Mouse lock problems

Hi Lax,

When I began m-box STO back in August 2011 STO was a mess, windows freezing, locking etc.

Today alot of the issues have been resolved but a few still remains.

1 - Mouse broadcasting is a 50-50 chance of working, i never use it with STO anymore, i dont need it and its to unreliable so i wont bother

2 - Mouse "click" lock, all the sudden mouse click doesnt work, its totally random and can happen anytime, today only way of resolving it is shutdown and restart of the session in question.

The mouse issue is what bothers me, imagine loosing your mouse in any other game you box, its pulled out a few curses of me during an evening of sto boxing i have to restart my windows 4-5 times, i get by but seriously i would pay you extra money to make this disappear.

So talk to me, why is this so hard to fix? what is it with STO that makes it so malign on mouse interactions?

Thanks!

[lax]

Umm... okay, if you really want a technical response...

First of all, every game is designed differently. There are many different APIs to choose from, and many different ways to use them.

When I first started working on supporting STO, the main problem was the game's threading model. This is one of the only games that separates the input thread from the window thread. This separation happened to cause deadlocks (where an individual window would freeze) with Inner Space, and I had to make design changes to Inner Space to support the model. This could still be contributing to a problem with the mouse.

Secondly, in order to fix a problem I usually have to reproduce it. For you that's easy, you play the game because that's what you enjoy doing, and it randomly happens while you play, and then you can come here and say hey I randomly get this problem. For me I don't regularly play the game so naturally it will be more difficult for me to even log into the game, let alone get some characters to a sufficient point within the game (e.g. problems at a login/character select screen are easy compared to ones requiring being logged into an area and moving around together, etc) and then hope the same problem happens within a reasonable timeframe. And then a solution to the problem may or may not be obvious. For you it seems like it should be easy, I should just change the line of code that says "Mouse.Working=False", but

Third, I have to know about the issue still existing and its importance. Until this week or so it looks like the last time any STO problems were discussed was April, but there's been unrelated posts in this forum since then. I have also made numerous changes to the input systems since then, sometimes issues like this get solved by unrelated fixes and then never need to be discussed again. So it wouldn't have surprised me if this was not an issue at all anymore, but apparently it is. I became aware of it again when you recently mentioned it, and it is on the table to get looked at again very soon...


You can also send me the "Diagnostics for game freezes" as mentioned in the other thread, which could potentially help narrow down the mouse issue you are describing. (You'd get the diagnostics from the frozen client)

Thanks for the answer,

Psychology 101, understanding a problem makes it less frustrating

one of the reasons i asked for an explanation was just to see if i can figure out a workaround.

but ill see if i can generate some diag, should i use the "freeze" or "crash", ill use both but to be honest game neither freeze or crash, its just left mouse click that stops working.

Anyway, i box EQ, EQ2, swtor, wow, D3 and ofc STO and so far only sto has had any (for me) noticeable hiccups so this perhaps says more about STO then innerspace/isboxer and STO actually has a history of mouse problems with certain g-cards/drivers.

[lax]

I just wanted to say... the known issues regarding the mouse in Cryptic Studios games (Champions Online, Neverwinter and Star Trek Online, and probably even their "Secret Project" assuming it's a new MMO using the same engine) have been solved as of Inner Space build 5852, which is now live!

I've done about 8 - 12 hours continuously with this game for 3 days. I haven't seen any issues like this on my 5 accounts. I'm gonna guess that its been fixed