Hardware Cursor Support

Well, I've passed 100 hours of evaluating Unity3D Pro. Many headaches like no included A*Pathfinding and an inability to make Terrain rotations. I've got over those hurdles.

Now I'm trying to implement a custom hardware cursor. I'm working on an RTS game, where the state of the cursor is used to communicate quite a lot of visual clues to the player. Using a software cursor is NOT ACCEPTABLE, any lag with the cursor will kill the gaming experience, as documented elsewhere on this forum.

So far my exhaustive searches have lead to:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/70163-Hardware-Cursor-Plugin/page2?highlight=custom+cursor
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms648045(v=vs.85).aspx
http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=sdragoon&logNo=150096564973

and I've finally come up with the following script based on the three Windows-only solutions I can find through Google. When I run the game (within the Editor), the custom mouse pointer appears, but then vanishes when the 3D scene appears, resetting to the default windows cursor. I read somewhere that the solution only worked on .exe builds, so I ran a build and the cursor doesn't show at all in that. (Windows 7 64-bit).

Is there anyone that has a solution they wouldn't mind sharing?

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using System;
4. using System.Collections;
5. using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
6.  
7. public class CursorManager : MonoBehaviour
8. {
9.     [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto, ExactSpelling=true)]
10.     public static extern IntPtr SetCursor(IntPtr hCursor);
11.    
12.     [DllImport("user32.dll")]
13.     public static extern IntPtr LoadCursor(IntPtr hInstance, int lpCursorName);
14.    
15.     [DllImport("user32.dll")]
16.     public static extern IntPtr LoadImage(IntPtr hInstance, string lpImageName, uint uType, int cxDesired, int cyDesired, uint fuLoad);
17.  
18.     //fuLoad
19.     public const uint LR_CREATEDIBSECTION     =0x00002000;
20.     public const uint LR_DEFAULTCOLOR     =0x00000000;
21.     public const uint LR_DEFAULTSIZE     =0x00000040;
22.     public const uint LR_LOADFROMFILE     =0x00000010;
23.     public const uint LR_LOADMAP3DCOLORS     =0x00001000;
24.     public const uint LR_LOADTRANSPARENT     =0x00000020;
25.     public const uint LR_MONOCHROME     =0x00000001;
26.     public const uint LR_SHARED     =0x00008000;
27.     public const uint LR_VGACOLOR     =0x00000080;
28.    
29.     public void ChangeCursorToArrow()
30.     {
31.         SetCursor(LoadCursor(IntPtr.Zero, 32512));
32.     }
33.    
34.     public void ChangeCursorToCustom(string filePath)
35.     {
36.         SetCursor(LoadImage(IntPtr.Zero, filePath, 2, 0, 0, LR_LOADFROMFILE | LR_DEFAULTSIZE));
37.     }
38.    
39.     public void Init()
40.     {
41.         string cursorPath = Application.dataPath+"/Resources/Cursors/normal.cur";
42.         ChangeCursorToCustom(cursorPath);
43.     }
44. }
45.  

 

Well, looks like it's the Unity GUI system that is resetting the cursor.

Anyhows, I've managed to get lubo3d's solution working for now, as I have no C++ experience.

Please Unity Team, sort this out in the main API ASAP so it also works when playing in the Editor. I nearly threw in the towel during my eval because of this.

 

When searching for a way to load another standard cursor already included n the OS, I ended up with this:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2.       public enum WindowsCursor
3.         {
4.             StandardArrowAndSmallHourglass = 32650,
5.             StandardArrow = 32512,
6.             Crosshair = 32515,
7.             Hand = 32649,
8.             ArrowAndQuestionMark = 32651,
9.             IBeam = 32513,
10.             //Icon = 32641, // Obsolete for applications marked version 4.0 or later.
11.             SlashedCircle = 32648,
12.             //Size = 32640,  // Obsolete for applications marked version 4.0 or later. Use FourPointedArrowPointingNorthSouthEastAndWest
13.             FourPointedArrowPointingNorthSouthEastAndWest = 32646,
14.             DoublePointedArrowPointingNortheastAndSouthwest = 32643,
15.             DoublePointedArrowPointingNorthAndSouth = 32645,
16.             DoublePointedArrowPointingNorthwestAndSoutheast = 32642,
17.             DoublePointedArrowPointingWestAndEast = 32644,
18.             VerticalArrow = 32516,
19.             Hourglass = 32514
20.         }
21.    
22.         private static void ChangeCursor(WindowsCursor cursor){
23.             SetCursor(LoadCursor(IntPtr.Zero , (int)cursor));
24.         }
25.    
26.         [DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "SetCursor")]
27.         public static extern IntPtr SetCursor(IntPtr hCursor);
28.    
29.         [DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "LoadCursor")]
30.         public static extern IntPtr LoadCursor(IntPtr hInstance, int lpCursorName);
31.