MAMEWorld Forums - Programming - Forcing MAME to maintain keyboard input, even when it's not in the foreground.

Before I start, you should know that I have input.c set to force DirectInput. Raw was not working with my custom onscreen game controller device.

For a variety of reasons I need to have MAME maintain keyboard input, even when it is not the foreground window.

If you look at this code in osd/windows/input.c.

Code:


//============================================================
//  device_list_poll_devices
//============================================================

static void device_list_poll_devices(device_info *devlist_head)
{
	device_info *curdev;

	for (curdev = devlist_head; curdev != NULL; curdev = curdev->next)
	{
		if (curdev->poll != NULL)
		{
			(*curdev->poll)(curdev);
		}			
	}
}

When MAME is in the foreground, it enters into the for loop. When MAME is not the foreground window it never enters the for loop.

My first guess was that DirectInput was causing this behavior by automatically unacquiring the keyboard when the window losses focus. To test this theory I changed the cooperative level of DirectInput to DISCL_BACKGROUND | DISCL_NONEXCLUSIVE. (It is set to DISCL_FOREGROUND in the original source). According to the SDK this should allow it to access device input, even when it is not in the foreground.

That didnâ€™t do it unfortunately, and it continues to not enter into the for loop which Iâ€™m guessing means that it does not have access to the keyboard input.

Iâ€™ve spent a good deal of time walking through the source trying to determine when keyboard_list (which is the device_info struct that is passed to this routine) loses itâ€™s connection to the keyboard data but I canâ€™t seem to locate it.

Does anyone out there have any thoughts on how to accomplish this? Am I on the right track?