Hiding the mouse cursor during a game

Enchantermon · Post by **Enchantermon** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:57 pm

Hello all. I just started using ScummVM for playing King's Quest and I have a problem with the cursor, or rather, its existence. The older games like KQ2 and KQ3 didn't have a cursor, but when I play them in ScummVM, it adds one. I was originally just going to move the cursor off of the screen, but even if I do that, whenever the game loads something (a new screen, for example), I can still see part of the hourglass appearing in the corner. If I were playing the games just to play them, this wouldn't bother me so much, but I'm recording them for YouTube so I would like to get rid of the cursor completely. Is there a way to do this? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!

envisaged0ne · Post by **envisaged0ne** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:23 pm

Currently there is no way of doing that. But there has been discussions about it, and the overall opinion is that it doesn't bother users enough to change it. You can always use DOSBox. It doesn't have the cursor.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:29 pm

DOSBox also has a built in video recorder. Though, it wouldn't record sound events from a microphone at the same time...

Enchantermon · Post by **Enchantermon** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:32 pm

Unfortunately, DOSBox tends to record jerkily enough to bug me, which is why I was investigating other options. That's really very unfortunate; if other people have brought it up, wouldn't it at least be prudent to introduce a way for people to switch it on and off at will, like a checkbox or an .ini variable?

MusicallyInspired wrote:DOSBox also has a built in video recorder. Though, it wouldn't record sound events from a microphone at the same time...

It does? I didn't know about that. I'm not using CamStudio to record my audio, so if DOSBox will capture the video better than it will, I'll just use that. Thanks for letting me know about it.

However, I still think my above point is a valid one, isn't it?

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:42 pm

Yes, it's valid. It'd be nice to have as an option. Did you add it to the feature request tracker?

Enchantermon · Post by **Enchantermon** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:46 pm

MusicallyInspired wrote:Yes, it's valid. It'd be nice to have as an option. Did you add it to the feature request tracker?

No, I didn't know there is such a thing; I'm not familiar with how open source projects operate. I'll look for it and add it.

And, of course, DOSBox's recording/screenshots feature doesn't seem to work (either that or it's not saving the files where it's telling me it will).

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 11:51 pm

The capture folder is set by the dosbox.conf file. Usually, the capture folder is in the same directory as DOSBox.

Here's the Feature Request Tracker. You have to register an account at SourceForge, though.

Enchantermon · Post by **Enchantermon** » Sat Nov 06, 2010 12:04 am

Thank you; I found it and added my request.

I had originally assumed it would dump them either there or in the game's directory, but they were in neither. In DOSBox's directory, however, there was a batch file that pointed me to the AppData/Local/DOSBox/capture folder under my user name as the place where screenshots and videos would be saved, but they weren't there, either.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Nov 06, 2010 2:41 am

Wherever the dosbox.conf file points to that's where they'll end up. If it doesn't give a pathway and just says something like "capture" than it's in the capture folder that is in the same place as the dosbox.exe file you run.

Enchantermon · Post by **Enchantermon** » Sat Nov 06, 2010 2:58 am

I figured it out. I have the King's Quest Collection from 2006 with the patches from sierrahelp.com installed. The patches create new shortcuts that I've been using to launch the game. Due to the way they invoke DOSBox and the dosbox.conf file, when DOSBox tries to interpret the path for saving the file it's passed an invalid path and therefore cannot record. I didn't notice it before because the shortcuts also disable the console by default which is where the error message is dumped. I'm sure it's fixable with a little fiddling, though. More than likely, I can just edit the conf file to use relative paths and it should work.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Nov 06, 2010 3:48 am

Indeed. Also, don't forget to install the Zip Motion Block Video codec that DOSBox uses to capture. It's also in the DOSBox directory somewhere. Right-click on "zmbv.inf" and click "Install". Otherwise you won't be able to view or manipulate it. Afterwards you can convert it to Xvid or whatever and upload it to YouTube.

Enchantermon · Post by **Enchantermon** » Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:30 am

Done, thanks.