My son is disabled. He plays this PC game called Tibia, just a simple point and click game.
I noticed when he played he would have to click 2 or 3 times before his character would move. This was because his hand spasms and moves before the release of the down press. So what I'm looking for is a way to skip straight to the click without waiting for the mouse release.
Here is an AutoIt script. First install AutoIt. Then create an file with the extension .au3 (so like test.au3) and put the following text in there:
#include <AutoItConstants.au3>
HotKeySet("{ESC}","Quit")
While 1
Sleep(1)
If _IsPressed('01') Then
MouseClick($MOUSE_CLICK_LEFT)
EndIf
WEnd
Func _IsPressed($HexKey)
Local $AR
$HexKey = '0x' & $HexKey
$AR = DllCall("user32","int","GetAsyncKeyState","int",$HexKey)
If NOT @Error And BitAND($AR[0],0x8000) = 0x8000 Then Return 1
Return 0
EndFunc
Func Quit()
Exit
EndFunc
You can doubleclick on the script to start it.
As soon as you press the mouse button down it immediately clicks. If you press Escape the script stops.
I have made it into a little program. You can download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZcAO8apIbl0SY4vYZPUzW8htYjnIyIe3/view?usp=sharing
The free and open source AutoHotKey (AHK) can do this very easily:
#IfWinActive, Tibia
LButton::
Click
return
LButton UP::
; do nothing, avoid spurious "up" events
return
The #IfWinActive makes sure that the behaviour triggers only within that game. If the string "Tibia" is not in the actual window title of the game, you can use a spy application shipping with AutoHotKey to find a correct selector. This solution is purely event based, so has no performance overhead and does not lag behind if the PC is busy.
This can be arbitrarily extended. For example you can change it so that if you press another key, the behaviour is temporarily disabled, you could opt to act the 4th or 5th mouse button as a click-and-release left button, and so on. Have a gander through the AutoHotKey Usage and Syntax chapter to see what's possible.
AHK can provide plenty of "quality of life" features, only limited by your imagination. For example it can scan the screen for specific images/icons, and perform actions if it detects certain things, and so on. I'd highly recommend for someone who is limited in what they can do with mouse or keyboard to have a deep look into it.
Gantendo has generously provided an excellent solution.
If, for whatever reason, that solution doesn't work for you and your son, or you desire a tool with additional features and flexibility, I can highly recommend X-Mouse Button Control (XMBC) by Phillip Gibbons.
XMBC is a feature-rich gratis (donations accepted by the author) software tool for Windows that allows you to define functions of all pointing device buttons as well as combinations of buttons. It handles events such as "button up" and "button down" very well. It is extraordinarily powerful and flexible.
Can your son use a trackball instead of a mouse? This lets him lift his fingers off the ball before clicking on the buttons.
A touchpad is another solution, again he can lift his fingers before clicking. However most touchpads have tap-to-click which is likely to be very frustrating. Make sure that the pad allows this feature to be turned off before buying one.
Or he might prefer using his feet to trigger the mouse buttons. These appear to the computer as second mouse, but it only sends button clicks. Some can be configured to send ctrl/shift/alt with the click. A list of them is available here, amongst other places
https://www.healthyworkstations.com/productbygroup.asp?PrGrp=1158
I found this by doing a web-search for 'mouse button pedals'
Windows allows several mice and keyboards to be connected (and used at the same time - they act as one), so the family can continue to use the standard mouse if they prefer it.
There have been some great free solutions presented here. On the costly side, you could buy him a "gamer" mouse, a lot of them come with software that allows to remap buttons on your mouse. You can easily create macros and assign them to whichever click/button on the mouse. The brand Razer and its software razer synapse allows you to do such things, I've had a very similar usecase where I remapped keys on the keyboard to execute "key release" on "key press", and to top it all off, you can assign mouse/keyboard profiles to certain applications so that this particular behavior only happens when using that specific application.
There's various software and hardware to address some of the issues disabled people have with using computers. This isn't an exhaustive list, by any means, but they seem to address your specific issue (or similar) with needing longer mouse presses to represent a click.
I haven't used any of it, so I don't know how well they work. Also, I'm not affiliated with any of these lists or the devices/software on them.
Point-N-Click is a free virtual mouse designed for people with disabilities that make it harder to use click a mouse. As long as the user can move a mouse, trackball or other pointing device, he can make the virtual mouse click.
https://patient-innovation.com/post/539
Computer Accessibility Software
https://inclusiveinc.org/pages/computer-accessibility-software
X-Mouse Button Control (XMBC) allows you to create application and window specific profiles. This in turn, allows you to re-configure your mouse behaviour for individual applications or windows. For each profile you can also configure up to 10 'layers' of different button configurations which you can switch between using hot-keys or mouse buttons.
https://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm
This factsheet provides details of some of the alternative keyboard, mouse and other pointing devices available. It also gives information on adaptations you can make to standard keyboards and mice. There are so many choices and variations, we cannot cover every single piece of equipment in this factsheet.
https://abilitynet.org.uk/factsheets/keyboard-and-mouse-alternatives-and-adaptations
In the USA the Trace center does much of this work, try contacting them https://trace.umd.edu/contact/. They should be able to point you at a local accessment center that will have the 101 different mouse replacements designed for disabled people to try out.
