VOGONS


First post, by amedeux

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Hi all,
I'm having a problem that drives me nuts. I'm running Dyna Blaster within Dosbox 0.74.
I am using PPjoy to emulate a joystick and I managed to map keystrokes to the virtual joystick (through PPJoyKey.exe).
Once in the main menu of Dyna Blaster the virtual joystick works correctly (I press any of the mapped keys and I can switch through menus correctly) but when I start either a single player or a multiplayer game keystrokes addressed to PPjoy don't seem to fall through anymore and I can only play with players that were set up with Keyboard 1 and Keyboard 2 as input.
I reckon this might come from the fact that in game one could cheat and type in "hudsonsoft" to get infinite lives (or whatever) which might prompt the gameto take exclusive control of the keyboard and thus exclude PPjoy upon game engine start.

PPjoy emulation works fine in other games (I tried it in Lost Vikings) which leads me to believe this might be a Dyna Blaster specific issue.

I remember I did solve this very issue about 6 years ago but I wasn't smart enough to note down the solution and now I'm trying to figure it out again.

Would DOSbox mapper play any role in this? I've checked it and it seems to have correctly remapped PPjoy sticks onto Dosbox ones.

Would anyone have any suggestion?
Thanks!

Reply 1 of 8, by zirkoni

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Well, if you're already using a virtual joystick you could just as well use the DOSBox keymapper only.

Change the joysticktype in dosbox.conf to ch, start DOSBox and use the keymapper (Ctrl+F1) to map whatever keyboard keys you want to use to the joystick x- and y-axis and buttons.

https://youtube.com/@zirkoni42

Reply 2 of 8, by amedeux

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Thanks for the suggestion, I switched to Dosbox key-mapper only and I get the same behavior, I can move from menu to menu, all seems fine until game engine starts: then no reaction from mapped keys, just like when using PPjoy.

Something emerged from my memories of solving this very problem years ago. It may be unrelated but I noticed that when setting up keys for keyboard players Dyna would not allow me to use P,S,M keys as they were reserved for Pausing the game and toggling Sound and Music. I'm thinking may be at game start any key which wasn't mapped within the game itself is blocked, just like one can do with joystick emulators.

Anyhow I'm just speculating, I'll try some more. Any idea however experimental is welcome.

Reply 3 of 8, by zirkoni

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It works fine for me. I configured the the controls like this:
blue: I,J,K,L and Home (these are mapped to joystick)
black: R,D,F,G and Q
white: Arrows and Enter
red: N/A

I even tried mapping all 4 players in the same movement keys and separate bomb drop keys and it worked fine. I'm using DOSBox 0.74 on Windows 10.

https://youtube.com/@zirkoni42

Reply 4 of 8, by amedeux

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Wow, really!?
This gives me hope. It might be something on my Win7, then. May be my laptop keyboard UK layout or drivers. I remember I had to play some tricks on the Win7 keyboard drivers back then. Would you be able to share your dosbox.conf for me to have a look at it, per chance?

EDIT
I've just created a Virtual Machine running WIN10, installed dosbox, set it up to run UK keyboard layout and Keyb UK (my keyboard is UK) and despite the high hopes I get the same problem. I tried the same thing on a VM with Win95 and another one with Win98SE.

I've read around that people may have problems with keyboard drivers and Dosbox. On my laptop I have the built in keyboard and a logitech wireless one and among my devices I can see a HID Keyboard Device and a Standard PS/2 Keyboard (which is also the same showing up in the VMs).

Reply 6 of 8, by Admiva

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zirkoni wrote:
It works fine for me. I configured the the controls like this: blue: I,J,K,L and Home (these are mapped to joystick) black: R,D, […]
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It works fine for me. I configured the the controls like this:
blue: I,J,K,L and Home (these are mapped to joystick)
black: R,D,F,G and Q
white: Arrows and Enter
red: N/A
I even tried mapping all 4 players in the same movement keys and separate bomb drop keys and it worked fine. I'm using DOSBox 0.74 on Windows 10.

Hi, I have exactly the same problem like Amadeux, so thanks for the topic.

For virtual joystick Im using VJoy and its working perfect everywhere except the DynaBlaster. Joystick only work in menu.

Had you found a solution? Or "Zirkoni" could you share your version of Dynablaster?

Thanks

Reply 8 of 8, by Josh22

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I know this topic is kind of old, but I'm writting this for anyone who has this problem and is curious how to solve this. Maybe my simple suggestion can help.

So, I have the same problem as amedeux mentioned, I can scroll down through Menu with joystick, but when game starts, nothing work with joystick.

Ok, now the suggestion. It's very simple. When you connect your gamepad with PC (before you enter the DosBox), in game's Player Input section there should appear more 2 options which zirkoni mentioned: Analog1 and Analog2. Just use these 2 options as joystick keys that you set in your DosBox key mapper (CTRL + F1). So, these two game options are recognized as DosBox key mapper joystick keys. You can change them in Key Mapper through the game also, it will automatically update the changes.

Idk, will it work for you, but description of the problem is the same as mine, and this suggestion worked for me. My DosBox joysticktype is set to auto (so DosBox automatically recognizes my gamepad and keys are setted up fine for the 1st joystick axis in Key Mapper) and Im using 12Keys gamepad, so I was able to set keys for 3rd and 4th player on the same joystick.

I hope that simple suggestion will help.

Enjoy !