Absolute Mouse in Windows on iPad

[fiskenuno]

First of all, thanks for this incredible port of Dosbox. It has revolutionized Dos and Retro Windows gaming, especially on iOS devices.

Now for the issue at hand. I want to get absolute mouse working on Dosbox Pure through Retroarch on iPad - but it feels like I've tried EVERYthing and it's just not working well enough.

I have tried DOS/Win 3.11/Windows 95a/b/c and Windows 98 and this is what I've found:

• In DOS VBmouse seems to be the best option. It's not 100% compatible - I assume some games use their own mouse drivers which breaks compatibility, but in most cases this WORKS.
• In Windows 3.x VMWMouse does work but it's buggy and in many cases it just makes games crash with different error messages. For example Lemmings 3.x version. From what I can tell, it seems to affect games using Win32S or WinG. No idea how to get around this.
• In Windows 95/98 I have not found any way to get absolute mouse to work at all. The drivers that work for DOS and Win3.x won't install through the Win "Add New Hardware", but I read you can simply modify System.ini, but it does not work for me. After doing this and restarting the VM mouse doesn't work at all. Nor have I managed to get any other drivers, such as DOSLib, to work. I have searched and searched for a solution, but after spending so much time with this I am now considering just giving up.

In UTM I have managed to get absolute mouse to work in Windows XP on my iPad. It is detecting the input device as a USB 2.0 device. Is it possible to get it to work in Windows 95/98 in Dosbox Pure through internal USB? Not sure if the detected USB device is somehow internal on hardware level or if it's emulated in UTM, in which case it probably won't work the same in Dosbox. The downsides of UTM are speed and hardware video acceleration though (lack of 3DFX for example, which Dosbox Pure does have). So getting this to work in Dosbox Pure would definitely be the preferred option.

Thoughts and ideas on what to try next?

[schellingb]

Just to be sure, for DOS you have tried setting the "Mouse Input Mode" to "Direct controlled mouse (not supported by all games)"? It works for me, as it says, in most games.
With input stuff there is always a chance that RetroArch does something weird on a specific platform but in this case it sounds like it mostly works in some cases, so I assume this is not the frontend's fault.
Are you using the last public release 0.9.9? It is quite old by now so maybe things have improved since, there should be a new release sometime soon (I hope).

I, too, have tried various ways of getting a VMWare mouse driver work in Windows 95/98 without success. It is frustrating that it doesn't work because it is a very lightweight solution, both on the host's and the guest's side. It needs minimal code to be integrated in DOSBox. Though hearing about issues you have in certain Win 3.x games sounds frustrating, too. I guess if this is an issue of the guest driver there isn't much the emulator can do.

DOSBox-X has a few more bells and whistles (see their documentation), for example the serial mouse emulation. It doesn't do USB as far as I can tell. USB emulation of any sort is probably far out of scope for our DOSBox fork, as far as I can tell it is very complex. Serial mouse emulation might be on the table, we already emulate a modem on one serial port. I don't know how involved that would be or if it could be enabled by default or not.

[fiskenuno]

Thanks for your reply, @schellingb

Just to be sure, for DOS you have tried setting the "Mouse Input Mode" to "Direct controlled mouse (not supported by all games)"?

Yes, I've tried playing around with the "Mouse Input Mode" too. Although, as I said, in DOS I am quite happy with the results. It is the absolute mouse support in Windows that is not working as well as I had hoped. For some games it is perfectly fine to use relative mouse, for others it's much much more convenient with absolute mouse.

Are you using the last public release 0.9.9?

I am using the last public release, yes. I am using the Retroarch version available through the App Store and have updated the Core (in case there has been any updates recently).

It is quite old by now so maybe things have improved since, there should be a new release sometime soon (I hope).

Sounds great! I am looking forward to testing a new version. However, based on you saying you have had similar experiences in Win 95/98, it seems not that much have changed on that side... :(

DOSBox-X has a few more bells and whistles (see their documentation), for example the serial mouse emulation. It doesn't do USB as far as I can tell.

Yeah, I have tried messing around with Dosbox.conf files and the input options, but I couldn't get it to work that way either. It can get very time consuming, trying different options along with different drivers. If the system locks up or the mouse won't work, you need to go back to a previous version and try something else etc etc. Hence why I wanted to ask in here if anybody had success with something specific. But maybe you are right in that I would be better off asking at a DOSBox-X forum...

USB emulation of any sort is probably far out of scope for our DOSBox fork, as far as I can tell it is very complex. Serial mouse emulation might be on the table, we already emulate a modem on one serial port. I don't know how involved that would be or if it could be enabled by default or not.

Yeah, I experimented some with Win95 yesterday where I enabled the USB drivers in order to install Daemon Tools, because I wanted to run games with Redbook audio. I had issues where the OS just froze on me several times and I had to hard reset the VM. That's not good as those old OS's tend to corrupt your HD image when you don't shut them down properly. So I might want to stay away from USB for now. Maybe serial mouse emulation could be an option though.