As long as the joystick works in Windows there should be no problem using it with old games running on Dosbox since Dosbox emulates a traditional analog joystick. The following settings work with Tie Fighter Collectors Edition:

1joysticktype=2axis
2timed=true
3autofire=false
4swap34=true
5buttonwrap=true

When you start Dosbox you should see something similar to

1Using joystick Microsoft SideWinder Precision 2 with 4 axes, 8 buttons and 1 hat

in the Dosbox console window. If not, then Dosbox hasn't recognized your joystick for some reason (could be a Dosbox-Vista compatibility issue - I suggest trying it on XP also).

Interesting... so it doesn't matter that my joystick has 4 axes, as long as I tell Dosbox that it only has 2? Dosbox does actually recognize my joystick for what it is (correct brand, correct # of axes buttons and hats), so is this just XWing not playing nice with more than 2 axes?

EDIT:

Also, autofire doesn't work? That makes me sad....

And btw, where can one pick up TIE fighter these days? I hear it was awesome but I never got to play it. Is it freeware anywhere?

I'm having problems just loading the game on my vista 32bit laptop. I downloaded dosbox and am not sure what the next step is. Could someone walk me through the steps? Thanks!

No. Check out the DOSBox Readme, and the multitude of Tutorials and FAQ's here on VOGONS and on other websites. If you encounter a specific problem, open a new thread, and describe the issue in detail, in accordance to the posting guidelines. Good luck.

Well, putting this all on XP went off without a hitch. Everything "just worked" without any fiddling needed, joystick included. Guess I won't be bringing XWing to work any time soon!

Anyways thanks to everyone who responded. It's nice to know that there's a helpful community out there for things like this!

So, like I asked before, is TIE fighter freeware anywhere yet or do I have to track down an ancient dusty copy?

SteelCrusader, TIE Fighter has never been released as Freeware, AFAIK. There are several auctions on Ebay, quite cheap too. I'd go for the "Collector's Edition CD-ROM".

Oh, and DOSBox doesn't handle more than two joystick axes per joystick, unfortunately. This means no analog rudder or thrust control. I'm still hoping this will change some day, but i think it's quite complicated to code. DOSBox would have to emulate a Thrustmaster or similar joystick, and map the axes to whatever additional axes the Windows joystick reports.

> DOSBox doesn't handle more than two joystick axes per joystick, unfortunately.

wrong 😉

yeah, i see options for 4 axes in the dosbox.conf file. Is it more likely that Xwing and TIE fighter don't support them? (As they were never coded to receive input from more than two)

h-a-l-9000: why wrong? Is there a way to assign a joystick axis to an analog throttle, or an analog rudder control? I'd be amazed if there was a way to do that. AFAIK, the "4axis" thingie in the .conf has something to do with two-joystick-mode. There's no way to map axes to game inputs, too.

2axis - 1 or 2 joysticks each 2 axis 2 button
4axis - 4 axis 4 buttons
4axis_2 - guess it chooses the second joystick if you have two connected
fcs - 3 axis 4 buttons, 1 axis used for hat
ch - 4 axis, at least 4 buttons, hat (button encoded)

Hmmm... I know the "fcs" and "ch" entries in dosbox.conf, but i thought they are some kind of pass-through for real hardware. Did you actually try to use some kind of rudder/throttle control for games? I tried that some time ago, and didn't have any success. I had a long discussion with wd about that topic, and he confirmed that mapping joystick axes is not possible (yet?).

Besides, how should that work? For both CH and Thrustmaster sticks, there are small TSR's (or simple programs) to "program" the Joysticks to specific functions. That's how the support works in TIE Fighter, for example - you start a program that's part of the joystick's software, and use a config file that comes with TIE Fighter to program the joystick (this info is straight from the TIE Fighter readme - too much text to paste here). There's no way to configure the joystick inside the game. AFAIK, there's no other way to get rudders, throttles, etc. working in DOS games. I used to have a huge Gravis flightstick (can't remember the name right now), and this one had it's own config software, too. Basically, you have to tell the joystick about the game, not the other way round. There's no way to do that in DOSBox.

I'd be happy if i was wrong, but i'm afraid i'm not. (;

I don't have a rudder but throttle is fine in i.e. Radix, Terminal Velocity, WC3, Win95. First choose a joystick the game supports in dosbox.conf, then choose the appropriate joystick in the game's setup and maybe change the swap34 parameter, that's all. You can even map axes in the keymapper (I'm not sure to what extend, I never really used it).

fcs and ch are not a passthrough, they rather make the hat availible in the form of how those two pieces of hardware did.

Hm, that's interesting. Now i remember another topic i was discussing with wd: DOSBox will recognize my XBox controller (via XBCD driver) correctly, but i can't use the right thumbstick - it is simply ignored by DOSBox (for example, while trying to map it with the keymapper). At the time we were discussing the topic, wd said that problem could be connected to SDL. I'll try it again in the next days with a XBox 360 controller.

hal, can you tell which axes you're using on your joystick, other than the forward/backward and left/right axes? I mean, what they are "called" in DOSBox?

I'm still not sure how i would talk TIE Fighter into using additional analog axes. As i wrote, there's no way to configure a joystick inside the game, or any command line parameters or something similar.

Anyway, i'll try the games you've mentioned. I had no success with WC3, but that was a few builds ago (i think there was not "swap34" parameter at that time).

called in DOSBox? In the mapper? My joystick only has an additional throttle axis which becomes axis 3 as default and has to be changed to 4 by "swap34" for game compatibility.

jaxis_0_2+-
jaxis_0_3+-