No joystick working WC1

H

highpsi

Spaceman
Everything appears to be running perfect with dosbox on my laptop with vista, but I cannot get the game to pick up my logitech USB joystick. Its a very basic little joystick with the two thumb controllers and such, like an xbox style or ps3.

Dosbox appears to detect it too when I launch, so it seems like it is just the game.

I've tried to press "j", ctrl J, shift J, alt J, jeez... I don't know how to access the option to turn the darn thing on in the game and cannot find any instructions anywhere either! :mad:

Ideas?




EDIT:
I can get WC2 to recognize a request for the joystick, but it pulls up the screen and says if auto fire turned on turn it off, and press a button. But nothing after that when I press all the buttons. I tried moving to all 3 different ports too but nothing works.
 
The problem is most likely to do with a modern USB Joystick (Saitek by any chance?) and DOSBox 0.74.

I had exactly the problems you are describing, where DOSBox picks up the joystick on startup, but the game either doesn't recognise it, or won't calibrate it properly. I found switching to older DOSbox versions seems to solve it - 0.63 does the trick for me at least. Keep 0.74 on board for other old non-joystick games though, it's a much improved version.
 
Bingo!

Nice suggestion Dan. Worked perfect.

I can't believe I am playing this game again now! I haven't played it in twenty years!

Dear god I feel OLD! ~~~

On a side note, its just as much fun as I remembered!!!

:)
 
I'm having this same issue with the joystick not working/being recognized but I'm playing with the Kilrathi Saga version. I've downloaded DOSBox .63, but I don't know how I would get WC1 to play with that if I'm using KS.

The game runs just fine and I've gotten to the Venice System with just the keyboard...but DAMN is it difficult now without a joystick.
 
Hmm, stumped about that one, Kilrathi Saga versions are Windows-only applications so DOSBox won't help you here, it could be to do with compatibility, could you tell me which version of Windows you're running? Thanks.
 
I'm currently running Windows 7 64 and using a Saitek X52 HOTAS

EDIT: Also, I have tried running it standard and in Windows 95 compatibility mode. No change when running in compatible.
 
That's exactly the same set up as mine, my Saitek X52 works fine with Kilrathi Saga in Win 7 x64, just not the throttle lever, but you'll have one hand on the keyboard for other commands anyway.

Attached to this post is my Joystick calibration file, unzip it and copy it into your \Gamedat directory (overwriting the old one) and let us know if it works :)
 

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  • wc1joystick.zip
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First off, let me say thanks for all your help Danr.

Ok, after going through this thing a bunch of times I'm noticing something rather interesting in that none of the WC games will recognize there's a joystick attached. I can get the mouse & keyboard to work for WC 1 & 2, but for WC 3 it seems it only wants to let me go flyin' with the keyboard.

Now I confess it has been a long time since I played these games into the ground, but am I missing a config or setup option somewhere? Some option to select them? I apologize in advance if it's been staring me in the face since the beginning but I didn't see any control options presented.
 
B Alex said:
First off, let me say thanks for all your help Danr.

Ok, after going through this thing a bunch of times I'm noticing something rather interesting in that none of the WC games will recognize there's a joystick attached. I can get the mouse & keyboard to work for WC 1 & 2, but for WC 3 it seems it only wants to let me go flyin' with the keyboard.

Now I confess it has been a long time since I played these games into the ground, but am I missing a config or setup option somewhere? Some option to select them? I apologize in advance if it's been staring me in the face since the beginning but I didn't see any control options presented.
Click to expand...

For WC3 you probably have to turn on the joystick in-game. When you launch into space, hit alt-o and then choose joystick (or mouse) and then save settings.

Also, can you post the joystick settings from your dosbox.conf file here incase there's something we're missing?
 
AD said:
For WC3 you probably have to turn on the joystick in-game. When you launch into space, hit alt-o and then choose joystick (or mouse) and then save settings.

Also, can you post the joystick settings from your dosbox.conf file here incase there's something we're missing?
Click to expand...

I tried that after you mentioned it but it doesn't even recognize it. I clicked on Calibrate and nothing happened. I can run the Saitek calibration just fine in Windows and it still works in games like X3.

As I'm using the Kilrathi Saga version I couldn't find anything DOSBox-related but I'm posting my config file from WC1 that I found just in case. I honestly have no clue at all what's up with this. :confused:
 

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  • WINGCMDR.zip
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I'm confused, Kilrathi Saga is not Dos and can't work in dosbox.
(Although I suppose it is theoretically possible to install windows 98 in dosbox and run try to run it. But I wouldn't recommend bothering for beginners, and wouldn't be worth the trouble)

Do you have a dos version that you are trying to get working?

All I can say is joystick has always worked for me in all wingcommander games even in .74 though I have a Saitek AV8TR. Yes. post what you have in the dosbox.conf file for joystick settings. Not the wing Commander.cfg file. Or if you don't know how to configure dosbox, I recommend using some sort of front end to help with configuration like the venerable Dfend Reloaded
 
wcnut said:
I'm confused, Kilrathi Saga is not Dos and can't work in dosbox.
(Although I suppose it is theoretically possible to install windows 98 in dosbox and run try to run it. But I wouldn't recommend bothering for beginners, and wouldn't be worth the trouble)

Do you have a dos version that you are trying to get working?

All I can say is joystick has always worked for me in all wingcommander games even in .74 though I have a Saitek AV8TR. Yes. post what you have in the dosbox.conf file for joystick settings. Not the wing Commander.cfg file. Or if you don't know how to configure dosbox, I recommend using some sort of front end to help with configuration like the venerable Dfend Reloaded
Click to expand...

No, it's not the DOS version of WC. I stated I was using Kilrathi Saga but AD said to post a DOSBox config file. I figured maybe KS was using DOSBox to operate in a non-Win95 environ or something.

To reiterate just what my situation is this is the current scenario:
Using Win x64 & Saitek X52 joystick/throttle combo
Trying to play Kilrathi Saga discs but none of the three games even acknowledge the presence of a joystick.
I have tried running the game in compatibility mode and without, no change.
 
B Alex said:
No, it's not the DOS version of WC. I stated I was using Kilrathi Saga but AD said to post a DOSBox config file. I figured maybe KS was using DOSBox to operate in a non-Win95 environ or something.

To reiterate just what my situation is this is the current scenario:
Using Win x64 & Saitek X52 joystick/throttle combo
Trying to play Kilrathi Saga discs but none of the three games even acknowledge the presence of a joystick.
I have tried running the game in compatibility mode and without, no change.
Click to expand...

I... That's my mistake. I never actually noticed that you weren't the original poster who was asking about Dosbox. Anyway, it's possible that the Kilrathi Saga has some issues communicating with newer versions of windows. The ddhack fix specifically works to help the game communicate with newer directx graphics funtions but I don't know that any time was spent with the way game controlers work.

Alternately, I have to ask if you have more than one game controller plugged in at the same time. THere's a bug in windows itself where more than one USB controller plugged in will make the joystick not work. So you can try unplugging any unnecessary USB peripherals that may be connected to your PC, calibrate the remaining stick in windows and then seeing if it makes any difference within the game.
 
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AD said:
I... That's my mistake. I never actually noticed that you weren't the original poster who was asking about Dosbox. Anyway, it's possible that the Kilrathi Saga has some issues communicating with newer versions of windows. The ddhack fix specifically works to help the game communicate with newer directx graphics funtions but I don't know that any time was spent with the way game controlers work.

Alternately, I have to ask if you have more than one game controller plugged in at the same time. THere's a bug in windows itself where more than one USB controller plugged in will make the joystick not work. So you can try unplugging any unnecessary USB peripherals that may be connected to your PC, calibrate the remaining stick in windows and then seeing if it makes any difference within the game.
Click to expand...

I tried your suggestions and at least now the graphics are all nice like I remembered them. Unfortunately, I'm still stuck in the joystick department. I'm about to just try a non-KS version and DOSBox it.

I NEED MY WC FIIIIIIIX!!!!

I'm getting close to just crushing up my discs and snorting them.
 
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B Alex said:
I tried your suggestions and at least now the graphics are all nice like I remembered them. Unfortunately, I'm still stuck in the joystick department. I'm about to just try a non-KS version and DOSBox it.

I NEED MY WC FIIIIIIIX!!!!

I'm getting close to just crushing up my discs and snorting them.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what to suggest exactly though it's possible there may be a driver update from Saitek itself that may help.

Also, I guess at this point it wouldn't hurt to try some of the ancient joystick patches in our files section: https://www.wcnews.com/files.shtml#wc3
 
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Ok, I'm just not going to bother with the KS version of the games. Tried everything mentioned and it just doesn't want to work so I went for the old DOS versions instead. Followed the instructions as per the guides and ran into this when I entered wc3 after mounting:

"EMS driver is not VCPI compliant"
 
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