About Mouse position and Particle effects

#1 So, you want to display a smoke effect in a 3D world based on the position of the 2D mouse cursor? There are a couple of ways to do this, so I'll throw my hat in the ring:

[b] In engine\game\gameTSCtrl.h, add the following public entries:[/b]

Point3F		mMouse3DVec;
Point3F		mMouse3DPos;

Point3F  getMouse3DVec() {return mMouse3DVec;}
Point3F  getMouse3DPos() {return mMouse3DPos;}

[b]In engine\game\gameTSCtrl.cpp, add the following functions:[/b]

[b]//-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-[/b]
void GameTSCtrl::onMouseMove(const GuiEvent &evt)
{
   	// Get the 3D vec and pos of the mouse in the world
	MatrixF mat;
	Point3F vel;
	if(GameGetCameraTransform(&mat, &vel))
	{
		// Get the camera pos
		Point3F pos;
		mat.getColumn(3, &pos);

		// Convert mouse coords to screen coords
		Point3F screenPoint(evt.mousePoint.x, evt.mousePoint.y, -1);

		// Convert screen coords to world coords
		Point3F worldPoint;
		if(unproject(screenPoint, &worldPoint))
		{
			mMouse3DPos = pos;
			mMouse3DVec = worldPoint - pos;
			mMouse3DVec.normalizeSafe();

		}
	}
      Con::executef(this, 1, "onMouseMove");
}

[b]//-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-[/b]
ConsoleMethod(GameTSCtrl, getMouse3DVec, const char*, 2, 2, "()")
{
	char* retBuffer = Con::getReturnBuffer(256);
	const Point3F &vec = object->getMouse3DVec();
	dSprintf(retBuffer, 256, "%f %f %f ", vec.x, vec.y, vec.z);
	return retBuffer;
}

[b]//-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-[/b]
ConsoleMethod(GameTSCtrl, getMouse3DPos, const char*, 2, 0, "()")
{
	char* retBuffer = Con::getReturnBuffer(256);
	const Point3F &pos = object->getMouse3DPos();
	dSprintf(retBuffer, 256, "%f %f %f ", pos.x, pos.y, pos.z);
	return retBuffer;
}

[b]In client\scripts\playGui.cs:[/b]
function PlayGui::onMouseMove(%this)
{
      %mouseVec = %this.getMouse3DVec();
      %cameraPoint = %this.getMouse3DPos();
      commandToServer('displaySmoke', %mouseVec, %cameraPoint);
}

[b]In server\scripts\playGui.cs:[/b]
function function serverCmddisplaySmoke(%client, %mouseVec, %cameraPoint)
{

       //Determine how far away from the camera you want the emitter to be placed
      %rangeScale = 200;
   
      // scale mouseVec to the rangeScale 
      %mouseScaled = VectorScale(%mouseVec, %rangeScale);
   
      // cameraPoint = the world position of the camera
      // rangeEnd = camera point + length of selectable range
      %rangeEnd = VectorAdd(%cameraPoint, %mouseScaled);


    [b]// %rangeEnd REPRESENTS THE 3D POSITION OF WHERE YOU WANT YOUR PARTICLE EMITTER[/b]
    smokeEmitter.setTransform(%rangeEnd);
}

Like I said, this is one way to do it. It may be overkill, but this code is how I set up my mouse selection and grabbing of objects. I've used it for other routines as well.

*EDIT*
Credit goes to Dave Myers and his Object Selection Resource
*EDIT*

#2 Woooww!!!
Really... many thnks!

I'm begginer in TGE... when I'll lern, I'll can help to the people xD I'm impacient!!

Saludos

#3 This is a great resource. Even though it was posted a long time ago, maybe someone might still be able to help me get it working. I have made the code and script additions that Michael suggests above, and both code and script compile fine. However, I don't see any smoke attached to the cursor. I figure this is because I need to create the "smokeEmitter" referenced in the final line myself, so I placed a particle emitter node using the mission editor and gave it the name "smokeEmitter." However, no luck. The smoke effect shows up where I place it but is not mounted to the cursor.

Does this mean that I need to create a particle emitter datablock in script?
If so, how do I make sure that the code above recognizes and mounts the particle effect correctly? (I'll add that I am using TGEA 1.8.1, but thought that it might make the most sense to post this question in the thread where the code originated.)

#4 Does anybody know what is the TGEA equivalent of server/scripts/playGui.cs? The resource says to put scripts in client/scripts/playGui.cs and server/scripts/playGui.cs. In TGEA 1.8.1, I can only find client/scripts/playGui.cs but not server/scripts/playGui.cs. In TGE, there is a playGui.cs file in both client/scripts and server/scripts but apparently not in TGEA. Does anybody know where I should put the last piece of script in the thread to make this code work in TGEA 1.8.1?

I might ask in the TGEA forum also but am trying not to double-post, so any help is appreciated. While I'm at it, does anybody have any suggestions on how to create the particle emitter in a way that it will be recognized by the last line of script?

smokeEmitter.setTransform(%rangeEnd);

#5 How to do this with Torque3D v1.1 ?