Posted March 13, 2021
Dosbox is able to emulate up to 2 analog joysticks. And with the mapper (accessed when pressing Ctrl+F1), you can remap any input with any key / controller that you have. So for example, you could make it so that when pressing a button on your favorite gamepad, it would behave in dosbox as if you just pressed the spacebar for example.
However, for some reason, joysticks / gamepad inputs are only accepted if you set joysticktype= to anything else than none in the dosbox config file, even though you might be playing a game that doesn't support joysticks at all.
So right now, you'll probably just say "Hey, just set the dosbox config file joystictype value to auto and you're done, it will work !"
Yes, but there is a problem with that.
Suppose that I want to play a game with my gamepad using the directional pad instead of the analog stick. How do I do that with dosbox ? The standard 2axis joystick doesn't have a D-pad, so since it does not exist, dosbox won't even let me remap anything to the D-pad on my real gamepad. So I'm stuck with using the analog stick !
Then you may say "Set your joysticktype to fcs or ch since these joysticks had POV hats, then your D-pad will be accepted as an input by dosbox and you'll be able to remap it as you want."
Yes it does, but there is a drawback : I can only do that for 1 joystick. What if I want to play a 2 players game with 2 gamepads and use the D-pads instead of the analog sticks ? I can't do that with dosbox. Well, at least not unless I'm using an external remapping software which would be a bit complicated.
So my question is : why is it not possible to remap controls to a real joystick / gamepad unless joysticks are enabled in the config file, even though the game within dosbox does not "see" these joysticks directly ?
Am I missing something ?
However, for some reason, joysticks / gamepad inputs are only accepted if you set joysticktype= to anything else than none in the dosbox config file, even though you might be playing a game that doesn't support joysticks at all.
So right now, you'll probably just say "Hey, just set the dosbox config file joystictype value to auto and you're done, it will work !"
Yes, but there is a problem with that.
Suppose that I want to play a game with my gamepad using the directional pad instead of the analog stick. How do I do that with dosbox ? The standard 2axis joystick doesn't have a D-pad, so since it does not exist, dosbox won't even let me remap anything to the D-pad on my real gamepad. So I'm stuck with using the analog stick !
Then you may say "Set your joysticktype to fcs or ch since these joysticks had POV hats, then your D-pad will be accepted as an input by dosbox and you'll be able to remap it as you want."
Yes it does, but there is a drawback : I can only do that for 1 joystick. What if I want to play a 2 players game with 2 gamepads and use the D-pads instead of the analog sticks ? I can't do that with dosbox. Well, at least not unless I'm using an external remapping software which would be a bit complicated.
So my question is : why is it not possible to remap controls to a real joystick / gamepad unless joysticks are enabled in the config file, even though the game within dosbox does not "see" these joysticks directly ?
Am I missing something ?
