That's right. For some odd reason I can't figure out, the game ignores any inputs I'm setting to either JoyToKey or Xpadder. And the DOSBox internal mapper is only limited to two buttons so using that is not enough.

Oddly enough, both Alone in the Dark 2 and Alone in the Dark 3 don't have this problem at all. Keeping in mind that the three games are running through DOSBox, I don't know why is this happening.

DosBox's internal mapper *does* support more than 2 buttons, but GOG just may not have set it up that way.

Fix :
Find the line in its .conf file under the "[joystick]" section :
joysticktype=auto

and set that instead to
joysticktype=2axis

Try that and see if that lets you set 4 buttons.

Background :
Back in the Dos days, the way joystick ports worked is each port could accept simultaneously 2 2-axis joysticks and 2 buttons on each of them (4 total). What companies like Gravis did for their gamepads is ignore the second axis and use the 2nd set of buttons as extras for the first pad, allowing them to effectively have 4-buttons joysticks.

I actually have a more simple solution. Run JoyToKey as admin and then Alone in the Dark 1 will recognize the controller inputs as keyboard ones. I also had the same problem with Soul Reaver 1 (default joystick controls don't work in that game so I had to use JoyToKey and set the game to a keyboard config).

What I did was after making sure the controller was recognized by DOSBox and my computer, was use the DOS key mapper (via CTRL+F1) to use your mouse and keyboard to map your keyboard keys on to the controller buttons and joysticks. Works like a charm.

Please, don't hesitate to PM me with questions. :)

that's exactly what I did as well, the keys like space, enter, escape, I, and P all work but the arrow keys will not.
joy to key also won't work for me, works fine for dosbox when I use it the regular way with other games.
Also I am having trouble opening joy to key in admin mode, although I am currently on their tips site trying to figure it out.

Okay I have to apologize for not exhausting all the different possible fixes before posting this, I just did the run joytokey as admin like Subject Delta suggested, and that worked like a charm thank you man. Happy gaming to all of you!