How to emulate joystick buttons as keyboard keys with Dosbox-X ?

Andearoid

Compared to the Dosbox-Libretro core, the native Dosbox core run faster when using older hardware. With the old Dosbox core I was able to access the keymapper using [CTRL] [F1] . With the new Dosbox-X core the [CTRL] [F1] doesn’t work for me.

Is there another trick to map joypad buttons to a key press ?

Andearoid

To access the keymapper with Dosbox-X in the Batocera setup you’ve to press [F12] [M] simultaneously.

[F12] is the host key
[M] is the M letter on a US keyboard (or [ ,] on a french keyboard)

Next step, how to have a mouse controler to select/add keys mapping ? Does anyone knows ?

Andearoid

OKé… here is the gesticulation I had to do for mapping my joystick buttons to keyboard keys press like I want.

In EmulationStation press [F1] to open the PCFManFM window browser.
In its left menu, select “Application” and double-click on the XTerm icon to open a Linux prompt.

In the shell, type these commands to open Dosbox-X as full access mode with a working mouse pointer :

# cd /userdata/system/configs/dosbox
# /usr/bin/dosbox-x

In the menubar, select Main > Configuration GUI.
Then in the Dosbox-X Configuration window click Configuration > Save…
Enter the filename dosboxx.conf (not dosbox-x.conf !!) and validate with OK.
And Close the Dosbox-x Configuration.

In the menubar, select Main > Mapper editor :

click on the “virtual” keyboard button to assignate (to show it green),
click Add
on the gamepad/joystick press the button to map with the selected keyboard key
repeat step 1 to 3 for each gamepad/joystick buttons.
and click Save, then Exit

In the menubar, select Main > Quit to go back to the Linux shell.
To close the Linux shell type the command line : # exit

In the PCFManFM window browser go to /userdata/system/configs/dosbox/ folder.
Double-click the dosboxx.conf file to edit.
And add this line in the [sdl] section : mapperfile = mapper-sdl2.map
Save the new file content by pressing [ CTRL]+[S].
And close the file editor by pressing [CTRL]+[Q]

Close the PCFManFM window browser by pressing [CTRL]+[Q] on the keyboard.

Now when I launch a “dosbox.bat”, my gamepad emulate keyboard presses. That’s very usefull to play Doom with strafe left/strafe right as R1/L1 buttons. In Doom’s setup, this action are only available through the keyboard. It’s not settable in the joystick config.

Andearoid

After updating my Batocera x64 5.27.2 to the latest .29 release I had some issues with the key mapper.

At first the /userdata/system/configs/dosbox/dosboxx.conf config file wasn’t loaded. Because some old Dosbox-X’s parameters weren’t take in charge anymore. Nothing want works like before.

So the first thing to do, is to recrete a new clean config file :
cp /usr/share/dosbox-x/dosbox-x.reference.conf /userdata/system/configs/dosbox/dosboxx.conf

Then modify parameters like you did before. But take care about the mapper parameter. You’ll have to replace :
mapperfile = mapper-sdl2.map by mapperfile_sdl2 = /userdata/system/configs/dosbox/mapper-sdl2.map

You shouldn’t have to remap your keys with your gamepad. Your old mapper-sdl2.map is still compliant. And keep it safe !! I did a remap with the latest Dosbox-X mapper tool version, and I wasn’t able to assign [Up] [Down] [Left] [Right] buttons to my gamepad cross button.

Here is how the cross button was define in my old working mapper-sdl2.map :

key_up "key 82" "stick_0 button 13" 
key_left "key 80" "stick_0 button 15" 
key_down "key 81" "stick_0 button 14" 
key_right "key 79" "stick_0 button 16"

And here is how the cross button is define in the new mapper-sdl2.map :

key_up "key 82" 
key_left "key 80" 
key_down "key 81" 
key_right "key 79"

It seems something is broken in the DOSBox-X 0.83.7’s mapper. But you can fix it with my sample and a text editor.