Using the keyboard for the Get, Drop, Throw, Manipulate, and Use commands is only enabled when there is no mouse; so this is NOT a DOSBox problem, it is how the game was designed. When a mouse is not present there is a highlight box on inventory items that can be steered with the W,A,S,Z keys, and the command keys apply to the highlighted item.

To disable the mouse in DOSBox you can use a small utility program found here.

Oh wow, then how come the directional keys and such work? Are you 100% certain that's how it works?

If so, how extremely disappointing. Guess I'm back to trying to make autohotkey work.

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic42116.html

Clicking 8-15 times per attack cycle is just insane.

You have only to disable the mouse to see for yourself.

EOB3, even with its various flaws, did add the convenience of the "All Attack" feature.

I don't doubt that disabling the mouse will activate the keys. But that doesn't prove it's impossible to use them at the same time by the game's design.

For all I know its some obscure memory emulation problem or an irq or something preventing the keyboard from fully loading while the mouse is in memory.

It seems very strange to me that the designers would go out of their way to disable the keyboard during mouse play. Not saying it's impossible, just hard to believe. I could see it being done to preserve memory, but you'd think it would be mentioned in the manual or the setup menu or something.

The manual warns of nothing like that. It does however say "The keyboard commands may not be available on all systems, refer to your Data Card for details"

http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=584 This is apparently that Data Card. Which also fails to mention this either or situation.

Do you have any kind of citation that this is in fact the case? Again, not that I don't believe you, it's just that this is a deal breaker for me, and if I'm going to quit I would rather not do it based only on your word heh.

I have no "proof" other than the readily observable behavior of the game. I sincerely doubt an emulation issue is preventing the use of mouse and keyboard at the same time when they both work separately. It would not be the first time that game documentation has not fully disclosed how game features work.

Yeah, I also remember playing EOB2 explicitly without the mouse because of this 'feature'.

I'm sure it made all the sense in the world at the time they made this game, even though it is a face palm now looking back... 😉

😠

"feature" indeed.

Thanks guys for your help. At least I can give up trying to fix it. That's something at least 😀