MaLa Hotkeys - Escaping Emulators

[thejazman]

Howdy.

I have a problem with the MaLa defauly hotkeys. When an emulator is selected, lets say for instance a genesis one. You simply press Esc on the keyboard and you go back to the MaLa frontend.
This is the same for ALL emulators. You press Esc to go back to the frontend. However, it also does this with home computer emulators liek Amiga and AtariST. What that means is, if I need to use the Esc
in an Amiga game (which I often have to) it just closes the emulator and take me back to the front end. Not good!

My question is, how do I change this for certain emulators Or can I reasign it to another key?

This is really frustrating as it is stoping me from enjoying certain emulators. Please help.

[harveybirdman]

I"m pretty sure you can make it a CTRL combination with a few keys and thereby make the same key combo the exit command for every emulator... I'll play around with mine and confirm.

[harveybirdman]

you can make it be a combo with CTRL, ALT, or SHIFT so that ESC still carries it's same function in the emulator you are using.  Just check the corresponding checkbox where under the edit hotkeys function in MALA configuration window.



it's not perfect, but it's a work around.  Only other thing I can think of would be if the emulator itself let's you set the function keys, like say zsnes.

[Dechene]

Enter the hotkey section in mala for the emulator you are having trouble with.

There will be one hotkey in there already I think, It will be the one that catches the Esc key and closes the program on you.

Select the hotkey action on the left, then tick one of the boxes, alt, shift or ctrl.

Now, to exit the emulator you will need to push Esc & whichever function key you chose at the same time.

So now if you just press Esc, it will not affect Mala at all.



I think that's right anyway...

------------------------------------------------ edit

my bad, just read birdmans comment properly. same answer already given...

[thejazman]

Thanks for the replys!

Unfortunatly, editing the hotkeys by adding a ctrl or alt dosent work. Esc on its own still overides everything and quits the emulator.

I cannot seem to find any other options to change things so I dont think there is anyway you can? Surely this is a major flaw in MaLa if this is true?

[DaOld Man]

Why dont you just change it to another key for that emulator only?
For instance, F1.

[harveybirdman]

what is the default command key to exit in the Amiga and Atari emulators you need the ESC functionality in?

[thejazman]

Why dont you just change it to another key for that emulator only?
For instance, F1.

That's my point. There is no way to change it. The default Esc key overrides everything else even when you define a different key.

[DaOld Man]

Ok, I see what you are saying.
I tried changing from ESCAPE to F1 for Atari2600 and it worked.
I tried it with NES and if you hit escape, the rom ends but the emulator doesnt.
I think it may have to do with the hotkeys you have set up in the emulator itself. For example, in fceu (my nes emulator), under hotkeys I had game quit=ESCAPE and nothing set for emul exit.
So maybe you need to explore the settings in the emulator you are having trouble with. (Like I think Harveybirdman said).

[harveybirdman]

Ok jazman, I know why you are confused, cause this fooled me too.

When you select close as the feature the field where the default "ESC" is displayed becomes grayed out.

However you can still click in there an press the button that you really want to use, such as Q, F1 or whatever.

Going to test this really quick on my "cab" (it's not really a cab yet  ) and I'll come back and post the results.

EDIT:  indeed this works no problems so you can set your "hotkey" for quit to anything you want.