Posted January 22, 2014
Okay, the game has two major problems when controlled by keyboard. First, the jump action with shift does not work, and cursor arrows jump in orthogonal directions while movement works with keypad (clunky). Second, after pressing a directional key on keypad, the character takes one step, then halts a while, then resumes moving. I suspect it is tied to "autorepeat" feature of old keyboard where on long keypress, one letter was typed, and only after a while the autorepeat kicked in. Anyway, it's annoying as hell for games. The third problem (besides Spanish Inquisition) is that the keys are scattered all across the keyboard in an impractical manner.
To resolve all this, you need to use a joystick, preferably a joystick with digital (0-1) input, not an analog stick (japanese style fightstick works quite well, if you have one, in emergency, use D-pad on a gamepad), or at least joystick commands remapped to keys. Just select the "joystick and keyboard" controls in the ingame menu, and follow the short calibration procedure. That way, you get nice, sensitive directional input, and two context-dependent buttons - first uses objects in front of you or fires your gun, second toggles crouch, or jumps with a movement command. If you have a stick with many buttons (like my Madcatz TE fightstick), map as many commands to buttons using the DOSBOX mapper.
The mapper is opened by pressing Ctrl+F1, and you can then map controller events (stick moves, button presses, key presses) to Dosbox internal events. After I was done, I was able to map all the game commands on my stick except F4 (enter password) which is used really infrequently. That way, you can play the game in a smooth, natural manner you are used to from modern action games, and the annoyance brought by clunky keyboard controls and the laggy input is largely eliminated.
The game is worth the effort!
To resolve all this, you need to use a joystick, preferably a joystick with digital (0-1) input, not an analog stick (japanese style fightstick works quite well, if you have one, in emergency, use D-pad on a gamepad), or at least joystick commands remapped to keys. Just select the "joystick and keyboard" controls in the ingame menu, and follow the short calibration procedure. That way, you get nice, sensitive directional input, and two context-dependent buttons - first uses objects in front of you or fires your gun, second toggles crouch, or jumps with a movement command. If you have a stick with many buttons (like my Madcatz TE fightstick), map as many commands to buttons using the DOSBOX mapper.
The mapper is opened by pressing Ctrl+F1, and you can then map controller events (stick moves, button presses, key presses) to Dosbox internal events. After I was done, I was able to map all the game commands on my stick except F4 (enter password) which is used really infrequently. That way, you can play the game in a smooth, natural manner you are used to from modern action games, and the annoyance brought by clunky keyboard controls and the laggy input is largely eliminated.
The game is worth the effort!
Post edited January 22, 2014 by Kamamura
