C64 emulator keys not working (Solved)

[Bruce]

Hi everyone- I just got my translucent system running the OS vision 2.0 and everything seems great except the C64 and C128 emulators are not working with some of the keys. The W, A, S, Z keys don't do anything or produce a character like a left arrow. Funny thing is that if I load the VIC-20 or Plus-4 emulators, all the keys work normal. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this?

[Rudi]

Howdy Bruce,

Good to meet another newcomer to the COSV environment.

I've also had some issues with VICE emulation as, of course because of my age, I was not born in the time of Commodore or raised around its ecosystem. However, I have a solution to your problem.

https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/vice_toc.html

I can't really relate to the older techies aside from, well, everything works with a manual. VICE by default uses the Symbolic (C64 default) keyboard layout. If you wish to change this to Positional, which is what solved it for me, you can under Preferences > Keyboard. You can also change out some of the specs of your C64 emulator such as a mouse, joystick, etc.

- Rudy

[Rudi]

Howdy Bruce,

Good to meet another newcomer to the COSV environment.

I've also had some issues with VICE emulation as, of course because of my age, I was not born in the time of Commodore or raised around its ecosystem. However, I have a solution to your problem.

https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/vice_toc.html

I can't really relate to the older techies aside from, well, everything works with a manual. VICE by default uses the Symbolic (C64 default) keyboard layout. If you wish to change this to Positional, which is what solved it for me, you can under Preferences > Keyboard. You can also change out some of the specs of your C64 emulator such as a mouse, joystick, etc.

- Rudy

P.S. if you have a spare Barebones C64x laying around, gimme a ring.

[LeoNigro]

Keysets are used to map joysticks to keys.

The reason the WASD keys aren't working in each emulator is because they've been mapped to a second joystick.

Cursor keys and right shift for Joystick 1
WASD and left shift for Joystick 2
(Incidentally it's ALT-J to switch joystick ports.)

You can go into each 8-bit emulator and modify the keysets to you liking or disable them altogether.

My reason for preconfiguring the emulators this way is because many people don't actually have joysticks at the ready, yet expect to be able to play games on their keyboards, thus it was set up by default.

If you have joysticks they have to be configured manually inside each emulator.
As there are many different types of joysticks is isn't possible to preconfigure them.

You will typically find the keysets(or joystick/controller selector) by entering each Commodore 8-bit emulator
and either:

1. Selecting the System --> System menu and then navigating the menu tree to Input Devices and selecting Joysticks.
Or
2. Right clicking on the Joystick section of the VICE emulator windows in the bottom right and selecting to Configure Joysticks.

You then will see the buttons to configure each keyset.
And a dropdown to select your connected controller to use in a joystick port.

This thread has been moved to the Emulation section.
I have also added the above Emulation instructions in the Official Guide Section.