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Tie Fighter Joystick Problems

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First post, by Axecutter

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Hello all i am trying to run tie fighter in dosbox. ive mounted the drive and the cdrom all that i figured out from reading the intros. what i am having trouble with is the joystick mapper and everything. to me its doesnt make any sense i dunno what im doing wrong. when i calibrate the joystick in game it goes all weird and it takes me a lot of time to get out of the game to try again.

if anyone has any information that would help i would be greatful to them for the help.

with the other posts ive read they really didnt make much sense to me so please be simple and to the point so i can get this problem fixed. i really miss playing this game and havent been able to for about 8 years or something like that, probably more.

mounting makes sense mapping everything doesnt cuz i know very little about it. please i beg for any and all assistance. thank you

Reply 3 of 29, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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h-a-l-9000 wrote:

timed=false in dosbox.conf

I wonder: what does it exactly mean? And does it apply only to this particular game (TIE Fighter), or to other games as well? I recently won Secret Weapons of Luftwaffe from ebay, and plan to play it with DOSBox; does it need the same setting as well?

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 4 of 29, by gulikoza

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timed=true is more precise emulation that takes computer speed (= dosbox cycles) into account when calculating joystick movement. Timed=false is old behaviour before the patch. For some reason, some games like the old behavior (Tie Fighter), others need timed=true (Descent 2). Leave the default, if you have problems, try timed=false.

http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza

Reply 5 of 29, by h-a-l-9000

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Different games can go different approaches of reading the joystick position. The general porblem is real hardware did not chang […]
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Different games can go different approaches of reading the joystick position.
The general porblem is real hardware did not change the CPU speed at runtime, DOSBox however does that with cycles=auto or when you change speed manually. Most games need fixed speed for their joystick routines, a few can handle different speeds.

The DOSBox versions before 0.70 have a simplified (kind of hack) joystick emulation that works speed independent with the games that require fixed speeds. However it causes problems with the other type of game and that's why timed=true was added. It's a more realistic implementation but is speed dependent in most games.

timed=false should be the best setting for most games.

timed=true is for Wing Commander Armada, Wing Commander 3, and probably other later Origin titles, but not the ealier like WC1/2 and Privateer.
Try it as well if the joystick doesn't work properly with timed=false.

You have to recalibrate in the game after changing timed=.

Reply 6 of 29, by Axecutter

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thats a lot of info thank you all for your time spent explaining. that makes a lot more sense, only thing is i had just downloaded dosbox poked around with it mount the c and the cdrom cuz that stuff was pretty straight forward. everything else was a little out of my league cuz i dont deal with that stuff on regular basis. most times i dont fiddle around with things i dont have any understanding about cuz i dont want to mess it up more then it already was.

Reply 7 of 29, by crellt

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Hello, im a new user and am encountering a similar problem, as the first one mentioned above...
Ive got vista and ive got tie fighter running on dosbox etc. However if i try to run the game normally the cursor goes crazy, and if i try 'timed=false' then the cursor goes normal, but the joystick isn't recognised. I can't calibrate the joystick in-game either. Ive tryed using my microsoft sidewinder joystick and an xbox 360 controller but niether work. Can anyone help?

Reply 8 of 29, by Maldoror

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I have a similar problem...

When I enter the game it runs fine...it calibrates my Joystick (MS idewinder) and the crusor seems to respond to the commands of joystick before going into combat...but when i enter into a mission, the ship starts spinning out of control....the buttons of the joystick do not fire (they only switch the cockpit mode, from visible to invisible, all of them), and the joystick command bar does not respond at all....pressing the buttons of the mouse seems to stop spinning of the ship, but it doesnt give me any control...

I tried the solution proposed here (timed=false) but it is the same thing...what else can I do?

Reply 12 of 29, by eL_PuSHeR

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crellt wrote:

whats going on with the [moved]?

You posted in the dos section and you are using DOSBox. Not the same thing, mate. I relocated your post.

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Reply 14 of 29, by AceJoel96

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Are you using TIE Fighter Collector's Edition CD like me, the plain 7-mission CD version, or the floppy-based version? I'm using DBGL, and I can't get mine to run the setup in DosBox; I get an error message saying that I can't install it from the hard drive. How is yours mounted? I have everything but the destination of the install set to CD drive, with forced ioctl.
I have it installed outside of DOSBox already.

The Long, Long History of TIE Fighter...Coming Soon!

Reply 15 of 29, by AceJoel96

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I fiddled around with DBGL some more. I made a new folder in My Documents as the target for the install. I set the installation to run from the CD drive. I set it to execute from the hard drive after the install. I still get the message from within DOSBox that I can't install it from the hard drive.

The Long, Long History of TIE Fighter...Coming Soon!

Reply 16 of 29, by MiniMax

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> can't install it from the hard drive.

Obviously, the installer believes that it is running from a hard drive.

Please tell us how you have your mounting setup in DOSBox.

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Reply 18 of 29, by Dominus

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Please tell us how you have your mounting setup in DOSBox.

This means that you should write us EXACTLY how you are mounting everything before you try to install.

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Reply 19 of 29, by M3n747

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Hi. I don't want to start a new thread like a n00b, so I'll just write here. 😀

I've installed TIE-Fighter Collector's CDROM under DOSBox and it works perfectly. However, playing this game with a mouse is murder, so I'm thinking about buying a joystick. What concerns me, is wether a modern USB joystick will work fine, or do I need to look for an old-type joystick, connected to a sound card's game port? Ewnabommer here says (s)he's using a cheap USB joystick, but someone on some other forum said not to use USB joystick with DOSBox - this is a bit confusing, to say the least. I would appreciate any info you can give me.

Cheers.

<_<