If a joystick has more then 2 buttons, Wing Commander 3 seems to treat the odd # buttons as button 1, and the even # as button 2. And Xpadder does not override that. Unaware of this, I spent an hour allocating these excess buttons to keyboard functions using Xpadder. This results in me firing my guns with the same joystick button I use to cycle weapons or match speed with a target.

Needless to say, this is annoying the heck out of me.

While I can see the thought process that went into this control setup, it conflicts with modern joysticks and the Xpadder software in a way I never thought possible. I would dearly love to use these extra buttons for other functions without shooting lasers whenever I push the key to cut throttle.

Is there any workaround to this bizarre problem?

Are you using the DOS version on DOSBox? If so, press ctrl-F1 and you can remap the buttons to the joystick.

I just tried that. I have the same problem even when remapping the joystick in DOSbox. DOSbox only seems to want to recognise two buttons.

Try mapping the joystick 2 buttons. My DOSBox recognizes my 360 pad as two joysticks. If that works it would only give you four buttons, but it's better than two.

Thanks, but I am going to see if there is a better solution....

I noticed some joystick settings in the dosboxWC.config file that comes with the game. I am going to have to experiment with those when I have some free time. The Joysticktype= setting does look promising...

In the meantine, if any of you can figure it out for me, thanks a bundle.

I was able to figure this out myself! The problem was that 'button wrap' was set to 'true' in the dosboxWC3.config file. Changing this to 'false' solved the problem for me.

Wow that's... really simple in retrospect. Congrats on figuring it out. I was of no help and yet got marked as having the solution. Maybe they don't allow TCs having their post as the solution.