It's no secret that I'm not a veteran from the days of DOS. Barring my MSX (which did not even have a mouse) my first computer already had Windows98 on it. So I have no familiarity with the old white on black, text commands interface and the software of those distant days.

Now I've been meaning to play the DOS version of Robocop 3, known by some as Robocop 3D (it's abandonware by the way).

As you can see from the video, it looks like an interesting game (though yeah, the music sucks), much better than the NES and SNES platformers. But you have to play the first person shooter segments (4:45 in the video) using the mouse, because the keyboard makes Robocop turn around jerkily and there's no buttons to raise or lower your aim, meaning you can only go for headshots which is rather hard when your crosshair moves from one side of the target's head all the way to the other side at the mere pressure of an arrow button.

So yeah, I'd gladly play with the mouse... except it doesn't work for me!

I don't know why this is the case. I've played other DOS games with DOS box that did use the mouse and never had any problems, so it's something inherent to this one.
I've tried adding "-conf -m" to the bat file that starts it up, but that did not help.
So... anyone here familiar with DOS games and has any ideas as to what may be necessary to enable the darn mouse?

I grew up using DOS, but I never really tinkered with forcing mouse support in programs that didn't actually come with mouse support as a default. I'd say look for a configuration or setup file or even a menu within the game itself. A readme file would also probably have info on that. For a lot of the old DOS games, they used to have a list of all the hotkeys (such as mouse toggle) associated with one of the F-keys so you could try just going from F1-F12...

Anyone else have any ideas?

I've neer played this game, but it does support mouse input natively:

But you can't make the mouse work in this one game? Strange. What version of DOSBox are you using?

But this one should!

There's only a sound and joystick setup... and the joystick setup only detected the joypad the first time, never again (also it detected it, but it didn't work in-game... not that I mind since I'm trying to play with the mouse)

Couldn't find any. It just asks you right away what language to play in and whether you want to play story or arcade mode (the latter prompts a level select too)

I've tried looking for a manual on-line. I did find one with a list of keys, and it said the Amiga version of the game allows you to toggle the mouse with the M button (that seems to be the only Amiga exclusive command), doesn't say anything about the DOS version, as if it shouldn't even be an issue to begin with :\

I've tried pressing every single button on the keyboard twice (not combinations though).

0.74

Somebody claimed in the DOSBox compatibility list that the game was working fine on version 0.70, can you verify this?

Tried it, doesn't seem to make any difference other than the characters don't match my keyboard.

Mmm... I'll take a more in-depth look tonight.

Thanks :)

Figured out what the problem was! B)

When you launch the game with start.exe, it expects some parameters, otherwise it returns an error message. When you run robo3.bat, all it does is launch start.exe with the correct parameters. Except that... they aren't correct.

If you open robo3.bat in Notepad, you'll immediately notice the problem. One of the parameters is "DID=". What immediately follows is the directory where the game is supposed to be stored. Change it to where the executable is mounted in DOSBox (or you can use the relative path "." without the quotes if you run the game directly from its working directory), save the batch file, then run it from DOSBox.

I have no idea what's the connection between the working directory and the mouse input, but I'll play along. :P

Enjoy your retro game! Oh, and I highly suggest that you update the compatibility status on the DOSBox website afterwards; the last one is for version 0.62!

My thoughts exactly O_o
Also it seems the mouse and keyboard won't work at the same time. Weird. I would have preferred aiming with the mouse and advancing with the up key...

But regardless, that's awesome thanks again! :D

To clarify: did you get it working? I use DOSBox for games more than Windows nowadays ...

I certainly did. I even finished the game.

Also now that the mouse works, the J key on the keyboard is used to switch between that, keyboard and joystick (the latter of which doesn't work, but who cares).
I had a lot of trouble controlling the jetpack with the mouse, so I just mapped it to joypad with XPadder.

It was an entertaining game (unlike the Amiga version which is the stuff of nightmares), though the boss fights are one-chancers (either you get it right or its game over and back to the start).


Now I'm trying to get Hound of Shadows to work (one of the first text based adventures to feature pictures), but I get stuck at the first full screen image. Weird.