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[Bug?] Cursor flickers when clicking hotspot

I'm not sure if this is a bug in AC or Unity, or simply a fact of life that I need to learn to work around. When clicking on a hotspot, the mouse cursor very briefly flickers. But the "type" of flicker depends on whether or not the Action List associated with the hotspot is set to run in background or pause gameplay. This occurs when the hotspot has a mouse-over cursor (in my case, an "interact" cursor, but it could be anything).

If set to pause gameplay, the standard Windows cursor flicks in. If set to run in background, the default AC cursor (as set in the Cursor Manager) flicks in. Obviously the standard AC cursor is more acceptable than the Windows cursor, but ideally I'd like no flicker to occur at all. I'd like the "interact" cursor to stay, without blinking for even a single frame. I'm also not sure what sort of implications there'd be if I went and changed all of my action lists to run in background instead of pausing gameplay. (Not sure if there's an easy way to do that en masse, or if it's possible to set that option as the default?).

I'm using Windows 8.1, Unity 5.2.2, and AC 1.51. Here are my cursor settings:
image

Comments

  • Do you have a Wait Cursor defined below? When you mouse over or interact with something and it involves a menu that fades in (like the hotspot or interaction UI), that fade animation blocks script execution for a second, and can cause the cursor (or other active menus) to flicker. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but might be worth a check.
  • @hedgefield, I don't have a wait (cutscene) cursor defined at all.
  • Is this an Editor issue or occurs in builds as well?  Your description makes it sound like the cursor flits between AC and system cursor, rather than simply disappearing - is that right?  It could well be a Windows issue as much as anything.
  • This occurs in both builds and the editor.

    Yes, it seems as though it flits between the two cursors rather than disappearing altogether. I think that's especially evident in the case of the "run in background" action lists, in which AC-determined cursors are present the whole time (albeit still with a flicker).
  • Don't seem to be able to recreate this.  As you have "Always show system cursor in Editor?" checked, wouldn't the problem instead be more along the lines of only the AC cursor disappearing.  Does this occur for you in either of the demo games?
  • using UnityEngine;
    using System.Collections;

    public class CursorScript : MonoBehaviour
    {
    // Use this for initialization
    void Start ()
    {
    //Set Cursor to not be visible
    Cursor.visible = false;
    }
    }

    I have this in an on start cut-scene and it hides the system cursor. You could try that.

  • Thanks Chris. I suppose this problem can be defined either as the AC cursor "changing" to the system cursor, or the AC cursor disappearing and the system cursor being "revealed" for a frame.

    I just tested the demo scenes and no, this doesn't occur in them, even when I set up the basement scene to use the same interaction methods as my game. I wonder if this is a UFPS-related thing :/

    Thanks Deckard, I'll give that a try.
  • Update on this: it's not limited to hotspots. The cursor "flicker" occurs whenever an ActionList is run, if set to pause gameplay.

    Outside of the hotspots as mentioned before, I can't get any sort of concrete, repeatable behaviour with regards to the cursor flicking from the "interact" to the default AC cursor (with a "run in background" ActionList). I think that's probably less important.

    This still occurs with Deckard's suggestion to hide the cursor with a script. That doesn't seem to have any effect on this problem.
  • AC, UFPS or Unity - it's rather hard to say at this point.  If using the Demo_CursorManager in place of your own when running your own game still causes the issue, we can probably rule AC out.
  • edited April 2016
    Alrighty, I've tested it with my game using Demo_CursorManager, and the results are the same. Here's a gif of it in action. First I left-click a few times, then right-click a few times (one for "use", the other for "examine"): "use" is set to pause gameplay, "examine" is set to run in background. You can see exactly what's happening:
    image

    I've also separated a few frames from the gif so you can see frame-by-frame the result (for the "pause gameplay" ActionList) when the mouse button is clicked. It's actually quite interesting!
    image
    image
    image
    image
    image
    image
    image
  • What version of Unity are you using? Do you have any earlier backup versions of your project to check whether this is exclusive to an "updated" version of either AC, Unity or UFPS. Also, with that script, you shouldn't ever see the system cursor while in a built version of your game (you may still see it in the editor though).

  • I'm using Unity 5.2.2. I just tested with a slightly older version of AC, version 1.50e, and it does the same thing. I even tried removing PlayMaker juuust in case, but no luck there either.
  • The two icons side-by-side is AC's cursor system at work.  That they stay there the whole time - and that the same CursorManager works for the demo game but not your own - suggests that it is not AC that's causing this.  It could well be UFPS, or another asset you haven't mentioned.
  • Okay, fair enough. The system cursor issue must be caused by something else. Thanks for looking into this; I'll update if there's any progress on my side.
  • edited December 2019

    Any updates on this? I have the same issue and here is what I've tested.

    When I click on any hotspot, with an actionlist inside which is set to Pause Gameplay, the hotspot's icon starts flickering along with the hotspot's label. But when I set actionlist to Run In Background, the hotspot's icon is still flickering but label is not, plus I also start to see a default main cursor icon (small circle) just for a second underneath the hotspot icon. This is very annoying and is something that my eyes always catch every time I play the game. Any ideas on how to fix this?

    Unity 2018.1.0f2
    AC 1.66.1

  • I cannot recreate such behaviour. Please update to the latest AC - even if it's in a duplicate/test project - so that we're sure this is still an issue.

    What is your Interaction's "Player Action" field set to, is the state of your Hotspot's Interaction ActionList, what is your game's "Interaction method" set to, and are you using Software or Hardware rendering for your cursor? Screenshots of all will help.

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