So I can’t speak to other people’s setups, but I just confirmed something about mine:

LiveSplit should not be on top of your game window.

So here’s the longer story:

During my speedrun last night, the game “crashed” in several places. It would just completely freeze. And it was in places that I had never heard of there being crashes, nor had I ever experienced a crash there myself.

During the run, at some point, I became cognizant that when it froze, I could see my mouse cursor. So, luckily, I figured out that all I needed to do was click back on the game window.

Well, in reviewing my footage, I noticed that everytime it “crashed” my mouse cursor would temporarily be visible in the part of the stream reserved for the LiveSplit timer.

Just now, I verified what I had suspected: apparently I had accidentally created the perfect storm by making my LiveSplit window larger before I started the run.

Basically, what happens is this:

When you play in windowed mode, yes, it locks your cursor to the game window, but apparently an app like LiveSplit that is visible on top of your windowed game can still steal focus if you accidentally click on it.

So apparently, your mouse cursor is actually just locked to the region that your game window takes up, but you’re still free to accidentally click on things that are occupying the same region as the game window.

What’s horrible about this situation is that you have no idea you’re about to click on the LiveSplit window because you can’t see your cursor when you’re in the middle of a battle.

It should also be noted that LiveSplit is not necessarily the only timer application capable of stealing focus like this.

I’ll be investigating other software in the future to see if they also have this problem. I might even switch if I find something immune, just because I’m upset at how often I’ve accidentally reset my timer in LiveSplit mid-run (I’m 2 for 2 on resets (I’ve done 2 PC runs and have reset the timer on both runs)).

In the meantime, I’ll be moving the LiveSplit overlay so it’s nowhere near my game window.