TV guns - my thoughts

[night]

ok, finally got around to putting my cab back together since i got the guns in.
thought i'd give some impressions, no fancy review though .

they do work quite well IMO. and are pretty accurate. you just have to remember to calibrate them to the edge of the game screen, *not* the edge of the TV. i have an old phillips 25" with only RCA in and behind smoked glass. no probs there.
the shape i could care less about as they feel good in your hand anyway. they were easy to set up and get 2 working in win98 with mame.
i have 1 complaint and 1 problem.
the gripe first, the cords are twice as heavy as the gun. i dont care that they are corded, but its as thick as coax cable and makes it significantly heavier. im considering cutting that off and using some thin speaker wire or something so my arm doesnt fall off.

and the big thing, they work well 2 player, but its quite apparent they interfere with each. with 2 ppl going at it, there is no doubt shots dont get registered when 1 and 2 are shot at practically the same time. and its irritating as hell. i havent done much looking into it, but i just dont see what could be done about it .
i would say they are absolutely great 1 player, but for 2ppl its kind of up in the air right now for me. and not for any reasons i might have expected, which really sux.

oh, and there is also the reload annoyance, but im still workin on that one....

[u_rebelscum]

ok, finally got around to putting my cab back together since i got the guns in.
thought i'd give some impressions, no fancy review though .

they do work quite well IMO. and are pretty accurate. you just have to remember to calibrate them to the edge of the game screen, *not* the edge of the TV. i have an old phillips 25" with only RCA in and behind smoked glass. no probs there.
the shape i could care less about as they feel good in your hand anyway. they were easy to set up and get 2 working in win98 with mame.
i have 1 complaint and 1 problem.
the gripe first, the cords are twice as heavy as the gun. i dont care that they are corded, but its as thick as coax cable and makes it significantly heavier. im considering cutting that off and using some thin speaker wire or something so my arm doesnt fall off.

and the big thing, they work well 2 player, but its quite apparent they interfere with each. with 2 ppl going at it, there is no doubt shots dont get registered when 1 and 2 are shot at practically the same time. and its irritating as hell. i havent done much looking into it, but i just dont see what could be done about it .
i would say they are absolutely great 1 player, but for 2ppl its kind of up in the air right now for me. and not for any reasons i might have expected, which really sux.

I just got around to testing the guns, and I concure with your player2 problems on win9x OS.  In winXP, I think you need to make a one line edit to get 2 players going.  After doing that, I bet winXP will act just like win9x.

Background info: mame poles the current mouse state, usually once a frame.  The mouse state mame poles is shared by both guns.  Player 1 trigger is mouse button 1, player 2 trigger is mouse button 3; mame uses this so it fires only the player that pulled the trigger at the location stored in the mouse state.  However, if both the guns are fired within one video frame, one of the gun's location overwrites the other's before mame can read the first one.  Mame sees both triggers pulled since they aren't the same button, but only one location since the mouse state can store only one location.

I see three fixes.  MameAnalog+ (for winME/9x), MameAnalog+XP (for winXP), or rewriting mame's mouse data reading functions so instead of reading the mouse state, it reads buffered mouse messages.  I'm sure actlabs would love you to do the last and submit it to mame, but it's also the most work.

oh, and there is also the reload annoyance, but im still workin on that one....

Mame's reloading isn't working for area51 etc ATM.  Analog+, however, includes fixes that do enable reloads.  You can download the source and apply only the specific game files (once I release a 0.76, that is) and have reloads.

[night]

actually i am using your analog+.
but only .71 right now so i can use mame32 as i dont have a frontend setup yet. i am using the lightgun2b switch. is there another i need to enable?
at least this isnt a hardware problem.

[Howard_Casto]

Something to take note of.... in the arcades 2 player lightgun games were just as inaccurate.  I've seen it many times before.  It's a limitation of the technology.  If you notice, the two player lightgun games generally have bigger targets than the 1 player ones.  This is why

[night]

im fine with the accuracy, its the interferring with each other and not registering shots that i cant stand

[Howard_Casto]

That's what I'm referring to.  

[night]

oh. ummm... but rebel seems to suggest his build fixes the prob  

[u_rebelscum]

oh. ummm... but rebel seems to suggest his build fixes the prob  

Yes.  I don't know how the original games' hardware handled it, but if set up correctly, analog+ does not have the "both guns shooting the same spot at same time" error that the USB TV lightguns have with official mame.

but only .71 right now so i can use mame32 as i dont have a frontend setup yet. i am using the lightgun2b switch. is there another i need to enable?
at least this isnt a hardware problem.

Try enabling switchablemice, also.  Then, after the game starts, go into the UI (tab) and set which "mice" (which are the lightguns) to the correct players.  (To find out which "mouse" a gun is, set the trigger (button 1) input.)

Something to take note of.... in the arcades 2 player lightgun games were just as inaccurate.  I've seen it many times before.  It's a limitation of the technology.  If you notice, the two player lightgun games generally have bigger targets than the 1 player ones.  This is why

If both guns shoot at the spot one of the guns is pointing at, how does a bigger target help?  
(And both guns shooting where one gun is pointing when they are pointing in different directions isn't "inaccurate"; that's "error prone" or "bad" or "crappy".  "Inaccurate" implies that there is some inexactness that can be approximated or measured.)

Now, I can see how both lightguns messing each other's accuracy off by up to X pixels would lead to bigger targets.  But that's not what's happening with the TV guns.  It's not the flash or any other lightgun hardware that's conflicting with each other; with analog+ you can see that both guns are really shooting near to where they are pointing.  The error night and I are talking about is:
the OS is not tracking the two same-time-different-locations in a way that official mame can see, as mame's currently coded.


FWIW, I play tested a Maximum Force machine at a laundry mat near-ish where I live.  Not once did I notice both players shooting the same spot when I pulled the triggers at the same time.  I did notice the shot sometimes not going where I pointed, whether the guns fired at the same time or not, or with only one player playing.  And some of the targets were pretty small to me.  Not as good as looking the the arcade lightgun hardware guts, but as close as I can get. [shrug]