Replacing the Mouse Cursor

In the Windows operating system, the mouse cursor is normally an arrow. This is all fine and good for a spreadsheet, but game cursors need to be a lot more interesting! Wouldn’t it be nice to replace that drab arrow with a crosshair, or perhaps a rusty blade? Flash makes this easy. All you have to do is hide the real cursor and program a Movie Clip to follow your mouse cursor position properties. Doesn’t sound too bad. Let’s see what it takes to do it.

Let’s talk about the setup of the mouse cursor: it must be specific. What do I mean by that? The registration point has to be in a certain place. Open the demo file GDA_PROG9.2.fla to see what I mean, then check out Figure 9.5.