"Chronicles of Mystara" has the following input methods available:

Because some of these keys cannot be changed, the player1 controlls will need to be configured around the arrow keys.


The attack, jump, use and select buttons should be changed in config to something near the arrow keys. I'd recommend numerical keyboard: NUM_0, NUM_DEL, NUM_ENTER and NUM_PLUS.

That way player1 could keep their left hand on the arrows, and right hand on the bottom row of numerical keyboard, controlling "attack" with the big NUM_ZERO key, jump with the NUM_DEL key, item usage with the NUM_ENTER that is in the corner, impossible to miss, and item selection with the NUM_PLUS that is right above NUM_ENTER.

The numerical keys that have arrows on them (NUM_2, NUM_8, NUM_4 and NUM_6) cannot be set in game config to anything, as they're read as arrows and just make you move through the menus.


If you have one or more x360 controllers, just connect them and they should work. Enjoy the game.

If you have a controller, but it's not x360 compatible, jump to
"Translating DirectInput into x360" section below.

If you don't have a controller, we will first go through setting up a controller emulator, which will translate the keystrokes on your keyboard into controller input in Direct Input format, and then we will make it's input compatible with x360. This emulator will provide us with two virtual controllers, which in addition to the built-in keyboard-control input will give us 3 controllers in total, allowing up to 3 people to play together locally.

Be mindfull there is another program out there called vJoy, that is also more or less doing the same thing, but as of the time of writing it is not aimed at the end-consumer and we will not use it here.
The program we will be using is vJoy by Headsoft. Installing this will add virtual joystick drivers to your system. These drivers are digitally signed.

After installing the vJoy (your system might ask you to restart, because virtual device drivers were installed), launch the program and set up the controls for joystick 1 and joystick 2 accordingly to the following screenshots:

For controller 1 we use W, S, A, D for directions and F, G, H, Y for attack, jump, use, select.
Key 1 we bind as controller button 5, which we will use for "start".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For controller 2 we use I, K, J, L for directions and ;, ', enter, \ for attack, jump use, select.
Key 2 we bind as controller button 5, which we will use for "start".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After this, you should have 2 operational joysticks. You can check for their presence by pressing keys Windows+R and running
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a result you should see two of your virtual devices:


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And if you press "Properties" on any of them, you should be able to see them responding to your input.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You now have two virtual Game Controller that are translating your keyboard input into Direct Input protocol.

Even if you have 64bit system, it seems that for Chronicles of Mystara you will need 32bit version of x360ce.

Unzip the downloaded file. You will get x360ce.exe file that you need to put in the exact directory your game is located. This will probably be something like:

Copy the x360ce.exe into that directory and run it. It will ask if you want to create the dll file in this location. Confirm that.


Then it will ask to scan in search of settings. Mark "search the internet" and click "Next".

After it finds them, click "Finish".

You should now see the controller config window. Set both controllers the same as in following screenshots:



As you can see in both cases we've set button 5 as the "start", and buttons 1,2,3,4 of the vJoy virtual controller as A, B, X, Y of the x360 controller respectively.

Since for controller1, buttons 1,2,3,4 were mapped to F, G, H, Y, now F, G, H, Y of our keyboard are mapped to A, B, X, Y of x360 virtual controller.

This concludes our setup. When pressing the designated keys on your keyboard, you should see the target buttons light up in the x350ec window.
From now on, your virtual controllers are visible within the Chronicles of Mystara. You should keep the vJoy application running (it can be minimized to tray) during the game. the x360ec application can be closed. Now 3 people can play on your keyboard, just press 1 or 2 for starting controller 1 or controller 2 player.
Enjoy the local coop!