horizontal aiming for vertical aiming? Conversely, how could anyone think that moving the mouse forward/back to move in the game was a good idea? Not only does this require you to constantly pick the mouse up and re-center it on the pad, but it makes it virtually impossible to navigate narrow walkways without falling off due to accidental mouse movements.

In case you're wondering, I missed the days of DOS. I used a Commodore Amiga right up until the day I started using a Windows 98 machine.

[phil]

lol, some of those old dos games were great in their day but they are not generally something I would try to play now - I'm much happier playing Amiga games on UAE (even on my phone lol) than dos games (most of the DOS games were better on the Amiga anyway - although I was always more a PC person, my brother owned the Amiga lol)

The mouse movement is handled differently but not significantly. But that is not what I would be worried about, and I'm not saying it not possible, only that I'm not sure XMBC is the place to do it. I think a standalone program to do this would be much easier to handle - perhaps because of the mess it would cause in XMBC the way it currently stands, not least the possibility to completely screw your mouse up - its really not suited to most applications and thus most users!

I will think about it but I've not really got any time at the moment, I keep saying I must spend some on XMBC but I haven't found any recently!

Thanks,
Phil

[jips]

Maybe you should try "Multi Task Tool (Mouse Move Remapper)"