HI Guys,

I have an idea on how to solve my problem, but I would like to know whether there are better techniques.

Problem: When holding down the mouse in my 3d editor (.NET windows 10), I would like to use the length of time held down to trigger events repeatedly that add a value to another value.

Explicitly: When I hold the left mouse button(lmb) down, I would like to increase the alpha blend value of a point over the time I have held the lmb down for.

So if 0 to 1 on the blend scale takes 3 seconds to reach full value of "1". Then after one second it would be .33. I know it sounds a little bit inaccurate in terms of obtaining an exact alpha value, but I have other functions to deal with that in my editor. It's really just a alpha blend painting value.

I was going to use a timer to then fire off the mouse down event again, is this best?

Thanks in advance for any ideas, I don't believe I have the right answer, I have a functional one I believe ,just wondering if there are more elegant solutions.

Personally, I'd use a slider or a roller as it gives finer control.

Definitely a good option as well.

I think the best would be to:

OnMousePressed:
previous_time = current_time
start updating

OnMouseReleased:
stop updating

OnUpdate:
current_time = getCurrentTime();
setAlpha( getAlpha() + alpha_per_second * ( current_time - previous_time ) );
previous_time = current_time;

Essentialy: keep updating your object when mouse is pressed on it and in each update use duration of the mouse press from previous update to set desired value.