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TWO MICE in DoxBox?!

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First post, by LoWang

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I wonder if it would be possible to use two mice in some games through DosBox. It would be great for example to play Tyrian multiplayer only with mice. I don't know if it is possible to set there in game the second mouse, but maybe some doxbox settings... 😦

Reply 1 of 23, by neowolf

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To my knowledge, multiple mouse support in DOS games is extremely rare. (It does exist, for it requires special drivers.) The game itself would have to support it though, and even then I don't think SDL, which is how dosbox does it's input, supports it at all. So it's almost surely a no go.

Reply 2 of 23, by HunterZ

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There's certainly no specific support currently. It has been suggested that a serial mouse may work as a second mouse using direct serial support in DOSBox, but I haven't seen anyone confirm this.

Reply 3 of 23, by Srecko

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If I recall correctly, serial mouse on com port passthrough works in dosbox (recent versions). You can install serial mouse driver and get it working.
Settlers 2 gold can use two mouses for split screen, so I heard.

Reply 5 of 23, by `Moe`

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Windows itself can use multiple mice just by plugging them in (and installing the driver, if neccessary). You won't get two mouse pointers, both mice will move the windows mouse cursor. This is common with laptops, for example: built-in touchpad plus externally connected mouse.

This is totally unrelated to Siedler's 2-player mouse support, you need one mouse connected on the serial port and _not_ installed in windows.

Reply 6 of 23, by HunterZ

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This is what it sounds like to me:
- First you need the serial port working in Windows.
- Then, you need to plug in a serial mouse but not tell Windows that it's there (and don't let Windows find out on it's own either).
- Then, you should be able to pass the raw serial data coming from the mouse into DOSBox, which should in turn let you...
- ...install a serial mouse driver in DOSBox to capture the raw data coming from the mouse and supply it to a game, or...
- ...without loading a DOS driver, run a game that can talk directly to serial mice, which should be able to then interpret the raw data coming from the real mouse.

Reply 7 of 23, by ChaosFish

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Ah, and I already started daydreaming about 2 mouse pointers 😜
(Wouldn't that just be UBER COOL?!) 2 mouse pointer, each controlled by each hand... me wants.

Reply 11 of 23, by `Moe`

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HunterZ wrote:
This is what it sounds like to me: - First you need the serial port working in Windows. - Then, you need to plug in a serial mou […]
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This is what it sounds like to me:
- First you need the serial port working in Windows.
- Then, you need to plug in a serial mouse but not tell Windows that it's there (and don't let Windows find out on it's own either).
- Then, you should be able to pass the raw serial data coming from the mouse into DOSBox, which should in turn let you...
- ...install a serial mouse driver in DOSBox to capture the raw data coming from the mouse and supply it to a game, or...
- ...without loading a DOS driver, run a game that can talk directly to serial mice, which should be able to then interpret the raw data coming from the real mouse.

Almost correct. Siedler worked with a regular mouse driver for the first mouse (in dosbox that's built-in, no need to load one), and with it's own internal code for talking to mouse nr. 2 directly. So leave out "install a serial mouse driver in DOSBox".

Reply 12 of 23, by Deathcrow

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Hi! Sorry for digging out this old topic, but now that Settlers II runs very smoothly on 0.65 (in previous versions it didnt, at least for me) i just wanted to ask wether there may be any way to get the two player-mode working without having a serial port (or a serial mouse).

Is it possible to emulate a serial mouse on linux? So that my USB/whatever mouse acts as being connected through a serial COM port?!
Would be really nice to play Setters II in two player mode 😀

Reply 13 of 23, by Enigmar

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You can get a serial to USB adapter, and have the USB port act as a serial port. whether you can use an actual USB device and have it act like a serial connection, im not sure.

Must run dosbox on windows 3.1 within dosbox......

Reply 18 of 23, by blubbi

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ok ... i currently got
serial2=directserial realport:com2
in my dosbox.conf. i also tried it with com1 ... but the mouse does not respond in settlers 😒
it is a ps2 mouse with a serial adapter ...

anything else i can try?