Java: use Robot while running fullscreen app

Question

I have a problem with Robot class in Java: it sometimes doesn\'t work when i run a fullscreen game. Here\'s my code:

Toolkit tlkt = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit         


        

Answer 1

Assuming you are on a Windows machine, the call to java.awt.Robot calls are redirected to sun.awt.windows.WRobotPeer, which in turn calls native code in awt_Robot.cpp. You can check the source code of the awt_Robot.cpp here : http://www.koders.com/cpp/fidFFE004659A9CAB3DA2B3302C457E624AF6F3EEDF.aspx?s=GetDIBits#L232

Here you can see that the mouse events are realized with win32 call mouse_event(...) (defined in winuser.h)

So your Robot mouse click calls are limited by the limitations of mouse_event(...).

Then a little googling on this, reveals that some games have some sort of macro protection mechanism. They ignore mouse_event(...) routed methods and talk directly with the driver. Hackshield, for instance, provides such protection mechanisms to a number of games. So this is the reason why some games do not receive your Robot mouse clicks.