No Right Shift

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jbienz
Posts: 2
Joined: 26 Mar 2012, 06:44

No Right Shift

Post by jbienz »

New XPAdder purchaser and user as of tonight. I love it so far, but I think I’ve found a bug. Though I can assign Right Shift to a button, it doesn’t seem to want to send Right Shift. It only wants to send Left Shift instead. Right Control works fine, but Right Shift doesn’t.

What’s really weird is it seems to work in DirectX games but not in Windows or under XPAdders own debug screen. I’m trying to use this on a pinball cabinet and Visual Pinball actually sees the Right Shift because the right flipper moves. But the HyperPin front-end only sees Left Shift and when I go into XPAdders own Keyboard Debugging window and turn on ‘Test Enabled’ that window also only shows Left Shift. I tried disabling the XInput option and it didn't make a difference.

What the heck could be going on here? Is anyone else able to confirm this bug? It’s driving me crazy.

Primal Fear
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Re: No Right Shift

Post by Primal Fear »

I can confirm this. Never realized that, as it worked for me in the few games so far that insisted on right shift. And in Windows it usually doesn't make any difference.

jbienz
Posts: 2
Joined: 26 Mar 2012, 06:44

Re: No Right Shift

Post by jbienz »

Ok, just thought I was going crazy. I was actually able to work around the issue because I found that both my pinball simulator and the front-end could be mapped directly to gamepad buttons. So, I guess I didn't really need XPAdder even though I bought it. Oh well.

Before I realized that though, I couldn't navigate the HyperPin menu system in both directions because by default it was mapped to left and right shift.

Thanks for looking into it. Hopefully it'll get fixed, but right now I don't need it anymore.

Jonathan
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Re: No Right Shift

Post by Jonathan »

Looking into this issue...

The important keys to focus on are Left/Right shift, Left/Right ctrl and Alt/AltGr.

1) The assignment window detecting keypresses to select keys
All real keyboard keypresses are detected except AltGr (the window flickers and no assignment is made - bug 1)
All OnScreenKeyboard simulated keypresses are detected except AltGr (no flicker this time though - bug 2)
Xpadder simulated keypresses are ignored here by design

2) Notepad typing
Real keyboard Left and Right shift are detected but Notepad is not sure (or cares) which side is actually being pressed
Real keyboard Left and Right Ctrl are detected (tested via Ctrl+Home/End) but Notepad is not sure (or cares) which side is actually being pressed
Real keyboard Alt toggles the menubar activation on and off ok
Real keyboard AltGr allows input of other chars (euro symbol for example)
Both Xpadder and OSK simulations create the same results

3) OSK detecting keypresses
With the OSK open it detects real keyboard Shift and Control keys but highlights both (not detected side in the same way Notepad doesn't)
Xpadder simulation creates the same results

4) Xpadder keyboard test

Code: Select all

Real keys                            Xpadder                              OSK
==========================================================================================================
Left Shift A0(160)                   Left Shift A0(160)                   Left Shift A0(160)
Right Shift A1(161)                  Left Shift A0(160)                   Right Shift A1(161)
Left Control A2(162)                 Left Control A2(162)                 Left Control A2(162)
Right Control A3(163)                Right Control A3(163)                Right Control A3(163)
Alt A4(164)                          Alt A4(164)                          Alt A4(164)
Left Control A2(162)+UNKNOWN A5(165) Left Control A2(162)+UNKNOWN A5(165) Left Control A2(162)+Alt A4(164)
Bug 3 - Xpadder is not picking up its own simulation of Right Shift correctly although in the Assignment window it could?!

Bug 4 - AltGr is not being picked up in any way

Can you help?
I have exactly zero games installed :oops: so cannot currently test if games pick up these 6 Xpadder key simulations correctly
I do remember from my research in the past that different games pick up these special keys better than others so a variety of games and emulators need testing - (DirectX, DOS, Flash, etc)

If you have any games that do not pick up one of these 6 keys in their redefine keys options correctly then please let me know here...

Also, I'd like to know if anyone else gets different Xpadder keyboard test results for their real AltGr key versus their OSK AltGr simulation

Primal Fear
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Re: No Right Shift

Post by Primal Fear »

I think that the problem has something to do with Windows and BIOS key codes. Xpadder shows BIOS key codes that are also used by the most games. Then I have Microsoft keyboard Diagnostics, it shows Windows key codes that are obviously used in Windows (so for the Editor, FireFox, etc.).

The BIOS key code for right Shift is wrong, while the Windows key code is correct (according on Microsoft keyboard Diagnostics).

For AltGr it's a bit more specific. AltGr is actually only Ctrl+Alt (according to Microsoft Keyboard Diagnostics and this Wikipedia article). If I press AltGr on my keyboard, Xpadder shows the same as for Xpadders own AltGr. So I think that the keycode "UNKNOWN A5(165)" stands actually for right Alt, but Xpadder doesn't detect that.
Also all of my tested games that detected AltGr from Xpadder as Ctrl had the same problem with AltGr from my keyboard. So I think Xpadder sends the correct key combination for AltGr, but as it consists of Ctrl+Alt the games only detect Ctrl.

Primal Fear
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Re: No Right Shift

Post by Primal Fear »

I have found another key that cannot be detected by the keyboard test (it's going to be detected by the Assignment window and it's working as intended).

"/" Unknown E2 (266)

Edit: Microsoft Keyboard Diagnostics detects it also as "Unknown". It's the same with the original keyboard key.

Jonathan
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Re: No Right Shift

Post by Jonathan »

It appears to be my day for learning things :lol:

I have fixed bug 1,2 and 4 in my dev version. Xpadder (and myself) now know that Alt-Gr is actually LeftCtrl+(AltA4 or RightAltA5)

Bug 3 - the originally reported bug still remains...

New bug 5: forward slash E2

Primal, is this detected as forward slash by assignment window and simulates correctly in Xpadder?

Primal Fear
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Posts: 2437
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Re: No Right Shift

Post by Primal Fear »

Jonathan wrote:New bug 5: forward slash E2

Primal, is this detected as forward slash by assignment window and simulates correctly in Xpadder?
Nevermind, after switching my keyboard scheme to English UK it was working perfectly. Seem like this problem is caused by my German keyboard layout.

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