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lame legacy/keyboard problem

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I got given this used computer, so I downloaded legacy and got doom2 to run correctly on it. However, on this stupid, keyboard, it seems when you hold down too many keys, the "scroll lock" light flickers on and some keys don't respond... when playing, I try to hold down "run", back and left at the same time and the scroll-lock thing happens which makes the back key not register so the player just circles without moving back. Even right now when, depending which keys are pushed I can only hold down 3 or four before the scroll light comes on and the computer makes a small warning beep sound like I pushed too many buttons. I tried to go to "control panel" to see if there was some way to change the keyboard, but you can only change cursor blinking rate and crap. Any ideas? I have one crappier keyboard I could try but I doubt the problem is the keyboard itself.

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get a better keyboard. Your keyboard driver cannot handle more than a few keys activated simultaneously.
This will happen with any program or port.
(there is a very slim chance you have your handicapped settings on or something in Windows too, I suppose)
I could be wrong, but that is my experience.

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If it is the keyboard then, I'll go ahead and try this other one I have. Thanks for the input.

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I haven't heard of such a problem with Legacy, but if for some reason it persists, just post a follow-up here so I can relay it to the other guys in the development team.

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ahhh, changing the keyboard worked. Thank goodness, I'd hate a trivial frustrating thing to screw up the whole experience. I had figured that a keyboard was just a pretty physical thing and it wouldn't matter if it was one or the other. Apparently I was wrong.

On this keyboard the shift and backspace get stuck when you push them though. I'm thinking about pulling off the plastic keys with plyers and seeing if I can clean them or something. I hope the keys just come off and go back on easily...

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It's always the keyboard. Different keyboards have different key combinations that get stuck.

It has nothing to do with the app or the keyboard driver or the operating system. It's just an inherent flaw of the particular keyboard.

This is why the first thing I do when buying a new keyboard is test the functionality of several popular simultaneous keypress combinations (like used in FPS games or fighting games). And if I notice some severe problems (one keyboard wouldn't respond to Shift+Forward+Right), I replace it.

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dr_st, there is a keyboard chipset (driver) inside the keyboard itself, and a keyboard driver(s) in the OS.
It is one of those interpreters that is failing to allow multiple keys.

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DEMOn said:

dr_st, there is a keyboard chipset (driver) inside the keyboard itself, and a keyboard driver(s) in the OS.
It is one of those interpreters that is failing to allow multiple keys.


Then it's the one in the keyboard. That's what I mean when I'm saying "the keyboard itself".

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Good- I even fixed the two keys that were sticking. I just pulled them out with plyers and cleaned the inside with q-tips and rubbing alchohol, then put the keys back on.

This keyboard works fine now like I said. The only problem now is that when I launch legacy (plutonia.wad for example), it runs pretty smoothly except for here and there the music and visuals simultaneously break up (have trouble loading). It's playable but distracting. When you just let the first plutonia demo run, the brief break up will occur and this will cause the demo to play slightly out of sync in time which will eventually screw up the demo.

It is such a huge pain to figure out what causes stuff like this for me. I thought I might need to use the disk defragmenter, so did that (I finally figured out that you have to ctrl/alt/del end pretty much ALL tasks or the thing will have to "start over repeatedly because there was a change to the drive") But that didn't help. I thought it might be the sound but I tried disabling it and that didn't seem to help. I tried changing the video mode using legacy's options, to the lowest (normal) resolution, and changing the screen size and those didn't work. This computer is a "pentium 2" so it seems like it should have no problem running this stuff... Sometimes I just want to get windows 95, or whatever it was that doom2/plutonia/tnt originally ran on and play it like it was intended.

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You are playing the demo on the exact same version of legacy that it was recorded on right?

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no, I mean like you know "final doom" released by id software(plutonia and tnt wads)? Well there are demos that come with it and automatically play if you just watch the screen and don't start a new game. Those are the demos I'm talking about, the ones made by id. But these demos going out of sync is just a side product (I think) of the main problem which is brief music/visual slowdown/loading. It happens rarely but is still annoying when it does.

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You can't watch those demos with any modern port, you have to use the original exe or a port specifically designed not to desync. Dunno much about those though.

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Rellik said:

You can't watch those demos with any modern port, you have to use the original exe or a port specifically designed not to desync. Dunno much about those though.


PRBoom and Eternity should do it.

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