Multi monitor cursor restriction to primary monitor

[GSDFan]

This is for those of us that use a multi monitor setup when gaming and suffer the occasional game minimizing when the mouse cursor wanders onto the second monitor and a mouse button is clicked. I find this as an annoyance when this happens in the middle of something and the game, in this case Skyrim, does not recover and I lose the progress since the last time I saved.

 

A quick internet search turned up multiple programs to do this, but all needed to be run before you launched the game. I wanted something that could be launched from MO and would quit when the game exited. I found a solution in a freeware program from SnakeByte Studios called Cursor Lock.

 

In looking over the feature list, I came to the conclusion that this would be a handy program to add to the MO third party tools and any multi monitor gamers tools. There was even a solution for other Steam games provided by this program. Sort of a MO for the mouse cursor.

 

 Features as stated by the author:

•   Locking only when focused–requires no special user interaction, nor does it interfere with task switching between screens.
•   Uses a superior method of capturing the cursor compared to other solutions (e.g. MouseTrap).
•   Ability to open one program and lock another allows Cursor Lock to work well with launcher programs.
•   Can confine the cursor to window borders, in addition to a whole screen.
•   Customizable hotkeys allow for complete control of locking in any situation.
•   Alternate locking modes that run in the background for full user control and special circumstances.
•   Intuitive GUI support program for quick setup of Cursor Lock shortcuts.
•   Integrated help system for shortcut setup program.
•   Highly optimized and efficient locking program that uses practically no memory or CPU.

 

I downloaded the program from the site and Cursor Lock comes in a convenient installer package that lets you install to any location you choose. I opted to install it in the Program Files (86) directory and I did not notice any problems launching from MO or any game problem after testing for about an hour in Game.

 

The install was easy, just double click the downloaded executable and follow the prompts. At the end of the install you have the option to run the program when you finish.

 

Now comes the fun part. Cursor Lock will do all the work for us. On the main screen there will be four tabs. We are interested in the “Shortcut†tab. On this tab are four icons that relate to what can be done in the tab. They are Program Mode. User mode, User strict mode and unlock mode. Hovering the mouse over the icons will change the text in the window to the right of the icons.

We are interested in the “Program Mode†button, so make sure that it is selected before continuing. There are a few items in this view that we can use to set up the actions we need.

The first is the Open Program option. Put a check in the box to activate that edit field and press the button to the right of it. Navigate to where Skyrim is installed and select skse_loader.exe and click Open.

Next click the check box next to “Lock Program†and press the button to go to the Skyrim directory and select TESV.exe. Again click Open to return to the main window.

 

At this point we are just about done. If you noticed the box at the bottom of the window changed to include the arguments for the shortcut that can be created when the “Create Shortcut†button is pressed. Click in the box and select all of the text there and copy it. Start Note Pad and paste the text in there so we don’t lose it. Clicking the Create Shortcut button will create a shortcut on the Windows desktop with the string in it also. This is good for other programs, but we will not need it for MO and Skyrim.

 

Next start MO and go the create executables dialog and create a new executable and call it something like “Cursor Lock SKSEâ€. In the binary box go to where Cursor Lock is installed and click on CursorLock.exe and select open.

Remember the text string we copied earlier, that gets pasted into the Arguments box. When finished click Add and close. You now have a Cursor Locked, SKSE shortcut to Skyrim. Test it out and enjoy.

 

There is one other thing we can do and that is create a shortcut to the Desktop to run it without starting the MO user interface. If you want to use the –p “profile name†add it to the MO created shortcut.

[DoubleYou]

Sounds like a useful utility. Might be best to move this to the utilities forum.