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PSX Gamepad in Rayman running in DOSBox [SOLVED]

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First post, by forbjok

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MB: Abit IP35 Pro
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600
RAM: DDR2 8GB
VC: GeForce GTX 260 w/ 896MB RAM
SC: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
OS: Windows XP Pro x64 Edition
Game: Rayman
Video mode: OpenGL
Version: DOSBox 0.73

I just installed Rayman through DOSBox. The game itself seems to run fine - I haven't tested it thoroughly yet, but at least it runs with sound, etc and I can start a new save and enter the first level.

However, since the game is pretty terrible to play with a keyboard, I decided to try to use a PSX gamepad instead.

I connected the gamepad through a USB adapter (not sure about the brand, but it's from Clas Ohlson - probably just some rebranded noname) and restarted DOSBox. It seems to detect the gamepad, and when I start the game, it also seems to detect that there is in fact a gamepad connected, and asks to calibrate it - however, regardless of what buttons I press nothing happens. I can only skip through the calibration screens using the keyboard. After that, the cursor just keeps moving downward in the menus constantly, as is often the case when a controller isn't calibrated - however, still NO buttons are detected by the game.

I tried changing various things in dosbox.conf. Among other things, I tried changing "timed", "swap34" and "buttonwrap", and setting joysticktype to all the different values instead of "auto", but while they cause the speed of the repeated-down-presses to differ, or stop, they all have one thing in common - it still doesn't work - no buttons are detected.

I know the gamepad works - at least it has before - but I've never tried to use it in DOSBox before, so I don't know if this is a general issue or specific to this game.

I'm also not new to DOSBox. I've used it to play many different games over the years, and rarely encountered any other issues that couldn't be solved with some tweaking of configuration.

Is there anything special that needs to be done to make it work, or any other settings that could make a difference?

UPDATE:
Tested the gamepad in ZSNES to make sure it still works in general - it does.
Tried using gamepad in a different game in DOSBox - Mortal Kombat - doesn't work there either, no buttons detected.
Tried connecting a native PC gamepad (Saitek Rumble, similar to a PSX gamepad in design) instead of the PSX gamepad, and still get the exact same thing in both games, so doesn't seem to be gamepad specific either.

Last edited by forbjok on 2009-11-15, 13:35. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 2, by forbjok

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Dominus wrote:

try to limit the cycles to 3000 or so.

I tried setting the cycles to 3000 now. Other than slowing things down, it doesn't seem to make a difference. The buttons still do nothing, and the cursor still continuously moves downward, only slower.

UPDATE:
I made some progress.
I entered the "mapper" by pressing Ctrl+F1 (this didn't work until i manually deleted the existing mapper.txt file), and then manually mapped the gamepad's buttons to the corresponding buttons in the mapper. Even though the mapper seemingly had the same mapping before adding them manually, afterwards the game registers the button presses.

With the native gamepad this seems to basically work, however I wanted to use the PSX one, as it's much better, so I connected that again and tried to do the same.

In order to get DOSBox to allow proper assignment of the necessary buttons, I had to turn off "buttonwrap" in the config. After doing that, I'm able to assign them correctly (or so it seems), but when I enter the game, it detects buttons 3-4 as two buttons being pressed at the same time. Button 3 (triangle) = 1 + 3, and button 4 (circle) = 2 + 4, even though the 4 joystick buttons in the mapper are each bound to a different physical button.

Is there some trick to get this to work right?

UPDATE2:
Figured it out. Apparently, it's possible to map multiple physical buttons to the same event, and only one will show at a time in the mapper. By first deleting all existing mappings on the joystick buttons, the issue is resolved.
In order to get DOSBox to detect the second (right) analog stick's axises, I also had to force the joysticktype to "4axis", but I doubt I will use that for anything in DOSBox anyway.

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