The mouse cursor is there although it blinks like mad and thus, it's almost invisible when dragged to the center of the screen where moving icons are.

Another thing: It isn't shown either when you capture a snapshot using CTRL-F5. I don't know why but maybe it's a normal behaviour.

Here are three screens I captured. First and second using CTRL-F5 (the second one displays game version) and the third one using ALT-PrintSCR.

Looks like we're using the same version.

I've tried again and looks like the problem was exacerbated on the mission I was playing when I first posted (remember, white background). Still, you're right about the mouse pointer blinking like crazy, and not only in that screen, it also happens ingame too, although there is far less annoying.

BTW, the mouse pointer DOES appear when capturing with CTRL+F5. It's just that the blinking sometimes screws the capture. Watch this:

One way or the other, it is almost impossible to select any unit, which makes the game more difficult. I can't even be sure it's not a bug in the game itself, as in the old days I always played the CD version, which I threw away a long ago.

I don't know either. I must say I haven't played this game that much.

i think this rapidly blinking cursor is "normal". its a problem with the game itself, because it also occur under real dos (if i remember correctly).
btw, i have the US cd-rom version...

Yeah, but one think is the cursor blinking and the other completely dissappearing in that screen we mention. I don't remember having trouble selecting units when I played under DOS.

ok i've tested it again under dosbox 0.70 and you're right, the cursor is only visible in the upper corner of the tactical screen and it completely disappears when its moved to the middle of the screen.
but in the normal ingame screen the mouse control works flawlessly.
i'll do some further testing...

EDIT: no problems with dosbox 0.65 + outdated ykhwong's CVS and clean 0.66 beta2 so far.

EDIT2: seems to be a problem with the new dynamic core optimizations. the game works good with core=full/normal under v0.70 for me...

Understood. Thank you very much for your tip.

hmm beta2. That one had allready some of the optimalizations. I think it was the first build with them. (although there were changes to the dynamic core in later builds)

Longshot: did you try timed=false ?

timed=false makes no difference. i also had disabled all unnecessary stuff like joystick and GUS emulation for testing.

but using constant cycle settings with dynamic core works in some way:
i first tryed it with cycles=30000 ->cursor was visible completely.
after that i had increased the cycles step by step to 50000 in the tactical screen.
at around 40000 cycles the cursor begins to disappear (bottom of the screen) and the limit increases with higher settings. with cycles around 50000 i got nearly the same results as with cycles=auto/max.

ykhwong's 0.66rc3 CVS build (dated 25.02.2007) has also no problems with this game.

i hope this helps a litte to contain the problem.

Hmmm, Strike Squad also does this, the mouse sometimes vanishes on 0.70 (it's not playable at all on 0.65), but playing with the cycles setting I fixed it (apparently the mouse blinking is related to cycles chosen...)

The solution would probably be to play with the cycles in order to get a "stable" mouse cursor...

I've been doing more testing, "Armored Fist" looks & plays well at 15,000 cycles in dinamy core. This solves the mouse pointer issue.