How to detect arrow keys in a DosBox program?

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I would like to be able to detect arrow keys pressed in a program that is running in a DosBox environment. Is there a way to do this?

Posted 29-Sep-13 7:56am

jgspeeddemon

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pasztorpisti 29-Sep-13 14:59pm

I have always used int 16H of the BIOS for that (usually with ah==0). It depends on your compiler how to fill registers and execute interrupts with it.

jgspeeddemon 29-Sep-13 15:27pm

I am very new to C++. How would I go about doing what you describe? Can I use C++ or would I need to use assembly language?

pasztorpisti 29-Sep-13 16:19pm

Most c++ compilers on dos have a library with which you can specify incoming parameters in registers an then you can perform an interrupt or long call and then you can read the result registers without writing assembly. This doens't mean you don't have to know a bit of assembly but you can at least do it in C/C++ without bothering with asm and linker magic. If you are very new to C++ then I would forget about this solution. Maybe someone knows an easier one.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 29-Sep-13 23:39pm

There is no such thing as "DOS box", unless you are using some really old OS.
—SA

jgspeeddemon 30-Sep-13 0:49am

You misunderstand. DOSBox is a DOS-emulator for old DOS programs. It is available from http://www.dosbox.com/
I wish to intercept the arrow keypresses in that program to be able to utilize a mapping system in a windows program.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 30-Sep-13 8:55am

Yes, I misunderstood, but only because you did not share this important piece of information in first place.
One common misconception is calling CMD.EXE a "DOS box". How could I know what do you really mean?

And I'm just curious? why developing for DOS at all?
—SA

jgspeeddemon 11-Oct-13 13:21pm

I enjoy playing old DOS adventure games, like AD&D, and would like to create a program that would detect the arrow keys and then create a map from the arrow key. The old games do not have a mapping function available and I want to create my own map intercepting the arrow keys. I guess I can download the source files to "DosBox" and try to figure out a way to do this within the program itself. I was wanting to create a program outside of the "DosBox" environment. I do not know how to achieve this though.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 11-Oct-13 16:11pm

Thank you for the explanation. I hope Solution 1 can help you. As to your next question, you will need some compiling environment, say, for Windows...
—SA

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 11-Oct-13 16:16pm

Please see Solution 2.
—SA

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 1 · 2013-10-11T10:16:00

jgspeeddemon wrote:
I guess I can download the source files to "DosBox" and try to figure out a way to do this within the program itself. I was wanting to create a program outside of the "DosBox" environment. I do not know how to achieve this though.

You can work on, say, Windows and use some compiling environment for Windows. It could be MinGW/MSYS. Please see:
http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/BuildingDOSBox#3._Compiling_environment[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinGW[^],
http://mingw.org/[^].

—SA

Richard MacCutchan · Answer 2 · 2013-09-29T22:23:00

Solution 1

See http://www.dosbox.com/[^].

Posted 29-Sep-13 22:23pm

Richard MacCutchan