Doc Category: Display options

One of the key features of Alt Controller is the ability to create modes and switch between them to dynamically change your controls based on the task you are doing. You can even subdivide modes into pages if you wish, which are effectively sub-modes. The downside of this is that it can be hard to remember which mode and/or page is currently active if the main Alt Controller window is not visible.

To help with this, Alt Controller provides a mode/page overlay which superimposes a text label on the screen showing the current mode and/or page. This can be enabled using the View – Show mode/page overlay option.

You can choose whether this option is enabled when Alt Controller starts up in Tools – Options – Start up.

You can assign a hotkey to toggle this option on and off in Tools – Options – Hotkeys.

You can customise the style and position of the overlay in Tools – Options – Display.

Note: The overlay is not shown when the Default mode and page are active.

Some computer games hide the mouse pointer, so Alt Controller provides an overlay to indicate where the mouse pointer is. This can be enabled using the View – Draw pointer indicator option.

Note: To use this feature, your profile must contain a mouse input.

You can choose whether the pointer indicator option is enabled when Alt Controller starts up in Tools – Options – Start up.

By default, a grey circle is drawn around the current location of the pointer, as can be seen in the screenshot above. As an alternative, you can choose to see a radial line from the centre of the screen to near where the mouse pointer is. To customise the style of the pointer indicator, use Tools – Options – Display.

Note: The rate at which the pointer position is updated is determined by the display update interval which can be changed in Tools – Options – Timing. Reducing this interval is not necessarily a good idea as it could lead to other performance issues, but there is no harm in trying this if the pointer indicator movement is not smooth enough.

In Alt Controller, you can define regions of the screen to use as mouse pointer controls. At the time of creating the regions, it is possible to specify that the regions should only be shown when the controls are in a certain mode and/or when a certain application is active, as shown below.

When using the profile, it is also possible to toggle screen regions on or off using the View – Draw screen regions option.

You can assign a global hotkey to this and other View menu options within Tools – Options – Hotkeys. Global hotkeys are keyboard shortcuts that work from any window, so this allows you to turn screen regions on and off without needing to switch back to the Alt Controller window. In the screenshot above, just as an example, the hotkey Control+# has been assigned to toggling screen regions on and off.

Note: showing or hiding screen regions does not affect any mouse pointer actions assigned to the regions – these will still be performed regardless of whether the regions are displayed or not.

You can also choose whether to show region names inside screen regions using the View – Show region names option, and this option can be hotkeyed as described above.

You can choose whether these and the other options in the View menu are turned on when Alt Controller starts up. To do this, use Tools – Options – Start up.