No Afterburners in WC3?

[Optical]

Hello, I've been playing Wing Commander III quite successfully with dosbox, with the exception of one thing. I can't use the afterburners most of the time. The only time I can get them to work is in when I use an autoslide with the caps lock key AND lock them, and then I'm stuck using them in the direction of the autoslide.

Is there any way I could change the keyboard layout of the game as to make afterburners some other key? That might fix it, but I haven't found any obvious way of doing that.

Of course, other solutions are welcome if you guys have any.

 

[Optical]

Hm, well I just tried the dosbox mapper to (CTRL+F1) to rebind my keys, and it didn't work. I can only use the afterburners when they're locked and I'm autosliding....

Not sure where to go from here but to try and get the game to work without dosbox....

 

[Prometheus]

A while back I had success in trying to play Wing Commander III on Windows XP without DOSbox using VDMSound.

It wasn't quite perfect, but it worked well enough - my PC was much too weak to achieve the necessary performance in DOSbox.

 

[ChrisReid]

The game doesn't have an internal key mapper, but there is the DOSBox one as you found. I don't think I've heard of the WC3 afterburners not working in DOSBox before. Does holding tab down work in other WC games? What happens when you hit the afterburner lock key (`~)?

 

[Optical]

Hm, I might still have a copy of Prophecy lying around, I'll install that and see if it works.

I did play Descent: Freespace I and II and the afterburners worked just fine with ~ and TAB.

This is probably related, but I found it impossible to control the ship with the arrow keys as well. it was very sluggish, and sometimes the ship would not climb or climb especially slow with the up arrow. The mouse works just fine though.

I'll also install WC3 on another computer. I suspect it has something to do with my laptop.

 

[Solid Eric]

If you're using mouse flight, I've noticed that afterburners don't work with the Tab key. You have to double tap your right mouse button for it.

 

[Optical]

Aw... my CD number one of prophecy has gone missing. I guess I'm going to have obtain a new copy.

I ran wc3 on another computer, but that computer's keyboard doesn't agree with dosbox very well, (can't use the right shift key, have to bind = and - to other things to use them) but I CAN use tab to afterburn and the arrow keys work fine to control the ship. Hm.

I'm in the process of getting the rest of the Wing Commander games too, so I can see if this is a recurring problem in all of them (keyboard not working very well to control the ship, no afterburners with tab). As far as my arrow keys issues go it sounds like it is the same as this guy's: http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=25369&highlight=arrow+keys

I can use the afterburners by double tapping the right mouse button, but while I'm using them I can only roll and I cannot fire. Which is annoying, but it's an improvement at least.

Well, I can use SHIFT to make the turn rate go up to something reasonable, just a bit fast. I guess I'll just play through the game like that, without using the mouse.

The solution is looking to be to go out and buy a joystick.... :/

 

[Szegedin]

The solution is looking to be to go out and buy a joystick.... :/

bingo.

 

[ChrisReid]

Yeah, the shift+turn was a new thing introduced in WC3. I played that way and liked it pretty well.

Even with a joystick, I tended to use my left hand for afterburners and some things.

 

[Unregistered]

Is this bug (lack of afterburners when playing mouse) absent only under DOSBox?

 

[Madman]

Yeah, the shift+turn was a new thing introduced in WC3. I played that way and liked it pretty well.

Even with a joystick, I tended to use my left hand for afterburners and some things.

I'm not sure it was Chris, if you look under controlling the ship on the wc1 reference card:
http://download.wcnews.com/files/manuals/Wing Commander - Reference Card.pdf
it mentions using the shift key there!

 

[Lt.Overload]

Aw... my CD number one of prophecy has gone missing. I guess I'm going to have obtain a new copy.(...)

You can always try Secret Ops, free and it's the same engine.

 

[ChrisReid]

I'm not sure it was Chris, if you look under controlling the ship on the wc1 reference card:
http://download.wcnews.com/files/manuals/Wing Commander - Reference Card.pdf
it mentions using the shift key there!

That kinda blows my mind. I see it there buried in the text, but clearly I missed it for twenty years because it's not on the actual reference card lower down.

I wonder how the actual implementation worked... if it functioned the same as in WC3 where it's seemed vital (and new) to controlling a ship via keyboard. I'm trying to simulate it in DOSBox, but instead the ship gets "stuck" going in one direction with shift pressed down (and I'm not 100% sure that's not how it was intended due to the wording of that text blurb).