Erratic mouse in pool games

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

Moderators: Cat_7, Ronald P. Regensburg, ClockWise

Post Reply
enryfox
Inquisitive Elf
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 10:55 am

Erratic mouse in pool games

Post by enryfox »

Hi,
Sheepshaver latest build, osx 10.11 and apple magic mouse 2; the mouse runs perfect in any games I tried so far with the exception of two pool games (virtual pool and ultimate pool): in both cases the movements of the table or the pool stick are erratic, jumping from side to side or rotating randomly. I tried a basic USB logitech mouse, but results are the same. There seems to be something odd in the mouse emulation, but I do not see any option to tweak in the pref file. Is that a known limitation ? (Virtual pool is reported as working in the compatibility table).

thanks
bye
User avatar
Ronald P. Regensburg
Expert User
Posts: 7821
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Re: Erratic mouse in pool games

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

SheepShaver uses two distinct ways of displaying the mouse cursor, one ("hardware cursor") in window mode and the other ("software cursor") in full-screen mode. If the issue is manifest in window mode, you could try full-screen mode. If the issue is manifest in full-screen mode, you could try window mode. Not sure if this will solve the problem, though. Possibly SheepShaver uses the software cursor in these games in both window mode and full-screen mode or neither software cursor nor hardware cursor provide what is needed in these games.
Last edited by Ronald P. Regensburg on Tue Mar 29, 2016 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason:  
enryfox
Inquisitive Elf
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 10:55 am

Re: Erratic mouse in pool games

Post by enryfox »

I tried both windowed and full screen modes with both the magic mouse and an ordinary usb logitech mouse: the result is the same, mouse movements are perfect with the UI, but as soon as I start playing pool it goes havoc. I think pool games require high precision mouse movement hence they are accessing the data in a different way which is not fully emulated in SS (maybe a low level ADB ?).

thanks
bye
enryfox
Inquisitive Elf
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 10:55 am

Re: Erratic mouse in pool games

Post by enryfox »

Update on the issue: I found another game which has the same issue (alley 19 bowling, no less) and it works on both BII and SS. The issue is present with both emulators so it must be something common to both SS and BII.
I tried the game in BII on a windows pc and, to my surprise, the mouse works perfectly, no sign of strange behaviour.
It must be something specific to the osx build of the emulators OR something in my iMac; I do not have another mac to test, so i'm left clueless...

regards
Enrico
User avatar
adespoton
Forum All-Star
Posts: 4226
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 5:11 am
Location: Emaculation.com
Contact:

Re: Erratic mouse in pool games

Post by adespoton »

See Ronald's note above. It's likely relating to hardware and software polling of the mouse input -- possibly related to SDL 1.2.

If someone can get BII and SS compiling using SDL 2.0 (this will take significant rework of the code calling SDL), that might fix the issue, but otherwise it is unlikely to be fixed.

[edit] Just read your PM explaining that it's not due to full screen or windowed mode in the emulator, but full screen mode in the game itself. That's a head scratcher. Could be due to polling and ADB emulation as you mentioned. Still possible that SDL is the issue, but there's even less chance of a quick win if Windows works and OS X doesn't.
Post Reply