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DOSBox window loses focus while playing Wolfenstein 3D

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First post, by WayneCa

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I have a Pavilion 64-bit (Intel Core i5-6200U 2.3/2.4 GHz) Windows 10 notebook computer, with a 1 TB drive and 6 GB of RAM. I installed the 64-bit version of DOSBox and have been using it to play the MS-DOS variant of the game Soko-Ban for a while now. It works flawlessly. Recently I decided to play Wolfenstein 3D for the first time since I had my Windows 200o tower, Pentium II, and I don't even remember how much storage or RAM. I used DOSBox then and it worked flawlessly. I wish I could say the same now. The DOSBox window continually loses focus right in the middle of battle. I've tried remapping the CTRL key (fire button) to the Left SHIFT key (and subsequently had to disable sticky keys because of it), but the window still loses focus.

About the game setup:

I found a link to a shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D that was already setup for use with DOSBox. I copied all of the 6-episode files to the directory the shareware game is in, renaming the shareware executable to Wolf3D1.exe. The contents of the .bat file I drop on the DOSBox icon is as follows:

@echo off
config -set "render aspect=true"
loadfix -25
cd WOLF3D
WOLF3D.EXE
cd..
@echo on

Can anyone tell me why DOSBox is losing focus constantly? I've never run into this issue before.

Reply 2 of 5, by WayneCa

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Qbix wrote on 2020-06-26, 20:28:

which 64 bit version of dosbox ?

0.74.3

Also, I found that if I don't use the .bat file and just drop the wolf3d.exe on DOSBox, the game plays much better. Only once did the DOSBox window lose focus, and I'm not sure why.

Last edited by WayneCa on 2020-06-27, 20:28. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 5, by Qbix

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Maybe some background process on your PC ?
What kind of tools are running in your taskbar ?

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 4 of 5, by WayneCa

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Qbix wrote on 2020-06-27, 07:19:

Maybe some background process on your PC ?
What kind of tools are running in your taskbar ?

Since you mentioned this, could it have anything to do with the hwe map editor also being open at the same time? It's based on the original mapedit, but runs in windows and doesn't need an emulator. I'm not sure if it keeps the files open or not, but I can test this and see. I'll let you know what I find. I do know that not using the .bat file reduced the occurrences of losing focus. Apparently, there was no real need for using the parameters set in that file.

I tried playing without the maps editor open and the incidents of the DOSBox window losing focus didn't go away. In fact, it seemed like they went back to the frequency they were when I was using the .bat file.

As for my taskbar, none of the apps there have ever interfered with any other apps or software I have, so I can't see why they would start now, and only with this game. They never interfered with DOSBox when playing Soko-Ban. But, here is a list of what's in my taskbar:

DriveWire 4, Internet Explorer, Edge, Skype, Zoom, XVI32, Sokoban YASC, Discord, File Explorer (because I have the folder where Wolf3D is located open), Firefox, TextPad and VCC (CoCo3 Emulator)

I have no idea why any of these apps would interfere with DOSBox's window.

Reply 5 of 5, by WayneCa

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I was looking for the default config file when I realized I didn't have a 64-bit version of DOSBox. It's the 32-bit version. Upon looking for the 64-bit version I found there is no 64-bit version. I must have gotten it confused with another app I downloaded. At any rate, nothing I try makes the DOSBox window stop losing focus, even with nothing else running (other than the things in my taskbar which are only minimal since I have none of them open). And it only happens with Wolfenstein 3D. Sokoban doesn't have this problem.

I found the issue. It has something to do with Windows 10, I'm sure. I noticed that I lost focus exactly when I tapped the left SHIFT key to fire in the game. As I stated before, I had remapped the CTRL key to the left SHIFT key because of this problem, thinking it was the CTRL key that was the problem. Apparently, it's not just the CTRL key, but both the CTRL and SHIFT keys. No telling if there are other keys that have this attribute, but the ALT key does not seem to have an issue. I remapped the fire button to the Z key and the problem went away. I played an entire level without the window losing focus once. It seems to be something about Windows that it is looking for those keys being pressed no matter what app you are in.

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