Mouse Support for Playdate
Since some of my first prototypes with Playdate I’ve wanted there to be a way to interact with the device using a mouse. Well, today is that day!
A custom Hammerspoon script minitors mouse coordinates and sends them to the Playdate over serial connection. The game receives those messages through the recently added API playdate.serialMessageReceived(message), parses them, and acts accordingly.
Note: use of serial means you can’t have the Playdate Simulator or Mirror open when trying this. If you invoke the script and it can’t open the serial connection for any reason it will sound an error beep.
Originally, back in 2020, I wanted to be able to position items in the in-game level editor of my game Daily Driver more directly, using a mouse rather than typing co-ordinates into a file. Then I forgot about it for a while. Then in Playdate SDK 2.4.0 (March 1, 2024) a new API was added that made me wonder if it was now possible.
I knew the Uncrank’d Game Jam was in progress and was thinking about what to do, and then the mouse control idea came back to me. I first put together the bare bones of an app that drew a dot to the screen, mirrored both horizontally and vertically. Then I set about proving I could forward mouse events, which resulted in a small Hammerspoon script.
