How to Show Mouse Cursor without losing mouse capture?

xi57 · February 3, 2023, 3:02am

I finally got a chance to dive into this to see how to fix it.

I’ll try to make a full tutorial for this later, but for now here is the procedure:

github.com/x157/x157.github.io

Tutorial Request: How to Take Control of the Mouse with CommonUI

opened 03:11AM - 30 Jan 23 UTC

x157

tutorial request

As of UE 5.1, this code implicitly changes the input mode to Menu: (maybe only i…f you start in `Game` input mode?) ```c++ PlayerController->SetShowMouseCursor(true); ``` And this code does not change the input mode at all: ```c++ PlayerController->SetShowMouseCursor(false); ``` This means any time I want to show/hide the mouse as a part of normal game play I need to explicitly manage the input mode and mouse capture settings every time the mouse visibility changes. In my case, I'm trying to use a widget that is on `UI.Layer.Game` that is sometimes active and sometimes not active. I do not want all the input to stop working for the game, I just want the user to be able to click a widget if they want to, or not click it, **while still playing the game**. Ultimately I solved the problem by overriding `ULyraHUDLayout::GetDesiredInputConfig` such that it returns a different config for when I want the mouse to be visible during gameplay compared to what it returns when I want the mouse to be invisible. (Also had to explicitly disable `bIsFocusable` for the HUD Layout, or it sometimes starts stealing input). This also required overriding the base `ULyraActivatableWidget::GetDesiredInputConfig` to manage look input ignore settings in the various scenarios since Lyra provides no visibility into or access to set look input ignore preferences. Finally, a complete and total overhaul of `UCommonUIActionRouterBase::ApplyUIInputConfig` was required, I literally had to throw out that entire method and rewrite it all to get it to work. Part of that included not completely ignoring look/move input ignore preferences like it does by default. (In 5.1 this requires a custom engine, in 5.2 theoretically it will not). With all of this in place, I had to write a virtual `PlayerController->SetShowMouseCursor` (which itself is not virtual, so another engine hack required) and any time I want to show or hide the mouse in my extended `SetShowMouseCursor` I also explicitly call my (hacked to be public) overridden Action Router `ApplyUIInputConfig` with the appropriate config for a visible mouse (or invisible as the case may now be). For all of this to work, the HUD and the C++ need to agree that the appropriate Input Mode is `All` (Game+Menu). And the mouse capture in my case was `CapturePermanently_IncludingInitialMouseDown` with an invisible mouse, and `CaptureDuringMouseDown` with a visible mouse. Furthermore, since I use the mouse for Look input, I disable Look when the mouse cursor is visible, though Move is still active. --- Additional reading related to `Game` capture and mouse weirdness: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/why-axis-value-of-moveforward-event-is-0-when-left-mouse-button-event/577686/5?u=xi57