AutoHotkey Community

Can anyone help me with a script to simulate a dual-joystick control for a game that doesn't actually support it? For instance, the 80s arcade games Robotron and Smash TV had one stick for moving and one for shooting in 8 directions. Some of the home conversions only have a single shoot button and you shoot in the direction you are moving, or there's a lock button to lock your shooting direction so you can strafe.

I want to simulate a shooting joystick for games that only have a single shoot and a lock button. My idea was to use 8 hotkeys or eventually map the second joystick of a dual analog gamepad to move in the direction of the joystick and hold fire and lock, but release the movement so that I can still move with the main directional keys or joystick.


Here's a very simple script that only covers the cardinal directions:



I'm using this with Smash TV for Genesis on the Fusion emulator. It usually works as far as firing in the right direction, but sometimes if I am holding A for instance, it will keep moving me Left even if I am holding down Right. And sometimes I can't move at all if I am shooting.

Is there a better way of doing this?

So you hold down both the shoot button and the lock button while shooting, I guess? Well, I had an idea but you pretty much pasted it in your code...I dunno.
I have Super Smash TV (any difference from Smash TV?) on super nintendo emulator, and it has 8-directional shooting on four buttons. At this point, that's all I can recommend.
Oh yeah, and only download it if you own the actual game .

_________________
I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit,
and on the slitted sheet I sit. ;~}

Well, I know you can play other versions of Smash TV that have the proper dual joystick-like controls, but there are other games with this kind of "lock firing" and I'd like to use this on those games as well.

Hey, I just had an epiphany. If you were to use that script, and hit a shoot button (wsad) while running in a direction, that would interfere with the process of shooting in said direction.
Long story short, the problem is that you can only be moving one direction at any given time (counting diagonals as a single direction). With even the best method, you're going to have some problems running (you have to hit up and fire/lock to shoot up; if you're running down, you'll still have to hit up.)
You could try disabling the arrow keys (if that's what you run with) while changing shooting directions.



Can't really test the effectiveness of this script, but you might have to hit each of the shoot buttons to turn the arrow hotkeys off...? I don't know, but if this doesn't work, I don't know what to tell you. Good luck.

_________________
I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit,
and on the slitted sheet I sit. ;~}

Well, moving and shooting in the same direction is no problem. Moving and shooting in different directions sometimes ends up with me shooting in a direction I don't want to be shooting in.

I notice that when I am shooting in a direction with the script, I end up moving in that direction a little bit also. When I use your script that turns off the arrow keys, I end up not being able to move in certain directions until I totally release the shooting buttons.

Does it make sense that the WASD hotkeys keep repeating the "up down left right" keys if I hold them down?

Should I be using SendInput or SendPlay?

Well...sadly, I am very inexperienced. Instead of a:: you could try a down:: maybe? I don't know. My own scripts usually take many tries. Maybe some more experienced user can help you. Good luck.

How does the disabling the arrow keys work? I tried using that part but sometimes the arrow keys stay disabled.

Also, it seems like my WASD are repeating when I hold them down because I keep moving in that direction. How do I stop that?

Using left for an example:


I stole that from somebody else's script, actually, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

_________________
I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit,
and on the slitted sheet I sit. ;~}

Ok, so maybe I need to turn off all of the directional keys right when the shooting direction is triggering.

This version tries to turn off all the directional keys before changing where I aim to fire, but I think the emulator app is still picking up the directional keys. I'm also using the number pad to do the firing, and I'm leaving the shoot button down when i trigger the directional shooting, and using the 5 key to turn off shooting.



what am I doing wrong?