Cursor Node
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Usage Scenarios
World of Tanks Often, the gun reticle provided by the game can be quite difficult to see when the scenery is changing rapidly because of close-in combat, or when zooming in and out of the gunsight magnification. What CursorNode can do is to add a more visible reticle so that the player does not lose track of it even when the screen is in a flurry of activity. CursorNode will not replace the in-game reticle. Rather, a separate custom reticle is used on top of the original reticle. Since the original reticle is not always easy to see anyway, its presence does not cause a problem. In this scenario, we use the CursorNode "Cross (highlighter)" cursor as a overlay custom reticle, although any highlighter will do, including a user supplied image configured as a highlighter. The highlighter comes with 2 snap-to spots we can use to turn it into a WOT reticle. The tank gun reticle has 2 positions depending on whether the gunsight magnification is zoomed in or out. For illustration, a game configuration of 2560x1600 resolution in exclusive-full-screen graphics mode is assumed. Please note that the elements in the illustration may not be shown to correct scale.
Once the coordinates of the reticle positions are determined (CursorNode has special keys to help with this), these can be entered in the snap-to spot definition of the chosen highlighter/reticle:
The snap-to spots are incomplete until all the snap-to distances (in the green boxes) are defined. The distances control the size of screen areas the snap-to spots have influence over, and can be a little arbitrary according to user preference. For this illustration, we use the distances from the following plan:
The CursorNode highlighter cursor normally tracks the mouse pointer. However, when snap-to spots are in effect, the highlighter will be captured by the spots if it moves within the snap to distances. In the above illustration, the highlighter moving in the yellow area will cause it to snap to spot #1. Moving in the blue area will cause it to snap to spot #2. This snapping is what fixes the highlighter cursor in place and turns it into a reticle. In WOT battle scenes, the invisible in-game cursor though cannot be seen, is there nevertheless. Its coordinate is at one of the two reticle positions depending on which one is in use. What happens is WOT will move the invisible in-game cursor into the yellow or blue area of the illustration resulting in the custom reticle correctly snapping to the same position as the in-game reticle. The following are the completed snap-to spots that turn the CursorNode highlighter cursor into a highly effective reticle for WOT. The spot definitions are specifically for 2560x1600 full-screen mode resolution. Other resolutions and modes will require different spot definitions.
The snap distances A and B must be the same and calculated from: (Y coordinate of zoomed in reticle MINUS Y coordinate of zoomed out reticle) DIVIDE BY 2. Therefore, the value 60px comes from: (799 - 679) / 2 = 60. The invisible in-game cursor in WOT (in battle scenes) is moved by the game to the reticle positions as well as randomly by the user through normal mouse use. The inertia value masks out the very brief cursor movements caused by this kind of mouse activity. This prevents the custom reticle from being inadvertently dislodged from its position. The inertia value also affects how long it takes to switch the custom reticle from the zoomed-in and zoomed-out positions. The optimum inertia value must not be too long to significantly delay a genuine position switch for the custom reticle, and it must not be too short to allow very brief random mouse signals from incorrectly moving the custom reticle.
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