This is my first time using DOSBOX for a game such as this (SC2000), and immediately I was turned off by how the mouse works. I have a Logitech G500 gaming mouse that's smooth as silk, but upon launching the game, I found that anytime I move the mouse at a slower pace (such as to select stuff in the toolbars) it becomes sluggish and stutters, almost becoming unresponsive. It also seems to prefer to move either straight vertical or horizontal and will not work 'fluidly' which is extremely bothersome.

I read a 'tweak' to DOSBOX to turn locking or something off in the config, which I did, and there was no change. Is there any way to smooth the mouse out for this? If not, I'm going to be very disappointed and want a refund because it's unplayable in this state.

ANYONE? Come on.

Nevermind - figured out how to do it on my own. Not that I'm going to share this info, since the support here is so top-notch (yeah right). Never buying here again.

I just bought this game and am having the exact same problem.

I've got a Logitech MX518 optical mouse, that's always smooth (even in other DOSBox games)

Anyone had this problem? (and found a solution perchance?)

I'm optimistic since the originator of this thread found a solution, but I have not been able to .. I tried increasing the cycles, but it didn't change anything.

For me it was enough to just increase the mouse speed. If your mouse is already rather fast you could also try to uncheck "Use OS native drivers for pointer speed and acceleration". I'd also create a mouse profile for games with this issue (should be mostly low resolution games I think) within your Logitech mouse driver so you don't have to change your settings back and forth all the time. Iirc for SC2k you have to add the "DOSBox.exe" in "...\SimCity 2000 SE\DOSBOX\".


Regards

Thanks for the tip,

but could you explain where I can find "Use OS native drivers for pointer speed and acceleration" to uncheck it?

I've played a good number of low res DOSBox games and I've never had this problem before.

Basically the mouse zig-zags instead of going diagonally when moving at slow speed - if it moves at all.

(also, for some reason the game never quits normally, just freezes in DOS so I have to use CTRL-F9 to exit DOSBox)

You can find that check box within your Logitech mouse driver on the tab for your mouse pointer settings. It should be the tab where you can set your DPI sensitivity, mouse speed and acceleration and polling rate. On this tab should also be two check boxes. One for enabling angle snapping and the "Use OS native drivers for pointer speed and acceleration" one, which you can try to uncheck.

I'm still using the SetPoint driver which got replaced by the Logitech Gaming Software iirc, but the basic menu structure should be pretty similar.

This zig-zag mouse movement you mentioned was exactly what I had too. I don't know what's causing it but it looks like the mouse is slowly moving around the edges of the pixel squares and when I moved my mouse really fast it was less pronounced. That's why I tried to increase the mouse speed and - at least for me - it helped. :)

For reference I've my mouse set to 4200 DPI, unchecked "Use OS native drivers for pointer speed and acceleration", unchecked "angle snapping" (should always be off imo), mouse speed to 7, mouse acceleration at 0 and the polling rate at 1.000 reports/sec.

But basically all I had to do was to increase my mouse speed from 4 to 7. That had been enough to get rid off the zig-zagging.

The "Use OS native drivers for pointer speed and acceleration" checkbox only determines whether your OS' system mouse settings get taken into account for your mouse speed as far as I know. So if your Logitech mouse settings are rather fast (like mine above) and you uncheck it, the mouse gets faster.


Btw I have several low res games doing this zig-zagging with my normal mouse settings so I don't think it's something specific to SC2k; hence why I created a mouse profile for those. :)



And concerning this CTRL+F9 thingy I don't know. I have to do that too and, so far, it's only SimCity doing that. But if you start the game and immediately quit it again it tells you to press CTRL+F9 to quit it, so I didn't really perceive it as a big issue. But it would be better if it would simply close of course. :)

Thank you very much! I did go into the Logitech drivers (or Logitech Gaming Software) and unchecked the 'mouse acceleration' and presto! the mouse works 100% normally in SimCity 2000!!

Yay!!

I uninstalled the game and downloaded the installer again and re-installed, so any tweaks I made to the config files were erased when I did that - and I tried to turn on the mouse acceleration in the Logitech drivers and yes, the mouse becomes 'bad' again. It's definitely the problem!

Again many thanks!

(PS curiously, after re-downloading the game and installing it again, it quits normally now, no more CTRL-F9.. so double yay!!)

This wasn't really working for me. I find it a lot easier to play windowed than fullscreen. I also changed the filter to forced. This is in your SimCity 2000 Special Edition\dosboxSC2000.conf file

Find the scaler= line which is probably set to:
scaler=normal2x

Change it to
scaler=hq2x forced
- or -
scaler=normal2x forced

This makes it larger on high resolution displays. Since it is running in windowed, all mouse issues disappear.

That's great advice Thraka, it works 100% :)