Can you create overlay keys that act as a keyboard press? If so, how?

tacticalcraptical · 17 April 2019 22:47

I tried to make a keyboard overlay specifically for playing Amiga games and I want to create a button that presses the “Alt” (only way to use a grenade on the Amiga version of Turrican, of course). P-UAE core does not support mapping keyboard keys.

I created an overlay button like so: overlay0_desc22 = “alt,0.9575,0.262083333333,rect,0.0425,0.052083333333” overlay0_desc22_overlay = alt.png

But it doesn’t do anything. Any ideas? Being able to do this would be helpful for a lot of things. especially MS-DOS games.

hunterk · 18 April 2019 02:10

yes, you need to use “retrok_lalt” for left-alt.

See this old, busted keyboard overlay for details:

github.com

libretro/common-overlays/blob/master/keyboards/US-101/US-101.cfg

overlays = 6
overlay0_name = landscape-qwerty
overlay0_normalized = true
overlay0_full_screen = true
overlay0_descs = 105
overlay0_overlay = landscape-qwerty.png
overlay1_name = landscape-hide
overlay1_normalized = true
overlay1_overlay = landscape-hide.png
overlay1_full_screen = true
overlay1_descs = 1
overlay2_name = portrait-qwerty
overlay2_normalized = true
overlay2_overlay = portrait-qwerty.png
overlay2_full_screen = true
overlay2_descs = 74
overlay3_name = portrait-qwerty-hide
overlay3_normalized = true
overlay3_overlay = portrait-qwerty-hide.png
overlay3_full_screen = true

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tacticalcraptical · 18 April 2019 13:39

That worked! Thank you very much! You have just opened a world of possibilities to me!

I do have another related question though. Is there a way to assign multiple key/button presses to the same overlay button?

Like if you wanted to throw an axe in Castlevania with a single button press instead of the usual “Up+B” I have tried to do this myself a few ways but it does not seem to work. I am either doing it wrong or it’s impossible.

Thank you again!

hunterk · 18 April 2019 13:41

Sure, just separate the commands with a pipe character. E.g., up|b

tacticalcraptical · 18 April 2019 15:33

That works! At least with pad buttons.

I tried to do one that was:

a|retrok_ralt and retrok_down|retrok_space

Those didn’t work. Is that correct that they just don’t work or did I do something wrong?

hunterk · 18 April 2019 15:35

Hmm, I’m not sure, actually. I don’t think I’ve done anything mixing keyboard and retropad. I do know that using a key as a modifier does not work with the pipe combine. That is, lshift|retrok_r won’t make a capital R (not reliably, at least).

tacticalcraptical · 18 April 2019 18:15

I know doing that is probably pretty fringe. You’d only really ever have use for it to play some of the old C64 and Amiga games on a touchscreen device. Those were, as far as I know, the only games that ever combined joystick and keyboard input during regular play.