Playing this in Dosbox

[Tijn]

#12087

In another thread a modern port is mentioned that allows you to play Abuse on modern operating systems, without frame rate limits and other niceties.

That is probably the way to go if you want to enjoy this game nowadays.

But if you want to play it in Dosbox, the default experience might not be so great.

The main issue imho is the controls. Whose idea was it to use arrow keys for movement and mouse for aiming?? Idk about you, but I use both of those with my right hand. For this to work, I need two right hands! I don’t have two right hands!

Anyway, luckily Dosbox comes with a built-in keymapper. You can bring it up by pressing ctrl+F1. Simply click the arrow keys, choose “add bind” and press the wasd keys on your keyboard to add these to control the arrow keys.

Now you can play it with two hands!

As for the frame rate, I’ve heard people say it fluctuates wildly, but I’ve not really seen that. I think what might fix this is setting a fixed cycle count. I’m running it on auto at 45% and that seems to be ok, so that’s another thing you can try.

[Evil Taco]

#12089

Thanks for the tip, I was definitely missing WASD! I’ll try fudging with the cycles too.

[watchful]

#12116

I’ve noticed that mouse sensitivity is way too high in DOSBox-X. Maybe frame-rate? Lowering to sensitivity=30 is better though–for me–it causes horizontal sensitivity to feel too slow and vertical to feel more sensitive. It’s very jarring.

Don’t recall it being that bad when I first played it on my 486/P1. I’m curious if folks find DOSBox settings that work or how it works on their old hardware.

EDIT: DOSBox Staging with mouse_senitivity=30 feels better. Still a little awkward with such a low frame-rate. Don’t remembering it feeling so choppy back in the day.

[dr_st]

#12117

>> The main issue imho is the controls. Whose idea was it
>> to use arrow keys for movement and mouse for aiming??
>> Idk about you, but I use both of those with my right
>> hand. For this to work, I need two right hands!
>> I don’t have two right hands!

I remember that the unorthodox choice of controls was one of the things that put me off the game (and has been putting me off to date). I guess WASD was still not well adopted back then. I have at least one friend who used to play FPS games using the arrow keys with his left hand.

[patrick_wd]

#12118

I just hit the mouse sensitivity issue in Dosbox-X, but resolved it by setting both the X and Y sensitivity. In other words “sensitivity=50,50” The documentation implies that just setting 1 value will set it to both, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Probably just a bug, but at least setting both values works.

[Zacktorial]

#12155

I mean WASD would be preferably , but I haven’t had any problems mousing and using the arrow keys at the same time. Honestly my big beef is switching weapons is ctrl and…. insert? Really? That’s an insanely out of the way key when alt is right there.

[dr_st]

#12162

>> Honestly my big beef is switching weapons is ctrl
>> and…. insert? Really? That’s aninsanely out of the
>> way key when alt is right there.

You’re supposed to use the Right Ctrl (left of arrow keys) and Numpad Insert (right of arrow keys). Lost Vikings had exactly the same scheme for switching vikings. Though since it also used ESDF, and since I use Numpad arrows and not traditional arrows, I ended up using Left Ctrl and Pad Insert – with my left pinky and my right thumb.

[Zacktorial]

#12170

Oh lord, I haven’t had a keyboard with a numpad in years now. I forgot all about numpad insert. That makes way more sense.

I’ve just been only using ctrl to just cycle through weapons. It works well enough.