Moving on to Direct3D

:)

Well, DirectDraw is over, and I'm moving on to Direct3D. I thought this would solve some of my problems but (sigh) I'm still getting the mouse flicker thing happening. I used the tutorial from DirectX 4 VB and the mouse still does it.....if anybody gets the same problem or thinks of a way to fix it (DirectX8, Direct3D) then post here please! :)

Thanks for the help so far :)

Is it not just some driver problem you are having?

It all depends on what type of DirectX Run-Time you are using. That problem generally occurs when you are running the debug version of DirectX. Change over to the Retail version and you should be fine.

I have the mouse flickering problem too. Kind of like DirectX draws on top of the mouse cursor, and then the computer puts the mouse on top, and the DirectDraw loop draws on top of the mouse cursor again... and again....:eek:

IcePlug is correct. DirectX "owns" a part of the desktop real estate. The only problem is that the mouse still owns it all. Normally there is no problem, but some video cards have a problem overlaying 2-D accelerated graphics onto 3-D accelerated windows. Changing from Debug to Ratail run-times usually does the trick because there is less processing to do and the mouse has time to redraw during the vertial refresh. The final solution to this problem is to hide the mouse cursor and do all the mouse cursor processing yourself. It's a pain, but sometimes necessary.
Either that or get another video card, or find a way to over-clock the one you have.

This wouldnt be too hard. If you wanted you could go the whole way and implement full DirectInput, but you might not want to. You could just use the ShowCursor to show/hide the cursor itself. The cursor becomes invisible but still active, enabling you to have a custom sprite/surface for the cursor.

if i understand your problem correctly i believe i had the same problem myself. Go to your form object and change its properties to be BORDERLESS. (everytime i moved my mouse it flickered and sometime i could see the windows window behind my app)

!

Thanks for that help :) ......It didn't quite fix the mouse problem......but it DID fix seeing other applications flicker through the background :) .....I changed the Borderstyle of the Form to 0 (None) ......It's quite helpful......less flickering but still happens....I'm going to go ahead still with trying to make a custom mouse since the flicker is still there though..... This is a really good tip though for anyone else who's having the same sort of problems :)

Thanks again

Did you change the form's backcolor to black? Thats something I do as well.

:)

I remember seeing this problem when I enable the hardware cursor when playing "No One Lives Forever" Prolly gonna have to create your own mouse to correct, if a retail game can't even fix it.

Ah yes, this is a problem I always used to have. When you're about to blt to your primary surface, before the blt use the ShowCursor api to hide the cursor, and then show it again after the blt. That should fix your problem.

Jim

If you use a BackBuffer in a window, you'll get the flickering too.

Then you should, as said 20 times before, really use ShowCursor.