I'm looking for a free keyboard emulator that will work with dosbox so I can use more modern controllers with games that used older controls that had fewer buttons as well as really old games that had no controller support at all.

Is this "I want to map gamepad buttons to keyboard inputs"?

My 'setpoint' software for my mouse from logitech seemed to work with dosbox games last time I used it, allowing the extended buttons to send key events like 'tab' and the like.

I haven't tried it, but I would expect Joy To Key to work for you. That seems to be the original author's site, but you should always check internet downloads for malware.

google xpadder, if it's gamepad you're talking about. Should be just about what you need.

Thanks for the replies,I've tried joy-to-key and it doesn't work with dosbox and the free version of xpadder is incompatible with windows 7,I might just go ahead and buy Xpadder but I would rather find a free emulator if I can.

Fabe: Well it's just 10 bucks and you're gonna use it forever if you want to use gamepad. Fantastic tool, well worth the money (There's nothing better than playing Heroes of Might and Magic with my wife from bed using gamepad :D)

Hm, sorry for the useless reply, I wasn't sure how far you'd taken things. Obviously the remapper program is going to try to sit somehow between the interface via which once acquires the input and the program, but I guess the programs can be choosy about how they get their input and be accessing things the same way, defeating the scheme.

DOSBox seems to provide built-in key/button mapping functionality, which is possibly why this doesn't work. Possibly this guide to the built in mapping on the dosbox wiki will give you what you need without purchase?

I'm not sure how the gog-dosbox deployments are configured though, so this approach might require you to do the mapping for each game independently. When I used to use dosbox in Linux I would just create a dosbox.cfg per game in its directory.

Didn't know about the built in configuring ,I'll give it a try,thanks.