Character bounces while looking at mouse cursor

[Munkie_m4n]

I made a custom mouse cursor that is always set at the position of the mouse. My player character is set to always look in the direction of the mouse cursor. When standing still, everything is fine, and my character looks toward the mouse cursor. However, when moving (using 8 directional movement) there are some problems. If my character is moving in a direction opposite of the mouse cursor, it will bounce when I unpress the movement key. Also, if I put my mouse cursor at the edge of the screen and then move back and forth the character will move toward the cursor. I just want him to look at the cursor, not move toward it. It is for a shooter game.

[aenever]

Can you post a basic .mfa example?

[Munkie_m4n]

Here, use the arrow keys to move and alt+f4 to exit.

MovementTest.mfa

[chrilley]

What happens is that whenever you move the object its default 8-direction movement overrides the direction you set via events. Once you let go of the controls the object still has some speed that it gradually loses due to the de-acceleration value and since it is also always moving in its current direction it will home in on the target cursor. That makes it appears as if it is bouncing.

There are various ways you can go about to avoid this. I've attached one solution that I like.

Basically you split your player object into a collider(playerCollider) object and its visual representation(playerSprite) that is constantly placed at the collider's coordinates. The playerSprite doesn't take any controller input into account and will keep looking at the target cursor while remaining on-top of the player's position.

[Munkie_m4n]

This works perfectly! Thank you.