Post subject: Won't frame advance with up and left pressed
Joined: 8/13/2010
Posts: 9
Is there a hotkey that is conflicting with the frame advance? I have it under / and when I hold up and left and try to advance the frame it doesn't work. Any ideas? I'm using fceux. -kylelyk
Editor, Skilled player (1439)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2108
Sounds like an issue with your keyboard, that's fairly common. Often, the only thing you can do is rebind frame advance and/or the direction keys so they don't conflict. Keys like Ctrl are supposed to be pressed with other keys, hence they make good canidates for this.
Joined: 8/13/2010
Posts: 9
Changed it to control and now it works. What a weird glitch! It was only with up and left, nothing else!
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4043
This is an ancient problem. I used to have it with tyrian, way back when I was a kid on dos games - I couldn't shoot and move in a certain diagonal direction (think it was up and left like you) at the same time.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Player (80)
Joined: 8/5/2007
Posts: 865
Oh goodness yes, Tyrian. What an outstanding game. Is anyone working on a run for it? (I'll check, but it makes good conversation anyway.)
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
Getting a new (or at least a different) keyboard might affect your problem. This problem depends on the keyboard itself, and not anything about the programs in the computer. Failing that, rebinding keys, as others say, is another option available to you. Another option is to use the Auto-hold feature found in a few emulators. FCEUX definitely has it. The emulator can "hold down" a key for you so that you don't have to depend on getting around a keyboard flaw, so you can freely frame advance with 8 buttons held if need be. Good to keep in mind it's there, if you ever need it.
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1113)
Joined: 5/1/2010
Posts: 1217
kylelyk wrote:
Changed it to control and now it works. What a weird glitch! It was only with up and left, nothing else!
Likely there are lots of three-key combinations that won't work, and that was just first one you found. Technical explanation: Scan-matrix type keyboards (nearly every keyboard out there!) can't detect three-key combinations involving two keys on the same row and two keys on the same column (>3-key combinations only work if all three-key subsets would work). Say A and D are on the same row and A and O are on the same column (keyboard-dependent, and yes, this keyboard has it that way!), then one can't press A, D and O at once. Note that the scan matrix rows and columns may not correspond to physical key positions!
AnS
Emulator Coder, Experienced player (728)
Joined: 2/23/2006
Posts: 682
Maybe emulators should bind Frame Advance to Ctrl by default. Or even better, bind it to Tilde (the key below Esc) which seems to work with other 3-key combinations as well as Ctrl. Currently FCEUX binds Frame Advance to Backslash key, causing such topics as this. I wonder why this key was chosen back then, was it discussed somewhere on the forum, or it's just a random choice?
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4036
I used to have this problem with VBA too, since I have my Frame Advance key set to N (I don't remember why, I think it was the default). If I try holding Up and Left and pressing N to advance a frame, it won't let me. If I let go of Up and Left immediately before pressing the Frame Advance key, it will count both Up and Left in the movie and advance a frame. You might be able to use this method for FCEUX.
MarbleousDave
He/Him
Player (13)
Joined: 9/12/2009
Posts: 1559
You can set up to 4 keys for each function. Up mapped to Q, Num 7, Num 8, Num 9 Down mapped to Q, Num 1, Num 2, Num 3 Left mapped to W, Num 1, Num 4, Num 7 Right mapped W, to Num 3, Num 6, Num 9 A mapped to X, C, E B mapped to Z, C, E Start mapped to S, D, E Select mapped to A, D, E