I want to remap movement from the arrow keys to the WASD keys in Betrayal of Krondor. I've never used Dosbox before and have no idea what I'm doing.

I launch the keymapper with Ctl+F1, and proceed to do the following:

Select left arrow key. Click Add. Select W. Click Save.
Repeat for the remaining arrow keys.
Exit keymapper.

But when I launch the game, the WASD keys do nothing. I'm guessing there are steps I'm missing. Am I supposed to leave DOSbox running when I click Play on GOG Galaxy to launch the game? Am I supposed to launch the game within Dosbox by typing oldschool DOS commands? I don't get it. Any of it.

Any help much appreciated!

I think you would select the W key in the keymapper and add the "arrow" key to that. So on for A, S, and D.
You may want to check the game manual and double check those 4 letter keys and make sure they are not used for anything else, been a while since I played this. If so, I suppose you can always remap those to another key as well.

Hey, thanks for the reply. Just noticed it.

I followed your advice but unfortunately it still doesn't work. It doesn't seem to matter which keys I re-map in dosbox - whenever I launch Betrayal at Krondor the re-bindings don't take effect. As an experiment, I even deleted the biindings of the arrow keys completely, and the game still used the arrow keys to move.

To be clear, I'm remapping the keys in dosbox, hitting save, closing dosbox, then opening GOG Galaxy and clicking Play to launch Krondor, which automatically opens through dosbox. I tried figuring out how to manually launch the game by typing commands into dosbox like I used to do as a kid in the '90s (C, colon, backslash etc etc) but couldn't find a .exe file to actually boot the game.

Over the last year, I've spent hours trying to rebind the keys, and no time actually playing the game. It's so complicated. :(

I just tested mine thru the shortcut in the install folder and thru Galaxy. When yo hit "save", is there a mapper.txt in the main install folder of the game? (for me D:\GOGcom\Betrayal at Krondor). If it is installed in Program Files, it will not be able to write that and will not save correctly. Never install games into Program Files.
But, yeah, it is working for me just fine thru shortcut in game folder and thry galaxy, with the mapper.txt being created upon keybind save.
You may have to "remove" the normal key assigned as well. So, select "W", "add" the "up arrow", "del" the "w" from W. Save. The game may get confused when W is hit and it is receiving both W and Up Arrow. I did not test this part.

You should probably know that S is used to shoot crossbow in combat screen.
D is used to attempt defense in combat screen
A is auto-combat mode
D is also used in inventory screen to view keys or to drop items
You would have to redefine these as well. Check the reference card in "Extras" for other keys used in game.

I managed to resolve the problem after someone suggested I rebind the keys while in-game, and it worked. Previously I'd been rebinding in dosbox, then launching the game. So now I have full WASD controls for movement - hooray!

Thanks for the advice about redefining the combat controls, by the way. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing in the combat so far (very much muddling my way through!) so I'll have a read of the extras card and re-bind the crossbow, defense, auto-combat buttons.

There is also the possibility of usingautohotkey if you don't mind to install it fist. (It's free though) I find that pretty easy to use and here is what you have to do:

1. Install it
2. Rightclick on your desktop, select new and and click on AutoHotkey Script
3. Open this new script by rightclicking and choosing edit script
4. Insert this into the script:

#IfWinActive DOSBox 0.74
w::up
a::left
s::down
d::right
#IfWinActive

5. Save and close the script
6. Run the Script (either by double clicking on it, or rightclickling and choosing Run)
7. Start the Game and play

That makes it so that the arrow keys are now bound to the WASD keys. Though you should be aware that this is always active as long as DOSBox is active. That means that you will not be able to use the letters w, a, s, d at all unless you bind them to other keys as well. As far as I know they aren't used for hotkeys in the game but it also means you won't be able to use them for names of savegames and such. (unless you rebind them too or deactivate the script.

Seeing that this thread has been somewhat revived...

This game has been designed with arrow keys in mind and granted, it is very well suited for right-handed players (so if you are left-handed you might want to ignore rest of this post).

Anyway... BaK Interface is very well designed for right-handed players, I can vouch for that, since approx. two years ago I broke (and rather seriously pummeled) my left hand and it took many weeks to heal - now, since I was unable to work for several weeks, I was searching for a game, which can be played with just one hand (and surprisingly, it is not so easy and/or obvious) - and you guessed it, BaK was such a game...

So, for me such thing almost sounds like a blasphemy - of course, your mileage may vary, but anyway, try to give the original control scheme a chance, it is really well thought out and very usable with just one hand, which I was able fully appreciate.