Troubleshooter 2: Shoot Harder

[Howard_Casto]

Ok guys, it's out!

Here's the thing.... this app isn't exactly user friendly and due to the way it works and there isn't much I can do about it.  I'll make some "for dummies" instructions at a later date, but for now, read the readme.txt from top to bottom.  Then do it a second time.  A third wouldn't be a bad idea. 

Also this is the very first public release.  Consider it BETA.  Things are bound to pop up, and we'll deal with them as they come. 

That being said, enjoy!

http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/index.php

[retrorepair]

Gunblade video coming up

Good man, can't wait to try it out!

[DarthMarino]

I've played around with it for a couple hours but I think I'm gonna have to wait for the "For Dummies" instructions.  I just can't get it to work.  After I install I get a RunTime error '429' (ActiveX component can't create object) when I launch the game. The crosshairs work but it functions the same as far as using my mouse and/or Aimtrak.

[ShankyMcStabber]

From the bottom of my heart, big thanks to you Howard (and Ramjet) for all the work you guy put into getting the extra gun to work in SM2 games.  Just reading your thread made my head hurt, so it is clear there was no "easy" fix but you guys did it anyway in your spare time (and for free)!

[Howard_Casto]

Guys, there is a bug in my generated lua scripts.  It should take about two seconds to fix.  I'll get back to you. 

DarthMarino:  A can't create object error is usually caused by a missing dll or support file.  You have the visual studio 6 runtime files installed correct?

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I fixed that bit. 

I generate a stub lua file that launches the REAL lua file for the model 2 games.  When generating the script, I forgot to encapsulate the rom name in quotes. 

Oops. 

Download the 1.1 version at my homepage and re-run the setup.

[DarthMarino]

DarthMarino:  A can't create object error is usually caused by a missing dll or support file.  You have the visual studio 6 runtime files installed correct?

It's hard to say.  I tried installing it but I get the "this program might not have installed correctly" message.

[BadMouth]

   Stuck working all weekend and will be lucky to find an hour or two free to test.

I can't wait to play gunblade with my positional gun.

[Howard_Casto]

DarthMarino:  A can't create object error is usually caused by a missing dll or support file.  You have the visual studio 6 runtime files installed correct?

It's hard to say.  I tried installing it but I get the "this program might not have installed correctly" message.

Then run the setup as administrator. 

Honestly the program doesn't use anything out of the ordinary.  It uses a ton of api calls though, so if you are using a stripped down version of xp or something, it's unlikely it (or any of my projects really) will work. 

[DarthMarino]

I am running Windows 7 64-bit.

[Endprodukt]

TS2 doesn't work for me in M2.

Here is what happens:

Can only move in diagonals with both guns (top left to bottom right) in HOTD, VCOP and VCOP2. I can only shoot in HOTD. VCOP 1+2 doesn't register any triggering at all. Tried with a fresh install and got the same results. I tried it through TS2`s Model 2 Testmode with rawmode activated and deactivated. 

[Howard_Casto]

Darth Marino :  That's what I run, so I'm not sure what you are missing. 


Endprodukt Sounds like you haven't calibrated in the model 2 menu.  If it's a fresh install then the nvram files aren't there, so the guns won't move properly even without the troubleshooter.   

You haven't given me enough information btw.... what kind of guns are you using ect....

Raw input needs to be activated in model2's emulator.ini and the ids set to a number higher than all of your mouse devices for buttons to work in vcop and vcop 2.  TS2 attempts to do this for you automatically. 

Also make sure you have the right ids set in ts2.  When running a game in windowed mode, you can double click on the icon in the task bar to make the ts2 debug window appear, when you move your gun (assuming it's IR), you should see the values change in the window.  If not then you have the wrong ids set. 

[Endprodukt]

Tried another fresh install and now it TS2 says "runtime error: 76, cannot find path"?

I'm using 2 aimtraks.

[yakk11]

TS2 doesn't work for me in M2.

Here is what happens:

Can only move in diagonals with both guns (top left to bottom right) in HOTD, VCOP and VCOP2. I can only shoot in HOTD. VCOP 1+2 doesn't register any triggering at all. Tried with a fresh install and got the same results. I tried it through TS2`s Model 2 Testmode with rawmode activated and deactivated.

I am having the same problem with my AIMTRAKs.  I was playing yesterday morning before installing TS2.  I haven't touched the nvram files.  Kind of confused on the device ID thing?  Thanks for all of your hard work!

UPDATE: OK, fresh install.  Now I don't have control at all.  I noticed raw input is set to 1.  This is tricky stuff so I may just wait until a tutorial comes out or something.

[Endprodukt]

Okay... it's still giving me the Cannot find path thing...

But I can confirm that it's not the calibration. Even though TS2 wont install until the end now, the guns will still register in M2. Still only in diagonals... I couldn't even calibrate ingame because the guns only move in diagonals.

It also seems like sometimes the game would register triggering, sometimes not. Right now hotd doesn't want me to shoot but it's working in VCOP.

EDIT: I checked TS2's icon and both guns are registered correctly.

[Howard_Casto]

Mame's ID numbers aren't necessarily the ones ts2 and model 2 uses.  I'm pretty sure mame reads them in reverse or something.  Don't quote me on that though, it's been a while since I've messed with mame.

Like I said, double-click on the ts2 icon make sure you see movement. 


It sounds like the aimtracks might not be reporting themselves correctly.  That's the only thing I can account for the movement anyway. 


I want you to try the attached app. 

Set your id numbers in the two boxes and click the command1 button.  Change the IDS to where it tracks both of your lightguns. (You'll have to close the app with the escape key each time you want to change them.) What I'm interested in are the x/y values it gives and the text in the text box

[Endprodukt]

There is only one box in the rawtest. And as I said: Both guns are registered by TS2 (icon).


EDIT: nope... two boxes... I'm on 640x480 on my cabinet.

[BadMouth]

There is only one box in the rawtest.

Sounds like the old version of rawtest.
The box probably flew off the screen because it's being fed crazy high numbers by the aim-trak.
Try aiming only at the extreme upper left and see if it pops up.  (it will probably flicker around the screen).

How many mouse devices do you have plugged in?

[Endprodukt]

Right now: 2 Spinner, 2 Guns, 1 Trackball.

[Howard_Casto]

Okay... it's still giving me the Cannot find path thing...

But I can confirm that it's not the calibration. Even though TS2 wont install until the end now, the guns will still register in M2. Still only in diagonals... I couldn't even calibrate ingame because the guns only move in diagonals.

It also seems like sometimes the game would register triggering, sometimes not. Right now hotd doesn't want me to shoot but it's working in VCOP.

EDIT: I checked TS2's icon and both guns are registered correctly.

You guys are going to have to elaborate a little on "only in diagonals"  Do you mean it smoothly can go from the top left to the bottom right and any amount along that line?  or do you mean it either jumps to the absolute top/left or bottom right?

Ok now let me explain how the inputs work a little to help with that.  When ts2 installs the stuff for model 2, it copies over cfg files for hotd, vcop, vcop2, bel, gunblade and rchase 2. 

Essentially these cfg files are setup to block all buttons from p1 and p2.  Only the two triggers are mapped to the Z and A keys.  Now for all of the gun games, when the trigger is pulled, ts2 simply simulates a keypress for either z or a.  So it works like the old troubleshooter.  Obviously, if model2 doesn't have focus, key presses won't register.  Since the aimtracks show up as mice, clicking around while in windowed mode is bound not to work correctly. 

On top of that, vcop and vcop 2 have their own issues.  The only way I could block model2 input detection for those games was to turn on raw input for model2 and set the id numbers in the emulator.ini to numbers that are NOT the mice I'm using.  As I said, model 2 attempts to do this, but you might want to check manually.  If your guns are ids 3 and 4, for example, set the id to something nice and high like 6. 

You guys might want to use the input test menus in the games to determine if the triggers are actually being pulled, but the game just isn't registering them due to the aim issues.

[Endprodukt]

The crosshair will move fluidly on a straight line from the top left to the bottom right depending on where I aim with the gun. The crosshair will not leave this line at all or register shots at other points BUT that line.
That's why I cant really calibrate ingame. Both guns work fine outside of m2/ts2 (as a mouse or with mame). TS2 will register both guns in the icon - also shoot and reload.Any more infos you need?

[Endprodukt]

Okay... the behaviour is so random I could write something else all the time.

HOTD is not registering any triggers at all but both crosshairs are moving on a diagonal line.
VCOP 1 + VCOP will only register shots by gun 1, not gun 2 and will only move on the diagonal line.

Rawinput IS activated in m2's ini and tried to set the id's to 6, then to 7 and 8. no difference.

I don't feel comfortable with the fact TS2's setup wont finish and gives me a runtime error. I don't think the behaviour is related to that because it did the same when
the setup would finish... I'd still like to know why it's doing that.

[Howard_Casto]

What about the rawtest app I sent?

Set the id numbers to the same ones that are working in ts2 and hit the command1 button

Is the tracking of the red and blue squares the same as in model 2?

The reason I ask is the EXACT same code is being used in the rawtest app as the troubleshooter.  They should behave the same. 


I've gotta go guys... anything else you find out post here, I'll check it later. 

[Endprodukt]

I can't test using the RAWINPUT because my cabinet is running at 640x480 and it's not showing me the second window. Anyone else with two aimtraks around?

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I'm back. 

I found the axis issue at least... it was a one character typo (UGGGGH!).

So you guys try this new exe. (You'll still need the previous install.) 

I haven't looked into the trigger issues yet and I don't know If I have time to do it today.  One thing at a time though.  One thing you can try....  as I said, I remap the triggers to Z and A.  You can try pressing those on the keyboard to see if it fires within troubleshooter.  If it does then it's something with the keypress simulation.  If it doesn't then the NOPs might be off or something. 

[Howard_Casto]

Guys I just came to a realization in regards to the button issue. 

You guys aren't trying to play the games after launching them in the model 2 setup menu are you?  Because the buttons aren't going to work that way.  As a matter of fact, I tried it and confirmed that they do NOT work that way.  It makes sense afterall... you just used troubleshooter to launch a game...that loads a script and calls another instance of troubleshooter.   

I put that in there as a way to easily disable raw input so your could edit your input settings in model 2... with raw input enabled you can't navigate model 2's menus.  It works for that, but not for playing the game. 

You'll have the same "buttons randomly not working" effect if you launch a game while another instance of troubleshooter is active. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok aside from the above issue (which DOES make a difference) I have been able to replicate the error at least.  (Not sure about the solution yet). 

The issue is with the single cpu exe only.  The multi cpu version does not have the error.  It occurs in vcop and vcop 2 only... HOTD is not affected afaik.  Running the emulator from a command line, you'll find that the inputs don't work.  Pressing f2 in game and going into the input menu, you'll find that you can't press the triggers for either gun.  You should be able to press the reload key though. 

What's happening is the game is blocking my simulated key presses for whatever reason.  Model2 itself IS detecting them though as I can redefine any key in model 2's config menu by clicking on it with the mouse.   

The most likely culprit is that the NOP has moved slightly. 

I'll look into it and get back to you, but there are other ways to send inputs, so it's not a biggie. 

[Howard_Casto]

Alright, as far as I can tell, I've fixed the vcop issue as well.  I appears to have been a typo in the memcfg for vcop and vcop2. 

Anyway, the new package (1.2) is on my homepage, so download it and let me know. 

[yakk11]

Just got home for the night and tried the 1.2.  Everything works now!  Thank you so much!  I just have to readjust player 2 gun.  Do I have to turn raw input off to do that first?  Thank you for your hard work!!!   

[Howard_Casto]

Well I'm glad it's working... released this thing 4 hours ago and got nothing but crickets. 

Nah you should be fine just doing it in the game menu.  The cross hairs are actually useful for calibration. 

[Endprodukt]

Okay I've tested 1.2.

The crosshair problem is 100% solved for both guns. Awesome Howard!
I still have problems with the buttons.

VCOP 1+2: I can only shoot with P1
HOTD: I can't shoot with P1+P2

I've set ID's in the M2 ini to 8 and I'm using the multi cpu version. It might be related to the installation process though as I'm still getting the Runtime-Error 76 "cant find path" thing.

[DarthMarino]

I still haven't been successful in getting it to work.  As I mentioned I was getting the "429- can't create object" error for a while which may or may not be the reason it's not working for me. I believe I was getting the same error when Howard just made the changeable crosshair scripts and those worked fine despite the error.   I'm still not convinced I'm installing everything correctly. 

At one point when I was first fooling with it, I was getting error 76 (can't find path) from within Troubleshooter and once I created the folders CFG and Joycfg, this went away. I am currently getting this error when I launch Vcop instead of 429- hopefully a good sign.  Once I start the program, I can't see my mouse at all, so I can't go down to the TS icon.

[Howard_Casto]

Endprodukt:

If you are still getting errors with the install then everything isn't installing... it's as simple as that.  From your description it sounds like the cfg files aren't getting copied over. 

Like DarthMarino said, check to see if you have a CFG folder where model2 is installed.  If not then that is your problem... make the folder manually and run the setup again.   I'll see if I can confirm that this is causing the file error and fix it in the next release.   

If you are STILL having problems, you can copy the files over manually.... they are in m2setupfiles\CFG.


DarthMarino:

First off joycfg is for ts2's use, that doesn't get copied over.  Don't muck about in joycfg and memcfg, they aren't for human consumption yet.    The missing CFG folder might be the issue though, I'll look into it. 

I think you've totally hosed your install from constant testing.  There aren't many things that can give an invalid file error while running the actual program.  In your model2 folder there is an exe called TSStub.exe  That's what launches the troubleshooter.  It reads the file path from a file in the same folder called "ts2.cfg"  It's a plain text file generated when you run the setup that points back to the ts2 install folder.... Two lines.... the first is the path to ts2 and the second is ts2.exe  If you've moved ts2 since install  or somehow this file got messed up it could cause a path not found error. 

Regarding the 429 error, if you were getting it from a script then there is something wrong with your install of model 2 and/or windows.  Or your video card has issues, ect....  The scripts themselves aren't a program, they just manipulate things already in model 2. 

[Trnzaddict]

Howard, I'm getting the 76 path not found. I configure in TS2.exe, run the model 2 setup helper, finds the path of Model 2 and installs the scripts. Then I go to launch  gunblade and that message pops up. I don't understand why it's saying can't find path. The setup helper verify's it sees Model 2.



EDIT: I looked on the ts2.cfg file in my Model 2 folder and it's reading:

F:\Hyperspin\Tools\TS2\
TS2.exe

So I tried changing it to:

F:\Hyperspin\Tools\TS2\TS2.exe

and instead of the 76 error now it's Runtime error 62:Input past end of file

[Howard_Casto]

Read what I just posted above

[Howard_Casto]

Well I confirmed that model 2 doesn't come with a nvram folder, or a cfg folder and strangely enough, only the nvram folder is generated if you launch model 2. 

So that is most likely the file not found error you guys are getting in the setup.  I'll adjust the code accordingly, but you can fix it by manually creating a cfg folder for model 2 and THEN running the setup.  I don't do anything with the nvram folder so it should be ok.

[Endprodukt]

Now everything is working!!! Awesome!

[Howard_Casto]

good

What did you do to fix it?

I just want you do post it to help everyone else. 

[Endprodukt]

As you said: It wasn't installing the CFG folder. After creating a cfg folder in the M2 folder it worked.

[Trnzaddict]

Read what I just posted above

No, it still does not work. Everything is installed correctly, and I tried it with a fresh install of Model 2.

Made a CFG folder, everything is there, and it still cannot find the path.

FYI I'm not a newbie here when it comes to this. Something is definetely wrong.

EDIT:OK, the reason it was saying this is the game I kept trying to play is Gunblade. There is no lua script for Gunblade. So, hotd does have a lua script, so I tried it with that. No more error messages, but there are no crosshairs and Model 2 does not detect and of my aimtrak presses.
I have 2 aimtraks and I have them marked as ir guns (mouse based) and they're id's as 1 for player 1 and 2 for player 2 because that's what they show up as in the Ultimarc Aimtrak utility.

[Trnzaddict]

Ok, I'm just giving up on this. I've screwed with this for 2 hours and now I'm burnt out.

I don't understand what the problem is with this program. I run the Model 2 setup, it installs the scripts/CFG/artwork. Then I configure the games themselves in TS2, save the specific configurations, yet I try to open a game in Model 2 and before it runs the 76 error shows up, and the path to TS2.exe is 100% correct in the .cfg file in the Model 2 folder.

The settings paths are blank like you said, and the Have Troubleshooter 2 launch game box is checked. If I don't check it then I get the 429 error unable to create api.

People who have this working should post a small tut. or something.

[DarthMarino]

I decided just to ignore this error I'm getting and play around with it anyway.  I thought I was making some progess.  The mouse and AimTrak work completely independent of each other, including shooting and reloading.  The problem is that the AimTrak basically just points to the corners.  You can move but then it jumps to corner you are moving towards.  It acts just as it does in a program that doesn't like absolute mouse positions.  I am assuming that the TS program itself is what converts this and allows it to aim properly.  No matter what I change in TS, it works the same.  I can even delete it the TS folder and it will still work the same (it will just give me an error that the path is wrong).  I can use my Trackball mouse and regular mouse at the same time and it will work correctly. So, it appears that the new scripts installed help but the stupid error I'm getting is preventing the AimTraks from working properly. 

[yakk11]

I was having the same problem as Endprodukt was, but got it fixed after Howard_Casto released TS1.2, my problems went away.  After getting the latest version, all I did was start the Model 2 helper and made sure mouse was selected.  Then I made sure the device IDs for my AIMTRAKs were set at 1 and 2, just like in the AIMTRAK setup utility.  This was with my PC mouse still connected, by the way.  After setting those settings in TS2, I rebooted into Hyperspin and everything just worked!   Loving it!! 

On a side note, would this program potentially work for Demul?  That only has support for one light gun / mouse as well.  THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR HARD WORK AND GREAT SUPPORT!!   

Now I just have to get my NANAO MS2930 chassis swapped out for an mS2931 so I can play these games in the resolutions they were meant to be played in! 

[Howard_Casto]

The settings paths are blank like you said, and the Have Troubleshooter 2 launch game box is checked. If I don't check it then I get the 429 error unable to create api.

I said that you aren't supposed to touch those settings for the model 2 games for a reason.  Think about what you just said for a second.  Troubleshooter isn't launching anything.  Model 2's lua scripts are launching troubleshooter.  By checking that box you are creating your own file not found error because you are telling it to launch a exe with a name of nothing in a path of nothing.

Your true error is 429, which typically means that the vb6 runtime files aren't installed.  Don't start messing with settings I specifically tell you not to mess with in the readme just because you can't get things running. 

I'll direct you to this article for help in regards to setting up vb6 runtime files. 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4213496/how-do-i-resolve-run-time-error-429-activex-component-cant-create-object


If you are still getting a 429 error after installing that package, my guess would be you are missing a windows dll somewhere.  I can give a list of all the dlls used, but it's a LOT so let's make sure it isn't the obvious stuff first. 

There should be a lua script for gunblade.  There should be a lua script generated for all 50+ model 2 games.  If there isn't then something went wrong when you tried to install via the little setup helper in ts2.   

You keep saying that it can't find the path.  Are you referring to clicking on the verify path button and it says model 2 isn't found?   Because that's a serious error caused by the user. 

remember:

c:\m2emulator        is NOT a valid path!

neither is

c:/m2emulator/

or

\m2emulator

ect.....

You need the FULL path, which in this example is:

c:\m2emulator\

Note the last slash on there. 


I hope some of this helps you. 

[BadMouth]

Spent ten minutes with it last night on my test computer.  Not really enough to figure out much, but it seemed to work.
I was only using one gun for like 5 minutes, so it was kinda hard to tell.

Just spent a half hour trying to get it to work on my old setup with ACT Labs guns before I realized that
I'm running v.9 on that setup, which doesn't support LUA scripts.
Could this be the problem for others who can't get it working?   

[Howard_Casto]

It is entirely possible. 

Not only are lua scripts not supported, but because it is a totally different version all of the memory locations that I hack are most likely different. 

So yeah, version 1.0 is the only supported version.  I guess I should put that in the docs. 



A 429 error can only be caused by a missing dependency though, if you are getting that then your version of windows is missing something (again, most likely the vb6 runtime files). 

I don't use anything out of the ordinary though.  I use the memory apis, which a pc won't even function without, the dde apis, which have been included with windows since the 9x days and some generic file and keypress apis... these are all apis that are crucial for windows to work properly.  I intentionally didn't do things like use a dialog box to allow the user to browse for paths, ect to reduce the number of dependencies. 

[Le Chuck]

Howard, wanted to say thanks up front for putting in the work on this!  I'll be using positional guns on the R2 build and know this is going to come in handy.  Many thanks.  I'll let you know how it works when I finally get to that part of the build, in like three or four months 

[Howard_Casto]

No problem.  I'm all about the analog gun games myself, that's why I attempted to do this.  I know everybody else wants to play Virtua Cop and House of the Dead but I've played those games to death 10 years ago when they were released for the pc.  I just wanted to play Gun Blade and Rail Chase 2. 


You know, you guys could help me with something if you wanted to.  I'm currently looking for gun shells.  I need something a wiimote pcb (not necessarily the whole wiimote) can fit in. 

I was hoping for a handgun shell and a uzi, similar to this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/UZI-SUBMACHINE-GUN-TOY-PROP-COSTUME-ACCESSORY-PLASTIC-LICENSED-58-/170900258788

I'm going to put a big recoil motor in the uzi shell so it has to be fairly big.  I might put recoil in the handgun shells, but honestly there isn't a lot of room in a shell that size and I'm not a fan of the gun con design. 

Finding them online is easy, but I would like something I can get in a chain store to avoid shipping costs.  I hate to be a cheap bastard about it, but I'll likely break two or three shells just figuring out how to hack these up. 

I've got some of the perfect shot shells left over from the wii, but honestly those things are just too wide.  The grip is twice the width of a handgun and having the batteries on the top of the gun (in the wiimote) makes the whole thing top heavy.  I was hoping to mount the pcb sideways so I could use a narrower shell and put the batteries in the grip. 

Anyway, if you find a really good deal online, or you happen to walk into your local S-Mart and see a suitable gun in the toy section let me know. 

[Le Chuck]

I used cheap-o airsoft shells from Wally-whirled.  They were great but needed some subtle modding.  Take a walk over in the sports aisle and see if anything jumps out at you.  I was all enamored with the nerf maverick when it first came out but I can't bring myself to do anything arcade related with them.  I'm currently hunting for the perfect Star Wars blasters to refurb my pos guns.   

[Aceisback]

Been following this thread for a while and have to say great job Howard (Do you ever sleep???).

I have an EMS Topgun III that I am using with my PC games, model 2, and some Mame games. At the moment, the gun seems to be working as it should and I have had no issues other than the off-screen reload issue that has been fixed thanks to Ramjets Borderless fix.

If I am not planning on using more than one gun, are there any benefits to using Troubleshooter 2 that I may not be aware of? I don't want to start messing with my system since it is currently working fine if I don't need to, but If there are issues I am not aware of, I will give it a shot.
 
I am new to this stuff, so I don't know if I am missing something on my end that I don't know about. Besides that, I cannot get Model 2 v1.0 to work on my cab (Windows 7 issue I have not been able to resolve, although Model 2 v1.0 works on my other PC with Windows 8 and a PC running Vista) so I am unable to use LUA scripts at the moment since the apparently are not supported by Model 2 v0.9. All the games I play are working though.

Thanks!

[vandale]

No problem.  I'm all about the analog gun games myself, that's why I attempted to do this.  I know everybody else wants to play Virtua Cop and House of the Dead but I've played those games to death 10 years ago when they were released for the pc.  I just wanted to play Gun Blade and Rail Chase 2. 


You know, you guys could help me with something if you wanted to.  I'm currently looking for gun shells.  I need something a wiimote pcb (not necessarily the whole wiimote) can fit in. 

I was hoping for a handgun shell and a uzi, similar to this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/UZI-SUBMACHINE-GUN-TOY-PROP-COSTUME-ACCESSORY-PLASTIC-LICENSED-58-/170900258788

I'm going to put a big recoil motor in the uzi shell so it has to be fairly big.  I might put recoil in the handgun shells, but honestly there isn't a lot of room in a shell that size and I'm not a fan of the gun con design. 

Finding them online is easy, but I would like something I can get in a chain store to avoid shipping costs.  I hate to be a cheap bastard about it, but I'll likely break two or three shells just figuring out how to hack these up. 

I've got some of the perfect shot shells left over from the wii, but honestly those things are just too wide.  The grip is twice the width of a handgun and having the batteries on the top of the gun (in the wiimote) makes the whole thing top heavy.  I was hoping to mount the pcb sideways so I could use a narrower shell and put the batteries in the grip. 

Anyway, if you find a really good deal online, or you happen to walk into your local S-Mart and see a suitable gun in the toy section let me know.

how about the original grey ps1 guncons. Traditional Namco arcade design with heaps of room inside for mods and you can paint them if grey is too bland for your liking

[Endprodukt]

If your interested Howard: I've got a PS1 real arcade gun. It's basically like the namco arcade guns with recoil (with solenoid!). The plastic is just a tad cheaper and it has additional buttons. Was pretty expensive back then.  I don't need it because I've got two real namcos in my cabinet. If you're willing to pay for the shipping I'd donate it to you for your hard work. Its just missing the foot switch because I use it for time crisis. Let me know. BTW I'm located in Germany, I'd get a quote of you want.

[Trnzaddict]

The settings paths are blank like you said, and the Have Troubleshooter 2 launch game box is checked. If I don't check it then I get the 429 error unable to create api.

I said that you aren't supposed to touch those settings for the model 2 games for a reason.  Think about what you just said for a second.  Troubleshooter isn't launching anything.  Model 2's lua scripts are launching troubleshooter.  By checking that box you are creating your own file not found error because you are telling it to launch a exe with a name of nothing in a path of nothing.

Your true error is 429, which typically means that the vb6 runtime files aren't installed.  Don't start messing with settings I specifically tell you not to mess with in the readme just because you can't get things running. 

I'll direct you to this article for help in regards to setting up vb6 runtime files. 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4213496/how-do-i-resolve-run-time-error-429-activex-component-cant-create-object


If you are still getting a 429 error after installing that package, my guess would be you are missing a windows dll somewhere.  I can give a list of all the dlls used, but it's a LOT so let's make sure it isn't the obvious stuff first. 

There should be a lua script for gunblade.  There should be a lua script generated for all 50+ model 2 games.  If there isn't then something went wrong when you tried to install via the little setup helper in ts2.   

You keep saying that it can't find the path.  Are you referring to clicking on the verify path button and it says model 2 isn't found?   Because that's a serious error caused by the user. 

remember:

c:\m2emulator        is NOT a valid path!

neither is

c:/m2emulator/

or

\m2emulator

ect.....

You need the FULL path, which in this example is:

c:\m2emulator\

Note the last slash on there. 


I hope some of this helps you.

It looks like I'm going to need a list of the dll's. I ran that installer and I'm still getting the 429 error.


Supposedly vb6 runtimes come already with Win7 as well which is what I don't get. 



Being that Darth Marino has the same issue and he's on Win7 x64, something may be wrong with using this OS with your app.

[BadMouth]

Not sure if the troubleshooter relies on the same ones, but some of emulators I use (nulldc, demul, makaron) rely on these runtimes and they weren't included in Windows 7: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555

[Howard_Casto]

No it's definitely not a compatibility issue with win 7 64bit.  What do you think I'm running? 

Also win 7 does not come with the vb6 runtime files.  Windows xp did, which made my life a lot easier, but they haven't been included with vista or 7. 


I hate to ask, but when you are running the installer packages you are running them as administrator correct?  Because nearly nothing installs correctly in win 7 unless you right click on the exe and run as administrator. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok here are the main dependencies according to dependency walker.  Note that some of these dlls depend upon yet more dlls.  Windows has always been a mess that way.  Chances are if you have these it's ok though because all of the dlls helper objects are installed along with them as a package.

The stuff that says "windows" or "core" might vary a little, those are core dlls that every program uses. 

As vb6 is a 32 bit app, you'll find most of this in your system32 folder.

[Howard_Casto]

Oh I suppose I should also mention that the app requires directx 8. 

I didn't mention it because model 2 obviously requires dx as well and if you have any version of directx installed typically the older versions are retro-actively installed. 

[DarthMarino]

Ok here are the main dependencies according to dependency walker.  Note that some of these dlls depend upon yet more dlls.  Windows has always been a mess that way.  Chances are if you have these it's ok though because all of the dlls helper objects are installed along with them as a package.

The stuff that says "windows" or "core" might vary a little, those are core dlls that every program uses. 

As vb6 is a 32 bit app, you'll find most of this in your system32 folder.

I'm certainly no expert on DLL files but I can confirm that everything from that list appears in both my System32 and SysWOW64 folders except the long ones starting with "API-MS-WIN-CORE".  Where should these be located?

[Trnzaddict]

No it's definitely not a compatibility issue with win 7 64bit.  What do you think I'm running? 

Also win 7 does not come with the vb6 runtime files.  Windows xp did, which made my life a lot easier, but they haven't been included with vista or 7. 


I hate to ask, but when you are running the installer packages you are running them as administrator correct?  Because nearly nothing installs correctly in win 7 unless you right click on the exe and run as administrator.

I'm not going to lie, I did not run the installer as administrator the first time. When I did I got that prompt saying "This program may not of installed correctly". So I reran it as administrator but still no dice. I guess the next step is to run a search for all those dll's but I'll save that for tomorrow.

It's x64 home premium sp1 btw.


I'll post back my findings.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm guessing you guys don't get the error in the setup menus right?

It just happens when you go into the main game loop correct?

Why don't you try this (it won't fix the problem but it can help us determine what the problem is).

In your setup turn off "send outputs to mamehooker"

also uncheck the enable box for both p1 and p2.

See if the game and ts2 runs without error. 

If it does then it's got something to do with rawmouse or directx8 or possibly dde. 

That would at least narrow it down.

[Howard_Casto]

One more thing

Make sure you have a dx8vb.dll in your system32 folder and not only that make sure it's registered by typing "regsvr32 dx8vb.dll" at the command prompt. 

There was an issue years ago on vista about the vb-specific dlls not registering properly.  It's some nutty Microsoft bug.  I've never heard of this happening on xp/7 but it wouldn't hurt to check as these aren't common dlls that most apps would use. 

[DarthMarino]

Still get the error with turning off the outputs and both controls. 

I tried registering the dll but it gives me an error saying it might be the wrong version for 64 bit windows blah blah blah.  I tried registering again but after typing the full path: regsvr32 C:\Windows\System32\dx8vb.dll 

All I gotta say is:



Now, the guns aren't firing but that should a cake walk after being beat down by the DLL's.  Anyway, thanks Howard.  I'll play around with this some more and make a video later this week showing the games in actions.

[DarthMarino]

Hmm. Gunblade and Behind Enemy Lines are not working for me.  I can shoot, but not aim.

[Howard_Casto]

You probably need to calibrate them. 

While the lightgun games work out of the box, the analog guns do not.  Their default calibration is "nope I'm not moving"  scared the crap out of me when I was trying to get bel working. 

Also remember before that you said there wasn't a lua script for gunblade (there should be).  You better make sure you got a full install.  This would also be why your guns aren't firing... the cfg files didn't get copied over. 

[Howard_Casto]

Just a personal rant, but it really ticks me off when Microsoft does stuff like this.  You might think "well that's some weird vb-only dll, no wonder it wasn't working"  but nope, the vb dx dlls are part of the official direct x package.

Now you can download the latest dx distributable right now and it will install all the way down to dx 7 in addition to the latest version.  Yet for some reason they decided to randomly not register these dlls, depending upon the OS.  Why?


Anyway, I'm going to put a note in the readme.  Microsoft's license agreement prevents me from including the dll, but at least I can tell people about it.  I've also changed the code around a little.  Now none of the dx stuff will be initialized unless you use a joystick as your control type, which should help a little.  So I'll release version 1.3 tomorrow and that will be the last version for a while barring any bugs. 

Time to work on mamehooker. 

[Trnzaddict]

Hmmmm...tried registering the dll and it says that the specified module at "C:\Windows\System32\dx8vb.dll" failed to load. I dll'ed the dll and placed it in the system32 folder and still nothing.


 I unchecked the p1 and p2 and send outputs to mamehooker and still 429.

[DarthMarino]

You probably need to calibrate them. 

While the lightgun games work out of the box, the analog guns do not.  Their default calibration is "nope I'm not moving"  scared the crap out of me when I was trying to get bel working. 

Also remember before that you said there wasn't a lua script for gunblade (there should be).  You better make sure you got a full install.  This would also be why your guns aren't firing... the cfg files didn't get copied over.

Yeah, that's why I changed my post.  I realized that just because I didn't see them in the original script folder, didn't mean that they weren't actually installed from TS2.  The calibration was definitely the issue.  Anyway, great work Howard.  All 6 are working like a charm.  I'll put together a video tonight of everything in action.

[Endprodukt]

One question about the outputs: is it possible to locate recoil outputs for the gun games that used them? I'm not sure its worth it. I'm wondering if the recoil stopped in the arcade when you had to reload in vcop and hotd. Would be great to implement. People keep shooting on screen because the recoil keeps going.

[retrorepair]

One question about the outputs: is it possible to locate recoil outputs for the gun games that used them? I'm not sure its worth it. I'm wondering if the recoil stopped in the arcade when you had to reload in vcop and hotd. Would be great to implement. People keep shooting on screen because the recoil keeps going.

Only the positional gun games like Gunblade had recoil. HOTD and VCOP did not. I believe Howard had added the Gunblade feedback motor output.

I'm getting 429 error too on win7 x64. I can't seem to register that dll though, says it's not there even when I added it to system32 folder.

*EDIT* I had to add it to the syswow64 folder to register it, no idea why. Now it's working but not loading m2emu. I'll press on.

*EDIT 2* Didn't have the rom in the model2 roms folder  Works fine now!

I did notice the emulator running much slower with TS2 enabled however. It did with my own app I made for model2 outputs but I thought it was just my poor coding skills. I guess it's just something we have to live with.

Great work anyway howard, can't wait to finally play gunblade properly!

*EDIT 3* Ok, seems I jumped the gun (haw haw), while it all seems to work ok, it can't launch the game from the command line. TS2 sits there saying "launching" but never does. All is well if I launch the game manually but that's a bit of an issue for frontend use. Any ideas?

[Howard_Casto]

The slowness is actually something somebody else mentioned that I looked into last night. 

I've got output broadcasting turned on, but mamehooker doesn't support it yet.  So it's constantly timing out.  Unchecking the output box will speed things up.  I didn't notice it because I'm running the unreleased verison of mamehooker and when the outputs connect, there isn't a delay.  So unchecking your outputs box (for now) will speed things up. 

RR:  It sounds like you are trying to launch the games via ts2.  You are doing it backwards.... launch the games via model 2 and model2's scripts will launch ts2. You should never get a launching message from ts2 unless you are trying a pc game (which you CAN launch)  I can confirm that things work fine from the command line because that's how I did my testing. 

Endprodukt:  Like RR said, the lightgun games didn't have outputs, or if they did, they were hardware only and thus didn't have a output logic bit for me to read.  Gunblade had on/off rumble motors.  Bel also had outputs, but I can't find them (the bel driver is seriously lacking in some places).  There are ways to fake it via mamehooker, but that's a tutorial for another day. 

[Trnzaddict]

One question about the outputs: is it possible to locate recoil outputs for the gun games that used them? I'm not sure its worth it. I'm wondering if the recoil stopped in the arcade when you had to reload in vcop and hotd. Would be great to implement. People keep shooting on screen because the recoil keeps going.

Only the positional gun games like Gunblade had recoil. HOTD and VCOP did not. I believe Howard had added the Gunblade feedback motor output.

I'm getting 429 error too on win7 x64. I can't seem to register that dll though, says it's not there even when I added it to system32 folder.

*EDIT* I had to add it to the syswow64 folder to register it, no idea why. Now it's working but not loading m2emu. I'll press on.

*EDIT 2* Didn't have the rom in the model2 roms folder  Works fine now!

I did notice the emulator running much slower with TS2 enabled however. It did with my own app I made for model2 outputs but I thought it was just my poor coding skills. I guess it's just something we have to live with.

Great work anyway howard, can't wait to finally play gunblade properly!

*EDIT 3* Ok, seems I jumped the gun (haw haw), while it all seems to work ok, it can't launch the game from the command line. TS2 sits there saying "launching" but never does. All is well if I launch the game manually but that's a bit of an issue for frontend use. Any ideas?

Working finally. Thankyou Retro Repair. That dxvb8 file needed to be in my syswow64 folder before it would register properly.

No, everything else should be a walk in the park. What an ordeal.


Howard, before you release 1.3, to save alot of win7 users headaches I would add this is the readme about the dll and having to register it!

Well, I'm off to calibrate.

[Howard_Casto]

It's already in there for the next release.  Not that it will matter, there are always some people that don't read the instructions. 

Found some minor bugs that I'll address in the next release.  Basically stcc and stcce and their memcfg files were backwards and there was another minor bug related to the special output system they use.  So if you run into problems with those games this is why. 

Even if it's a fake recoil, it would be nice to have a way to do a recoil for the lightgun games that doesn't work when out of bullets.  So I fired up the old art money program and went to searching. 

I've already found the bullet count for vcop and vcop 2.  I'll look for hotd in a second.  The idea would be you'd write a script in mamehooker to only fire a recoil signal in mamehooker if the trigger is pulled, reload is NOT pulled and the bullet value is greater than zero.  Not exactly plug and play, but it would work. 

I won't add these into the main program until I've gotten the mamehooker release out of the way.  They won't do anything right now anyway.  I'm taking a break for a while though.  I got ZombiU for xmas and I still haven't played it.  Sometimes it's fun to muck about with the programs a little (like today) but I'm burnt out for the kind of serious coding it would take to do a mamehooker release.  So I'll start next week or this weekend probably. 

[Howard_Casto]

Update:

I found hotd's bullet counts as well. Piece of cake really. 

I've been thinking that I might add some more options to the model 2 installer.  Right now I create a script for EVERY game.  If you are running mamehooker this is necessary.  90% of the games have at least some sort of output.  If you have no intention of running mamehooker though, you really only need 6 scripts for the gun games. 

[Endprodukt]

Great. I guess this would mean a complete rebuild of my guns though as their recoil is triggered through aimtrak. Recoil is only working while shooting on screen.

[Howard_Casto]

Well if you could talk to Andy and convince him to release a firmware update for his guns you wouldn't have to. 

If the aimtrack shows up as a standard HID input device (I'm assuming it does) mamehooker already has the ability to write to generic hid devices.  I would just need a PID/VID for the guns and the bytes to send.  He could expand the outputs to some other pins as well.  Terminator 2 and many of the analog gun games have leds on the guns that I've already hooked up in mame. 

[Howard_Casto]

Sometimes I surprise myself.

I thought about the fake recoil problem and decided it might be nice to be able to broadcast the trigger/reload positions to mamehooker.  I've got to keep track of those values anyway, it's just a matter of sending them over. 

The output system already has support for custom functions "swp" and "swd" (steering wheel power and direction respectively) due to the odd way sega racers encode the force feedback values. 

In the memcfg these racers have the usually numeric "BitMask" value set to a string like so

BitMask=swp|0|100|101|200

The values are unimportant, but I decided to add to this function the positional data so a entry of

BitMask=pos|shoot1

Will send the status of the player 1 trigger.  But normally a output looks up an address... in this case I'm just sending over a value from the ts2 program, so the address entry is in the memcfg is worthless.  So what I decided to do is use the address as an optional conditional value.  If a memory address is provided, the output can't be set to 1 if the memory address returns a zero value. 

So if you take those addresses I mentioned last post that have the bullet count, and plug those into the memory address option, the fake recoil value won't turn on if you are out of bullets!  Also since most of the games don't set the bullet value to 6 until the game starts, it won't recoil if you are in the attract mode either!

I tried it out in vcop and it works great.  The only hitch (which is intentional due to the analog gun games) is that if you hold down the trigger, the recoil output stays a 1.  This is correctable in mamehooker though. 

*edit*

I should also mention that none of this is model 2 specific.  So it could be used to add recoil to the pc games as well.  Recoil on HOTD3 sure would be nice. 

[Trnzaddict]

So all gun games are done, BUT...Question: Guys with Aimtraks, (and myself)  for Behind Enemy Lines, the missile button. Our secondary fire buttons on Aimtraks are seen as joystick buyttons.
Now Howard you said do not remap anything in Model 2 itself besides for p1 and p2 and coin buttons. Can we map this missile button or how are we supposed to do this? TS2 allows the guns either to be seen as mice or joysticks.

Also, when running M2 in TS2 mode, it gobbles up all my mice, including my trackball which I use to navigate in windows. Model 2 does not allow control remapping unless the game is running. How can I make TS2 release my trackball mouse so I can at least remap the stuff we are allowed to?

[DarthMarino]

So all gun games are done, BUT...Question: Guys with Aimtraks, (and myself)  for Behind Enemy Lines, the missile button. Our secondary fire buttons on Aimtraks are seen as joystick buyttons.
Now Howard you said do not remap anything in Model 2 itself besides for p1 and p2 and coin buttons. Can we map this missile button or how are we supposed to do this? TS2 allows the guns either to be seen as mice or joysticks.

You need to go into the Aimtrak utility program and map the alternate button to Right Mouse Button.  I just tested it and it works fine.

[Howard_Casto]

What he said, but strictly speaking you CAN remap the buttons in model 2, I just said not to because obviously ts2's faking of a keypress won't do anything if you've got it set to something else in model 2.   Strictly speaking, it wouldn't do any good anyway.  Bel's inputs have always been hardcoded to the mouse in m2.  I had to bypass the input system entirely.

Remapping inputs in model 2 is a pain unfortunately.  I attempted to automate the process, but there's really no easy way. 

(This will be in the new readme btw)

To do it:

1.  rename your scripts folder to something else.  This will prevent ts2 from launching
2.  in your emulator.ini, set UseRawInput to 0

Now you can launch the game and nothing will work correctly, but you can go into the menu and change your inputs. 
Just remember to rename the scripts folder back and turn UseRawInput back on.

For games that don't use the mouse, you won't have to go through all this nonsense... just the gun games. 

[DarthMarino]

Well, here are the games in action:



I will play around with Virtual On when I get some time.

[Howard_Casto]

Looks good!  You spelled my name wrong though. 

I really need to pick up a easier to use camera so I can start posting my own videos.  I've actually got a really nice one, but it's firewire and uses digital tapes instead of sd, so it's a pain in the butt to upload anything. 

Anyway I think I might go output hunting a little.... I'm going to try to hook up ff in hotd3 and 2. 

[DarthMarino]

Sorry about that.  Name corrected.  I just shoot my videos with one of those Flip things.  Nothing fancy but it does 720P HD and is certainly easy to use.

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry about that.  Name corrected.  I just shoot my videos with one of those Flip things.  Nothing fancy but it does 720P HD and is certainly easy to use.

Yeah that's what I'm thinking.  I've got decent quality video equipment, but I need something I can just turn on and shoot.  Got a link to the kind you are talking about?

I found the bullet count bits for hotd3... took all of around 10 minutes.  I'll do hotd2 as well if somebody can tell me how to run it in windowed mode.  There really isn't much use in doing the rest as they are in model 2. 

[DarthMarino]

I believe this is the one I have.  They have a few different versions.

http://www.amazon.com/Flip-UltraHD-Video-Camera-White/dp/B0040702IE/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1362544456&sr=8-5&keywords=hd+flip

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks man.... I think there's actually an older model on sale at my local s-mart.  I might have to go check that out. 

I thought about it, and that whole DirectX dll thing might be causing people to have problems with my other applications (I use directx8 a lot). 

So I'm writing a little program that attempts to register the dlls for you.  I still can't include the dll, but I can at least make it easier.  This app will search for the dll in both the system 32 and the syswow64 folders.  If it finds it in just one, it will register if for you.  If it finds it in both, it will prompt you to choose which one to register, defaulting with the 64bit version (since that seems to be the one you guys had the most luck with).  If it doesn't find it in either, it will look in the folder where the app is, and copy the dll over and then register it. 

So it's still not a one click process. But it beats mucking about in the command prompt. 

[Endprodukt]

I will try to get Andy to chime in. I really don't know what pid/vid even means so it would be better to get Andy into this thread and let the professionals do the talk.

[Endprodukt]

Double Post

[Endprodukt]

As long as we're at it: is it possible to find the bullet counts in mame with mame hooker?  Would be cool for  area 51,maximum force,point blank  and others. I never worked with Mame Hooker so I really don't know. I already emailed Andy and I hope he can help out.

I'm not sure how this works though. Will all the outputs be controlled by Mame hooker? Means I need  scripts for all Mame and m2 gun games  to make the recoil work at all? right now the aimtrak recoil its triggered by shooting on screen. Will this still work for games without a script?

[frizat]

Ok so I'm probably missing something small here.

I've only tested this with the PC Games (House of the Dead 3 / Virtua Cop 2).  I can try and test Model2 tonight.

I'm running on WinXP with 2 aimtrak's and what I did was download the program and drop it in a directory E:\Tools\TS2  I went into the config program and pointed hotd3 location to my hotd3 installation and did the same for vcop2bpc.

I made sure both guns were enabled and updated my keyboard defaults (FYI - the defaults are saved, but when I open the config app, but keyboard defaults revert back).

When I run ts2.exe hotd3 with launch game - nothing happens, don't see TS2.exe in task manager
When I run ts2.exe hotd3 without launch game - nothing happens, don't see TS2.exe in task manager
When I run ts2.exe vcop2bpc with launch game - nothing happens, don't see TS2.exe in task manager
When I run ts2.exe vcop2bcp without launch game - TS2.exe loads up.. if I show the program it says "waiting for Virtua Cop 2" but when I load up VCOP2 manually, my guns don't work at all

I'm sure I'm just overlooking something silly, but any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[Trnzaddict]

Howard, is there anyway you can incorporate using joystick buttons for games with a secondary fire? Unfortunately for people running frontends, we are unable to go into the Aimtrak utility program and change our secondary buttons to a mouse function. Then we would have to change it back if we want to play a Mame game. And if a remap is used with a proggie like autohllhotkey it will not work because we need raw input to allow two players in the first place.

If Andy would make support for command line functions in the Aimtrak utility then we could script a change in autohotkey without having to manually open up the app.

Also with Virtual On, I'm trying to get rid off the reverse up and down. Right now, no matter how much I try to change the keys in the Von setup and save, up continues to move the mech backwards and down moves him forward. Am I doing something wrong?

[Howard_Casto]

I think your are looking at the problem the wrong way. 

MAME supports any kind of input.  So change your buttons to mice buttons and be done with it. 

Virtual On might have the joysticks reversed, I dunno.  It was my understanding it was like a flight stick (y axis reversed). 


frizat:

Make sure your paths are correct. 

c:\game
 is NOT a valid path
c:\game\
is

There are two versions of the pc edition of Virtua Cop 2 (maybe more) make sure you are attempting to launch the correct version.  Honestly, I couldn't get the pc version of vcop 2 to run on my machine so it's the only game I didn't test.  The values are straight from the original troubleshooter though. 

Hotd3 requires a constant registry hack to be launched, so if you are trying to launch any exe other than the loader (the menu prior to launching the real game) then this is your issue. 

You save keys with the buttons at the bottom of the cfg menu.  The one next to the path only saves things for the launch of the game.

[BadMouth]

Virtual On might have the joysticks reversed, I dunno.  It was my understanding it was like a flight stick (y axis reversed). 

More like a bulldozer.  Both sticks forward to move forward.  Both sticks back to move backwards.

[Howard_Casto]

Found a issue in the shelling code (for pc games) that only effects hotd3.  I launched shell with a hidden value to hide ugly command prompts, but apparently the hotd3 launcher won't load with a hidden value.  I've defaulted it back to normal focus.


I'll look into Von, but honestly it could be as simple as me labeling the sticks backwards in the cfg menu.   

[BadMouth]

I wish I had more time for testing it out.  I feel left out. 
I should have time tomorrow night to update M2emulator on my old setup and try it with the act labs guns.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I labeled the sticks backwards. 

It'll be fixed next version. 


I also found some issues with the output code.... nothing serious, but I fixed it. 

[Howard_Casto]

Went ahead and added in all those fake recoils I found. 

I looked into bel since it's recoil is broken.  I managed to find the ammo count, which works for the machine gun part, but the missiles will be a bit trickier.  I did find the missile count fairly easily, but as you may or may not know, the missile button for bel only works when you get a lock on an enemy.  So the missile count is irrelevant to determining if recoil should work.  Someone would need to dive into the memory addresses and find the byte that is changed when you get a lock. 

I'm not willing to go back into memory hell for a game I don't really care for, but ramjet, retrorepair, have at it if you want to and I'll plug the addresses in. 

[yakk11]

Added Behind Enemy Lines to my Hyperspin wheel today.  This game isn't working for me for some reason.  The only thing that seems to work is the player 2 trigger.  The crosshairs are stuck in the lower left of the screen.  I cleared my nvram and cfg folder, still the same results.  Any help?

[DarthMarino]

You need to Press F2 and calibrate the guns.

[Howard_Casto]

Added Behind Enemy Lines to my Hyperspin wheel today.  This game isn't working for me for some reason.  The only thing that seems to work is the player 2 trigger.  The crosshairs are stuck in the lower left of the screen.  I cleared my nvram and cfg folder, still the same results.  Any help?

If you clear you nvram and cfg folder it DEFINATELY isn't going to work.  The ts2 installer adds custom cfg files.  If you delete them the buttons won't be mapped anymore.

[yakk11]

Added Behind Enemy Lines to my Hyperspin wheel today.  This game isn't working for me for some reason.  The only thing that seems to work is the player 2 trigger.  The crosshairs are stuck in the lower left of the screen.  I cleared my nvram and cfg folder, still the same results.  Any help?

If you clear you nvram and cfg folder it DEFINATELY isn't going to work.  The ts2 installer adds custom cfg files.  If you delete them the buttons won't be mapped anymore.

So I should rerun the Model 2 helper in TS2? 

[Howard_Casto]

yup

then calibrate like darth suggested.

[yakk11]

Thanks guys!  Have it working.   

[Howard_Casto]

Ok although I haven't released a updated version yet, I think I've pretty well addressed all the bugs you guys have found. 

Next on the agenda is expanding the script functionality. 

I figured a widescreen key would be nice.  For a lot of the games though, widescreen has to be turned off, depending upon the screen you are on.  Daytona has that area mapped out in the example lua script.  Is there a list of the ws settings for the other games somewhere? I mean generic widescreen works pretty good, until you get to a game menu and  the icons are all screwed up. 

I also tried it on the gun games just to see how they behave.  Gunblade and Bel actually work ok in ws mode, which is to be expected considering they use analog guns.  Rail chase works ok as well, but I noticed the sound drops out in the first level... not sure if it's related or not. 

As for the lightgun games.... Widescreen does indeed work, but I think it would be very confusing to the player. Although the view expands, the area in which you can shoot your gun is still restricted to 4:3.  So if you see a guy on the edge of the screen you can't shoot at him. 

Thoughts on this would be appreciated.  Once I get this next release out I'll leave this project for a while, so you better get your requests in while you can. 

[DarthMarino]

For Model 2, I would have 2 requests. 

-Is there any way to do sequential shifting in Daytona?  Instead of 4 separate buttons for the gears, have a shift up and shift down.

-Sky Target has a weird control issue (at least for me though I've tried on a few controllers). If you pull all the way back on the stick the plane goes down instead of up.  If you want to fly up you have to only pull it back half way or so. Maybe there's a way to limit how far the emulator thinks you are pulling back.

I'm a bit torn on the widescreen possibility but it can't hurt to have the option, even if the targeting is limited to the 4:3.

[BadMouth]

-Is there any way to do sequential shifting in Daytona?  Instead of 4 separate buttons for the gears, have a shift up and shift down.

The author of RacerMAME wrote a small program called H2Seq that does that.
http://www.racermame.altervista.org/download.htm
I haven't tried it.

Not that it wouldn't be a good addition to Howard's program, but there is an option available now.

[Howard_Casto]

I don't think sequential shifting is out of the question, we already know where the shift position is located, it would just be a matter of changing it. 

Wow Sky Target is seriously screwed up isn't it?  I'm not even sure what the issue is there. 
The glitch doesn't seem to happen when you use digital controls.  I might just be able to use the existing lightgun code to control the flight axis (set p1 lightgun to joystick, ect..) and instruct the users to uncheck the analog controls box. 

[Howard_Casto]

Well that took all of about 10 minutes. 

Sky Target uses the same analog axis as gunblade.  The same NOPs apply as well.  I suppose I better make a special section though.  Some poor saps are going to want to use digital controls, and those are blocked as well.  Perhaps I need to add a conditional switch for NOPs?  The digital controls work just fine, so in the event that the user wants to use digital controls there really isn't any point in NOPing out functionality. 

[Howard_Casto]

So I hooked all that up and everything works. 

I think I'm going to cheat a little bit with the configuration though.  I'll just have three memcfg files for sky target and copy the appropriate one over depending upon if you want digital inputs, analog inputs, or analog inputs with an inverted y axis. 

[Howard_Casto]

I looked into the sega shifter.  I can certainty do it on my end, but I think we are going to have to wait until a future release, perhaps when I get a bit further along with outrun 2006. 

The problem is right now I use a very generic "one cfg menu for everything approach".  Even now I've got two hacks to that cfg menu (von and sky target) that break this up.  I don't want to have to do special cases for each game.  The best solution would be to totally re-write the cfg menu so that it's a little more flexible, only loading sections that the memcfg for each game can actually manipulate.  That's just not going to happen right now.

Also this goes into the hacking territory.  Thus far I've fixed issues and hooked up outputs.  The games are still working as intended.  If I start going do the "hack this feature in please" rabbit hole I might not ever dig my way back out.   

[Howard_Casto]

Started working on updated scripts for the lightgun games. 

Right now I assume that the screen width is the width of the gameplay area, but as you know, if you use a widescreen resolution it is not.  So I'm using a real simple trick to lock the cursors into the 4:3 area.  I thought it might be nice in case you are running all the other non-gun games in widescreen. 

It won't help with physical gun calibration though... you'll still need to aim at the corner of the gameplay area and not the corner of the screen.  But hey, I can only control so much. 

[BadMouth]

Finally got some time to test and can confirm that it works great with the Act Labs guns. 

One thing....when cycling through the available crosshairs, I can get blank ones on vcop (which is what I want).
It skips over the option for blank ones on vcop2 and hotd.
Maybe a part that wasn't copied over to the other scripts?

Calibration seems to drift a bit toward the bottom of the screen.  When aiming at the lowest part of the screen, the red splotch indicating where the bullet hits is about an inch above where I'm aiming (on a 32" screen).  Your crosshairs are where I'm aiming, so it may be that the splotch is off.  Either way, these games are pretty generous with their hit areas and there are only ever huge targets popping up in front of you at the bottom of the screen, so I don't think it really affects gameplay.  Thought I'd mention it though.

Time to dig the big positional gun out of storage and play some Gunblade the way it was meant to be played!

[frizat]

I'm still having issues setting this up with Windows XP.  I tried the rawtest.exe application and no matter the numbers I put into the boxes, the best I can do is to get 2 red mouses moving at the same time.  The blue one won't move except for when I click on "command 1".  The  dual guns work fine in MAME. 

Thanks!

What about the rawtest app I sent?

Set the id numbers to the same ones that are working in ts2 and hit the command1 button

Is the tracking of the red and blue squares the same as in model 2?

The reason I ask is the EXACT same code is being used in the rawtest app as the troubleshooter.  They should behave the same. 


I've gotta go guys... anything else you find out post here, I'll check it later.

[Howard_Casto]

well I removed the blank cross hairs in the scripts, so you shouldn't even be able to access them.  You might have an errant script left over from the testing phase but I'll look into it. 

Instead press 9 to just turn them off, it's saved on a per game basis so you'll have to do it for each game. 

I haven't noticed any vertical drifting with the crosshairs... it may just be your calibration for the act labs guns needs to be re-done.  I have noticed the occasional horizontal drift, but that has to do with the issue I was talking about above. 

Both ts2 and the crosshairs ignore the in-game calibration. Unfortunately the game does not, which is why the splotch might not line up with the crosshairs.  You are supposed to rely on the calibration your guns provide to get things right.  So in terms of calibration in model 2, your goal is to get the fake crosshair in line with the splotch.  It's much easier to do this with a mouse or joystick.  I can imagine that it's near impossible to do with a true lightgun. 

Of course the positional gun games are the opposite.... the calibration IS taken into account. 

Clear as mud right?


Anyway, you are correct... the games are extremely generous when it comes to hit targets.  As are the digital leisure games.... as are 75% of the games in mame.  Which is why when people complain that ir-guns aren't accurate enough to be a real replacement for lightguns I just ignore them. 

Just for the record, many lightgun games, as it turns out, don't even require aiming.  I learned this via my testing.  Shoot at the dead center of the screen for any sega shooter and you'll hit the target 80% of the time.  Kind of takes a bit of the fun out of it after you figure that out. 

frizat:  we've kind of moved beyond the rawtest app at this point. 

What kind of guns are you using?

[DarthMarino]

I looked into the sega shifter.  I can certainty do it on my end, but I think we are going to have to wait until a future release, perhaps when I get a bit further along with outrun 2006. 

The problem is right now I use a very generic "one cfg menu for everything approach".  Even now I've got two hacks to that cfg menu (von and sky target) that break this up.  I don't want to have to do special cases for each game.  The best solution would be to totally re-write the cfg menu so that it's a little more flexible, only loading sections that the memcfg for each game can actually manipulate.  That's just not going to happen right now.

Also this goes into the hacking territory.  Thus far I've fixed issues and hooked up outputs.  The games are still working as intended.  If I start going do the "hack this feature in please" rabbit hole I might not ever dig my way back out.   

Glad to hear about Sky Target.  That was certainly a more important fix whereas the Daytona is more of a perk.  I downloaded the program BadMouth recommended so I'll test it out when I feel like playing around with my wheel.  What are you doing with Out Run 2006?

[Howard_Casto]

Well mamehooker comes next, but the goal for outrun 2006 is to get some rudimentary FF data supplied to the output system.  The game doesn't have any official ones, but if I can find the car's acceleration and rotation, that's enough to do something with.  Likewise if I can find the flags for when the car goes off road, that's enough for the simple ff you found in the xbox release. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok, updated the scripts for the lightgun games.  The crosshairs should now be accurate regardless of the aspect ratio you are running model 2 in.  That being said I am NOT going to add the code to run the lightgun games in widescreen mode, and here is why:

1.  You can't shoot out of the 4:3 area anyway, so it's confusing to the player. 

2.  When you fire the gun, the white flash only flashes the 4:3 area.  It looks really ugly and there's no telling what it would do to true lightguns.

3.  When you get hit, the red damage rectangles, again, only cover the 4:3 area.

4.  When the game enters "cinema mode" (letterbox) the black bars only span the 4:3 area. 

All in all these games just look really bad in widescreen. 


The rest of the model 2 library looks great though, so there's no reason not to add functionality for those. 

Daytona will get a special script for it, as it's game modes are mapped out.  The others will have to make due with a simple toggle though. 

[Howard_Casto]

I've got something cool for you guys to play with.... just something I'm thinking of adding. 

I wanted to see if I could use the lua scripting to implement a screen effects filter similar to mame.  The results are fairly good!

All this does is take a png file (in this case a modified version of the scanlines.png included with mame, which I do NOT care for) and tile it across the screen.

Again, the same artwork limitations we've ran into before, the png doesn't scale and it's dimensions have to be a power of two.  Also mame uses the effects pngs as an overlay and model 2 doesn't give us this option.  Instead I converted this one into a translucent png and tweaked the translucency until it looked similar to how it would overlain.

On my machine, the effect looks best at around 1024x768, but depending upon your monitor this will vary. 

To try it out just take the "effects" folder in the zip and put it in your artwork folder. 

Then take a game you want to try it on, temporarily rename it's lua script, and put the "effect.lua" in it's place. 

[DarthMarino]

Looks good.  What do you think about putting the gun games in widescreen but then making a png overlay like this to cover just the bars on the side with a bezel of sorts. All the artwork appears above and below the screen on the actual cabs but maybe we can adapt some of it for the sides. I did something like this for Golden Tee and it worked out pretty well:

[phasermaniac]

whow! thats so amazing! a new troubleshooter!
I'm not sure it will work for me as i use two guncon2 non namco (as those had the rolling x problem), with wingun software, which doesnt use rawinput. But I'm gonna test it and tell you my results.
Would it be possible adding support to any mega drive/ sms/mega cd emulator, like kega or regen, which reads the coordinates in relative way? would be magnific as i didnt found any with lightgun support.

[Howard_Casto]

DarthMarino:

Well I would like to, and I've actually written some code to do just that, but I've had one heck of a time finding artwork for the Virtua Cop games or any of the model 2 games really.  The best I've found so far is a blurry image of sky target's control panel and a instruction card for Daytona USA.  Just keep in mind that I can't move the gameplay area around at all.  So it would be two skinny strips, on each side, not one to the left as in your pic. 

[DarthMarino]

What's the dimensions of the side images?

[Howard_Casto]

Depends upon the resolution you are running.  As I've said, model 2 won't let you scale images, so artwork would have to be made for each resolution (I'm thinking 1080p 720p and 1600x900).

Math fun:

Take the height of your monitor resolution, divide by 3.

Multiply that value by 4... now you've got the 4:3 gameplay width.

Subtract this value from the real width, now you've got the total width of both strips. 

Now divide the value by two.... each strip is "this value" x height.

So for 1080p it would be 240 x 1080 for each side.  You'd start with images that big and scale down.  It's not a lot of width really... you might be able to put some text and that's about it. 

16:10 bezels would also work and you can find them via the same formula, but afaik there isn't a 16:10 resolution size standard so I wouldn't know what res to put them in. 

[phasermaniac]

Mh, i have tried but by now dont have it working, i use wingun, wich works in direct input and maps triggerp2 to mouse 3 and reloadp2 to mouse 4
i have read the readme and this forum, downloaded t2 1.2, and created the cfg folder, no errors now.
I tried mapping p1 and p2 to the same id mouse, but doesnt seem to work... any suggestion?
Do you think it would  be possible adding reload to hodt3pc?
And any genesis sms sega cd support?
Qnyway thaks for the effort

[Howard_Casto]

WinGun isn't a legitimate driver... it's another form of hack.  I read the guns at the hardware level, and since wingun is a software program, it won't work. 

I might be able to add support but I don't know what wingun shows up as, programmatically speaking.  So I need some info.  Honestly I thought that project was defunt.  Didn't they finally come up with guncon 2 drivers?

[phasermaniac]

well, yes i have read it is more like a hack, there also is guncon2pc driver from smog, or the topgun2 driver also works (only it dont have the flash crt lightgun needs).
but i love wingun because i can do flash 2player flash games very easy, as i only have to map each trigger to two different keys and wingun, using one only cursor makes the job, jumpin for a frame to the p2 aiming when shoot and returning to p1. This dont allow continous fire, but this doesnt worry me very much.

In fact, with the old trobleshooter i had to configure as "dual actlabs tv usb lightguns" and worked very nice.

it's true the new software is dessigned for the rawinput method, wingun seems outdated, but works the best i have tried with crt guns.

[phasermaniac]

this weekend i discovered this: "http://frenzy.gl.tter.org/"
its is a mod for quake 2 and another for half life for playing with dual lightguns.
the down side is it was dessigned for actlabs gs (the first actlabs). Only the Quake2mod works in version 1.2 with newer guns, and only with one gun. I have never been able to find the trigger p2, dont know which method did actlabs gs to play dual lightgun, but i thing this only worked in windows 98.
anyways surprised this was done more han ten years ago.

[BadMouth]

. I have never been able to find the trigger p2, dont know which method did actlabs gs to play dual lightgun,

Not sure about the GS model, but there is a  "P2" position on the 3 position switch on usb guns that make the trigger and button show as mouse buttons 3 and 4.  The instructions say this is for PC games that support act labs guns in 2 player mode.  I assume this works the same as what you're talking about.  The game gets the position from the single system mouse and credits the shot based on whether is sees mouse button 1 or 3 as the trigger pulled.  I don't know of any games that actually used it.  they usually just screwed you out of 2 player with guns.



Sent using Board Express

[phasermaniac]

yes badmouth thats it, an with the usb actlabs, can you play quake2 gunfrenzy with both players? and the half life mod? have you tested that?

[BadMouth]

yes badmouth thats it, an with the usb actlabs, can you play quake2 gunfrenzy with both players? and the half life mod? have you tested that?

Not tested any of it.  No idea if it works with those games.
Wasn't aware of those mods until you posted.

[phasermaniac]

So, howard, ther is no option equivalent to the “dual actlabs tv usb lightguns“, from the original troubleshooter?

[Howard_Casto]

I'm not sure to be honest.  Afaik the act-labs tv guns STILL show up as two different guns if you put them both in 1p mode.  In this respect it should still work.  Badmouth tried it with dual act labs and he said it worked fine.  I dunno if his are vga or svid though. 

[BadMouth]

So, howard, ther is no option equivalent to the “dual actlabs tv usb lightguns“, from the original troubleshooter?

The TV USB Act Labs guns work fine with Troubleshooter2 and the supported games listed.
If you're trying to get it to do something with a game not listed as supported, it's not going to do anything for you.

I don't believe the original troubleshooter did anything for games other than those on the supported games list.

What guns do you have?
What game are you trying to play?

[Howard_Casto]

What he said.... the ts2, like the original ts, isn't a catch all solution.  As of now it works for the model 2 games and the few pc games that the first ts supported.  (Although there is a bug or two with pc launching that will be fixed next release.)

[phasermaniac]

yes, i know it doesnt work with any game (although support for any sms/gen/scd emu would be nice).
I'm trying with m2 emu. I suppose i would use the m2 games + hodt2pc, and hodt3pc, as the arcade versions are so smarter...
As i said before i use two guncon2(no namco) with Wingun, wich works in direct input, only one mice, and buttons mapping is: gun1trigger:mouse0, gun1reload:mouse1, gun2trigger:mouse2, gun2reload:mouse3.
this driver dont have any option to show up as two different guns (as actlabs seems to have),

Another cuestion, the fullscreen mode doesnt seem to work for me, has ts2 any action about this?

[Howard_Casto]

Just a minor update. 

I haven't forgotten about this it's just atm I'm slightly ill and regardless I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to programming.... right now I have some time to screw around on the forums and that's about it.  

There should probably be a release of the new version next week though.  I did manage to find a little time today to implement some new features for the output system.  Daytona and a few others used hacked memory locations, so the data they output isn't always ideal.  So I added optional offsets and multiplier settings for each output.  This can transform the "cars ahead of you" variable that ramjet found into a true "car position" by adding 1 to the value, for example.  I mainly did it for outrun 2006 even though it's clear at this point that it will require a dedicated program.  I just figured if you wanted to add other pc games in the future, multipliers would be helpful. 

[Endprodukt]

Can't get ts2 working with any of the hotd PC versions.

[Howard_Casto]

It's a launcher code issue...  It's talked about in this very thread and will be addressed in the next release. 

Anyway progess report time.


I haven't worked on this in a few weeks because I was kind of burnt out on it and I haven't exactly been feeling well.  I've worked a little more on this this morning though.  This will probably be the last release for a while, so I'm trying to tidy things up a bit.  I've started making very simple docs for all of the problem games.  That's what the "Read Notes for This Game" button is for. 

I've also added another option I the model2 installer. 

Right now the lua scripts are all or nothing in that none are installed (which means that the lightgun games don't have crosshairs) or a lua script is installed for all 50+ games.  Now the reason behind this is that most of the games have outputs and ts2 needs to be launched to broadcast them, but if you aren't interested in that functionality you've got TS2 launching for games that don't need it. 

All of those fake recoil outputs I mentioned a few weeks ago are hooked up except for bel.  I'll get to it tomorrow hopefully. 

Then I've got to do some lua script cleanup.  Right now we've got a "buttons.lua" and a "readlines.lua" that are used in addition to the scripts for each name.  When I started writing the scripts they were aptly named, but they aren't anymore.  Buttons.lua will have to be renamed to "settings.lua", it's where all lua-based keycode constants are stored and now a few settings as well.    Readlines.lua gets renamed to "functions.lua" as this will hold all of your necessary functions. 

In addition, the generic lua script used for all non-gun games will get added functionality.  I think the "effect" script I made a while back was pretty successful, so I'll add that in as well as support to toggle on/off widescreen rendering. 

In addition, I want to do some experiments to see if lua scripts can be loaded from outside the "lua" folder and if they can be conditionally loaded.  Bezels, output controlled artwork, all of that jazz can be supported via the lua scripting system, but making it generic enough to work for every game can be tricky.  So my idea was to just leave it up to the author.  I could check if a lua file exists in the artwork folder named after the rom and if so "require" it.  Each artwork lua script will be expected to have functions named "load_art" and "render_art" and if the script is found, these will be called during the generic lua scripts loop.  What is actually done in this two functions would be up to the author.  It would make things very similar to mame's .lay files. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I finally got out of my Outrun 2k6-induced stupor  this weekend so I decided to go back to this and finish up those scripts. 

I did some testing....  I can load lua scripts from any directory and I CAN conditionally load them.  So armed with that knowledge, I should be able to do a full-on mame-style artwork system. 

What I'll do is store a "default.cfg.lua" in the artwork folder.  This will store all of your default aw settings.  (If widescreen is turned on, if you are using effect files, ect....)  If you change any of these settings in-game, just like mame, I'll create a specific .cfg.lua file for that game, saving the updated settings. 

The rendering and loading of artwork files for individual games will be handled via external lua scripts for each game... so it would be treated very much like a .lay file in mame. 

More generic artwork effects like a scanline overlay and widescreen mode, will be handled by a singular, generic lua script. 

This will take a little while to code and test, but it won't be terribly bad.  I should have the final (for now at least) release done very soon. 

[Endprodukt]

Awesome, can't wait for the final version. Will this also fix some of the issues with VC1/2 ?

[Howard_Casto]

I'm not aware of any issues with the virtua cop games other than the upper-left corner issue with vc2.  That's something where I just need a new memory address and it would have to sit down for ages for find the proper values to NOP. 

It fixes issues with the pc game launching, issues with sky target, issues with inverted outputs and a few other minor things including a helper that'll let you know of the dx4vb dll is installed on your system. 

This new release is primarily to implement a artwork and screen effects system, which pretty much concludes any added functionality I can put into Model2 to make it a little nicer. 

[Endprodukt]

I thought there was a problem with vc that you couldn't shoot the very left or right screen but I might be wrong.

[Howard_Casto]

Nope, not that I'm aware of. 

Anyway, worked on blocking out the widescreen script since it's the simplest and I'll use it as a template for the artwork script and overlay script. 


I'm having a hard time staying motivated because it's been really nice outside.  I'll see if I can write up the other two scripts this weekend so I can combine them all and get to testing. 

[Howard_Casto]

Worked on the scripts a little more.  Completed one for effects (aka scanlines, ect).  What's left is a script to show graphics when paused and some example artwork files. 

I'm kind of stumped on that one actually.  Bezels don't exist for most of these games.  There are a few games that I can make active artwork files for... sky target has a danger lamp, and top skater has all these lights that flash... There aren't good pics for either.  Does anyone know of a good source?

[ArcadeBliss]

Sorry I do not however just wanted to thank you for this.  I just tried ts2 on my cab for m2 and it works like a charm

[Howard_Casto]

I appreciate the support as always. 

I went ahead and make a fake light bulb via Photoshop that I can use to simulate the marquee lamps on top skater.  Drawing anything made of glass is kind of tricky and although it still looks a bit amateurish, I'm rather proud of how it turned out.  I figured this would be the easiest example of active artwork because I can clone the same two images (light on and light off) multiple times similar to how mame often uses effects.  I'll make an art file tomorrow and post some pics. 

Sky Target is also doable, but the warning lamp is replicated in-game (the flashing red plane icon in your health meter) so I'm not sure if it makes sense to do one. 

I'll also do a generic one to simulate an arcade monitor. 

[Howard_Casto]

I think I've got a decent example artwork file finished for top skater. 

Check it out:



The glowing bulb needs cleaned up a bit to keep the glow from getting cropped, but other than that. 

I found out that lua scripting doesn't support bitwise-operations (lame) so I'll have to write functions to do it.  But other than that, everything is moving right along.

[ArcadeBliss]

Hi,  after playing with this for a day,  I've run into a problem that somethings two players work,  sometimes only one or none.  This happens even when only testing one game.  This also happens when I reboot.  Because I have removable panels with many USB controls,  it might be getting confused as to what to use.  Btw I only use ts2 with m2 and two aimtraks.

As a suggestion,  it would be great to be able to set TS2 to use controls defined by the windows identification string.   Controllerremaper for MAME does this and it works without a hiccup.

If you would like to diagnose my problem,  I would be happy to be a guinea pig.

[Howard_Casto]

It's an issue I thought somebody would eventually run into, but I don't have any good solutions atm. 

The only thing I have to work with in terms of unique identifiers is the physical address, due to the fact that I'm using the system messages method to read raw mice.  (Offers greater compatibility then the direct x method).  While I can certainly bind ids to these addresses, I'm fairly sure if your mice id numbers are jumping around, so are the addresses. 

I'll see if I can find something. 

[ArcadeBliss]

Thanks. That would be great.

Regarding directX your right, DrVentures app ControllerRemapper is using thedirectX dll to get the device ID. The deviceID I have observed is allways the same for my devices and mice regardless how many are connected to the system. After reinstalling windows, all my deviceIDs for my wheels, lightguns, mice, keyboards, and joysticks remained the same (checked with the provided tool - that was a shocker). The deviceID for my Aimtrak is similar to: HID#Vid_1241_Pid_1111#b_2eabd86_0_00000#

Mabye that might give you some ideas. Just let me know what I can do to help.

Cheers..

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I can't read vid/pids with the raw input api.  That's a hid thing.  There is an api that allows you to read the official device name of a raw input device, but I haven't gotten it to work yet.  It's supposed to pass me a pointer to a string containing the name, but the value comes up as "0" thus far.  It's probably a bad declaration on my end, but if it turns out that it isn't I have no way of getting a unique identifier as I discovered that the address IS dynamic. 

The problem with switching over to direct input is that some emulators/games have di on all the time, even if you aren't using it, and that could cause interference since we are hacking the interface.  Also it doesn't deal with true lightguns as well as the raw input api does.

[ArcadeBliss]

Thanks for your efforts. Even though I know nothing about programming I started to search the interwebs for something useful. Let me know if I'm just being annoying.  Here are some links I found:


Hardware Link1
[lualibusb] - a libusb binding for general USB devices.
[luausb] - a libusb1 binding for general USB devices.
[luahidapi] - a hidapi binding for USB HID devices.

Bitwise operations Link2

[Howard_Casto]

Heh... I appreciate the links, but that's lua scripting.  I use lua for any graphical mods to model 2 because of the fact that model 2 has a lua engine, it's just easier, but the actual troubleshooter app is just vb6. 

Also you linked me to usb/hid code.  I'm not using usb/hid, I'm using raw input devices.  I'll fix it probably, so don't worry about it. 

But no, you aren't being annoying.  I always appreciate any help I can get. 

[ArcadeBliss]

Vb6 eh? Let's see what I can find

[Howard_Casto]

I found some example code to read the device name, which should be enough.  It appears to be in Portuguese, but I think I can make it out. 

What was throwing me off was the aforementioned pointer.  Apparently you first call the function and in the return length is great than 0 you call it a second time pointing to a byte array.  As usual the api was written with C in mind and vb flubs the conversion, so you have to do it manually. 

Also the "name" it sends is a big old string containing the vid/pid as well, which is nice because those are easily identifiable. 

I should be able to work with that.  What I'm going to do is still allow the "mouse id#/joy id#" setup but in addition I'll add a "hardcode id" option that uses these names.   

[Howard_Casto]

Here if you want to play with something I modified the infamous rawtest app to list the available mice.  Just click the "list mice" button to your far right.

Note that the list you can generate has NO bearing on the rest of the app, but the "names" listed shouldn't change regardless of which usb device is plugged in first. 

I'll have to do the same thing for joysticks, but it's far easier in direct-input.

[ArcadeBliss]

Downloading to test it now. Will let you know if it spits out the same vid/pid I am used to seeing

Btw found some code where the author was complaining the returned string was too long so he sent it through a hash algorithm to shorten it but still keep it unique.

So just feedback, I used the app and it displayed my two aimtraks ( I cut out the relevant part that I know)

HID#Vid_d209_Pid_1601_MI_02#8
HID#Vid_d209_Pid_1602_MI_02#8

[Howard_Casto]

Could you post me the whole string please?

I've got a mess of devices here but not two of the same device.  Andy gives the AimTraks unique PID's, but most companies aren't so nice.  I was wondering how much of the string I could cut off, so I want to see what else differs in the two name strings. 

It's a shame that I don't have a easy way to get the plain text Instance name for raw devices.  In direct input I can skip the vid/pid stuff and just list "Madcatz Xbox 360 Controller"  ect...

[ArcadeBliss]

no problem. Since the app does not allow me to copy the text, I've included a screenshot. The APP window does not allow me to expand it to show the rest of the text.

[Howard_Casto]

That's what I suspected, thanks. 

It's odd really, normal devices use the "MI" section of the string to give the instance number.  You'll notice that you have two other identical devices hooked up and their mouse instance values are different.  The aimtracks use the same mi number though, which is odd.  So I think I can use just the first portion of the string and it will be enough.  I don't really see any reason to add all the other junk as it just makes things hard to read. 

[ArcadeBliss]

Just to let you know, the other two that look similar happen to be my opti-pac . let me know if I should hook up my usb keyboard and mouse combo for further info.

[Howard_Casto]

Just an update.  All projects are on hold atm.... I've been working on real world stuff so I don't have time.  Hopefully I can get back to things soon. 

[ArcadeBliss]

Real life always take priority. When you are ready, just let me know how I can contribute.

[Howard_Casto]

Found a little bit of time this evening.  I made a function to enumerate all the joystick names and their instance serials as well as a function to find a joystick via a name/instance string. 

I'll try to go ahead and do the mice as well.  Apparently I can get the real name of the mouse by reading the registry.... I'm not 100% sure that it's worth the effort, but I might go ahead and do that just so that mice instances look like the di ones.  It might be possible to actually use direct input just for the enumeration, but I'll have to confirm that di enumerates in the same order as raw devices does. 

[Howard_Casto]

I implemented what will probably be the actual format of the mice enumeration on the raw mouse tester.

I would appreciate it if somebody running XP can try it as I'm polling the registry and it's just odd on certain systems. 

You should get a series of numbers followed by the actual device description. 

[ArcadeBliss]

Will check it out.  I just woke up and after breakfast I'll go down and test it.

Just tested it.  I get an error #9 Subscript out of range

[Howard_Casto]

Ok let's make sure there are descriptions to read.

Open regedit (just type it in the search/run box)

Go to
 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\HID
 
Go To any of the vid/pid pairs in that folder (preferably one you know is a mouse) and then go to the folder inside with the number string

Click on the DeviceDesc key in the right section and paste what it says here.  This string seems to vary between OS/device so there may be a formatting issue. 

[ArcadeBliss]

for my aimtrak that ends in 1601, the devicedesc is: HID-compliant game controller.not verz descriptive 

[Howard_Casto]

I started plugging in some random mice on my end to try to replicate the error.... as I suspected it's a formatting issue.

If you want to try the revised version here you go.

[ArcadeBliss]

Worked like a charm. Here is the result.

HID-compliant mouse2&aae785&0&0000
Terminal Server Mouse Driver0000
HID-compliant mouse8&389ab7f3&0&0000
HID-compliant mouse8&253a70e3&0&0000
HID-compliant mouse8&770818&0&0000
HID-compliant mouse7&1505c671&0&0000
HID-compliant mouse7&38dd0433&0&0000

[Howard_Casto]

Cool... I'll start plugging this into the main app tonight.

[ArcadeBliss]

Howard your my hero

[ArcadeBliss]

....

[Howard_Casto]

Joysticks have been converted to use the id strings instead of id numbers.  I might do the mice tonight depending upon how late I stay up... otherwise I'll take care of them at a later date. 

[ArcadeBliss]

Cool can't wait to try it out

[Howard_Casto]

Hooked up devicestrings for the mice as well.  Now I need to get back to the scripting that I was originally working on. 

[ArcadeBliss]

Drooling...

[charlieram]

Thanks Howard for Troubleshooter2 but it was a pita getting it to work, I too was having the 249 error and read through this thread twice! I didn't want to annoy you by asking questions you had already answered but my fix isn't listed entirely so I thought I would give a breakdown of what I did just in case anyone else gets the same issue. Basically I needed to register the dx8vb.dll using an elevated command prompt.

Download dx8vb.dll and copy into your system32 folder.
Type CMD in the search bar then right click on cmd.exe and select Run as Administrator
Type regsvr32 C:\Windows\System32\dx8vb.dll  and press enter
The dll should now register ok and TS2.exe will no longer have the 249 error and 2 player control works in the gun games 

Does anyone know if Andy is going to implement Howards recoil outputs as that would be super cool, My guns and recoil kits are on order and I'm just waiting for them to arrive.

And finally thanks again Howard, Much appreciated 

[Howard_Casto]

My guess is no, he isn't.  I mentioned it to him and his question was if the program it's to be implemented in was to be open-source to which I said yes.  He basically said anything it is to be included with needs to be closed source, so I told him that was fine and I haven't heard back since. 

[max33]

Good afternoon .
First thanks a lot  for your work on TS2 that allow us to play old arcade games with two guns like in the real world.

I encounter anyway a trouble with this configuration .

I try to play at sega model 2 roms (i build an diy cabinet and bought two ems top gun 3 guns).

I can play but not reloading with two guns and ts2 activated.

Without ts2 the game works well (shooting and reload ).For reloading i have to either click on button 2 on the gun or configure with the top gun control panel that offscreen is button 2 . all works in this case but i can only have one gun.

With ts2 i got the two guns active (i can move the cross) , i have to configure the software of the guns to have trigger 1 on A and trigger on Z and it s works BUT
 i can t go offscreen . As soon as i move offscreen the cross of the gun move in the upper right corner with aparently coordonates (X:173 Y:86).
I tried several times to recalibrate the gun inside the games but i still encounter the trouble.

Do you have an idea of the problem

[TacticalChaos]

I can't seem to get my positional gun to work (as in it acts like it's not there) at all with this, regardless of what Device number I put (unless it's something above 3 which I didnt try because I only have 2 "joysticks" on the gameport). No movement, no buttons. Whats the direct input thingy need to be set to in M2 config (if that has anything to do with it)? FYI i can map it (m2 can see it by itself) in the M2 controls...not that it does anything since the m2 just ignores joysticks. Yes TS2 is launching when I start the rom.

I've been waiting for something like this for awhile to play the positional gun games since for some reason the original model 2 author did not bother to allow "joystick" support. Up till now I had to use Xpadder to have the positional gun emulate a mouse. Yes that worked for one player, but was a pain in the rear. Since the deadzone had to be set to 0 you could barely hold the gun steady enough so you could move your real mouse to turn the stupid program off etc. I even had to find a second mouse to plug into the computer to calibrate BEL, then switch M2 back to whatever input was needed for the xpadder. Ya, you gotta have a lot of time on your hands to go through all that BS lol.

[Howard_Casto]

max33:  It sounds like you didn't do a complete install and/or your install is corrupted.  You mentioned that you have to map the trigger buttons to A and Z.... if ts2 was installed properly it should have added configuration files which do this for you.  So that's my first clue that something is wrong.  You can't go offscreen with the guns, this is by design due to the way that M2 works (I don't want to error the thing out).  Ignore the crosshairs though, they are incapable of moving offscreen. 

TacticalChaos:

I assure you, if you are using a usb joystick, TS2 can see it.  It's probably due to whatever device you hacked your guns into.  Did you check the "force joystick poll" box?

[TacticalChaos]

max33:  It sounds like you didn't do a complete install and/or your install is corrupted.  You mentioned that you have to map the trigger buttons to A and Z.... if ts2 was installed properly it should have added configuration files which do this for you.  So that's my first clue that something is wrong.  You can't go offscreen with the guns, this is by design due to the way that M2 works (I don't want to error the thing out).  Ignore the crosshairs though, they are incapable of moving offscreen. 

TacticalChaos:

I assure you, if you are using a usb joystick, TS2 can see it.  It's probably due to whatever device you hacked your guns into.  Did you check the "force joystick poll" box?

I turned on the "force joystick poll" and when I tried it with device ID "1" and it worked (would of expected it to be 0). Evidently I must of missed that combination before. Muy gracias (or something like that).
  FYI it's not even usb, I'm using a gameport. I thought for sure that was the problem when you mentioned usb. So it works with even non-usb stuff.

[max33]

Thanks howard
For the moment i succeed in configure the pc version of HOTD 1 - 2 - 3 , virtua cop 1 with the old version of troubleshooter using the excellent post of Cananas (thanks a lot Cananas  )
With this configuration i have to let the game with keyboard standard conf and all works out of the box.
The lone things i did was choosing in the configuration of Ts1 which gun is p1 and which is p2.

With TS2 i think i miss something especially in the second page .
Is it possible that someone post a screenshoot of the different pages in order to make a kind of tutorial, maybe like Cananas did here :

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,91588.msg966703.html#msg966703

I think it will help a lot of personn ...

Anyway i will try again and if i found i will post for the others.... but for the moment i am a little busy so ...

[TacticalChaos]

Now all you need to do is make it so the troubleshooter can flip the screen so the games can be used in cabs with mirrors :-)
FYI I don't have one but always is nice to think about and actually knowing it could be done if I did is nice.

[Howard_Casto]

max33:  It sounds like you didn't do a complete install and/or your install is corrupted.  You mentioned that you have to map the trigger buttons to A and Z.... if ts2 was installed properly it should have added configuration files which do this for you.  So that's my first clue that something is wrong.  You can't go offscreen with the guns, this is by design due to the way that M2 works (I don't want to error the thing out).  Ignore the crosshairs though, they are incapable of moving offscreen. 

TacticalChaos:

I assure you, if you are using a usb joystick, TS2 can see it.  It's probably due to whatever device you hacked your guns into.  Did you check the "force joystick poll" box?

I turned on the "force joystick poll" and when I tried it with device ID "1" and it worked (would of expected it to be 0). Evidently I must of missed that combination before. Muy gracias (or something like that).
  FYI it's not even usb, I'm using a gameport. I thought for sure that was the problem when you mentioned usb. So it works with even non-usb stuff.

Glad to hear it.  Gameports officially aren't supported because direct input has been sketchy about non-usb stuff for years now.  I would think about re-doing my hack for future proofing.  It's the reason I added the "force joystick poll" check box btw. 

max33:  No tutorials yet because the program is still in flux.  The next version will probably require you to re-do your setup unfortunately. 

[Connorsdad]

how do I download this ?

The link http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/simplephp/ccount/click.php?id=61 doesnt work

[Howard_Casto]

There's something wrong with the server.... please be patient. 

[Howard_Casto]

The links have been fixed, so give it a try now. 

Something screwy happened my my php link system... I contacted Saint to see if it was a server thing but regardless, things should be fixed now. 

[Connorsdad]

Not sure If I'm a numpty here but how do I use this ?

Have trouble shooter launch game (Check)
GameEXE (Check)
EXEpath (Check)

What do I do now ?

[Connorsdad]

Anybody ?

I'm trying to get it to work with HOD3 on pc.

[Runzelblunze]

Hi!

Thank you so much for your work. I was so disappointed when nothing worked after I finally decided to buy my guns but thanks to you, I'm making steady progress.
I also had trouble with the dx8vb.dll on my Win 7 Home Premium 64Bit but putting it into sysWOW64 before using regsvr did the trick.

Now I have both Aimtraks moving correctly on model 2, but only the trigger of one gun works. I set both guns to "left click" on screen and "right click" off screen in the aimtrak config.
In Windows and Mame they both work like they should.
The Troubleshooter debug window also shows Trigger and Reload for both guns but the f2 menu's button test option and the games don't recognize the second gun's trigger.
Ah, also The first gun controls player two (in Model 2 and in the debug window) and the second gun controls player one. That's not a problem for me but it might be related to the issue...

Did anyone have the same problem?

edit:
just remembered: in the emulator.ini the id's of both guns are 5 and rawInput is enabled

edit 2:
I just found out what's wrong: my German keyboard is. In Germany, the y and z keys are swapped so for me, the second trigger is the wrong key... But I have no idea what I can do about it -.-
If I press the y key on the keyboard, the trigger works just fine... I think I'll just have to change the key somehow...

edit3:
Yes, that really was all. I changed my default language to English, now it's working :-)
I think that might be the reason why I got the guns so cheap in the first place ^^
Anyway, thanks again for that awesome piece of software

[intealls]

Have had some problems getting everything to work right with M2, but now it does, and it is sooo sweet (dual-wielding VC2 is pure bliss). Thanks _alot_ for your hard work!

I don't know if this is mentioned previously in the thread, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up when starting from a fresh M2 installation. Create the CFG directory in the M2 folder before using the TS2 M2 setup helper! Otherwise the process will fail (path not found run-time error) and trigger/reload will not function properly.

Again, thanks for this great app!

[LeSpank]

Hi , I'm a new user and I have set up TroubleShooter2 to work with the model 2 emulator. I'm after some help if anyone would be so kind!

The emulator and rom load fine (I'm testing with Virtua Cop). I can aim accurately with the gun but the problem is shooting and reloading.

I believe TS2 wants me to register shoot and reload as buttons on the gun but since installing TS2 the Aimtrak config program no longer works! This is the message I get upon launching AimTrak v1.9 in Windows 8. Just to reitterate I never had this problem before I started using TS2:



The end result is that I can only use the gun in the default config i.e. On screen = Left mouse and Off screen = right mouse.

So, anyone know what might be going on? I have already tried uninstalling AimTrak 1.9 and reinstalling.

Many thanks,
Chris

[LeSpank]

OK... my message above can be safely ignored.

Everything is working fine now, for some reason I had to delete my AimTrak drivers and start again from scratch. No idea what caused this but at least it is fixed.

Now using Troubleshooter 2 as intended and it is fantastic - many thanks!

[majorspawn]

Hi Guys,


2 x aimtrak lightguns
using troubleshooter2 TS2.exe to launch model 2 emu working 100% awesome!
guns setup as: (with mouse buttons,)
Aimtrak device 1 (working as 0 in ts2)
Aimtrak device 2 (working as 1 in ts2)

I can run sega model 2 emulator hotd, vcop etc with both guns and no problems

i  CAN'T get hotd3 pc to launch via TS2 or get detected by ts2? default game directories.

Do you need a "specific" release of hotd3?? if so what is it?
there is a mention of a regedit entry that allows the hotd3 to run direct without the launcher? is this true?
the game exists in the correct directory below
C:\Program Files (x86)\SEGA\THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD3_EU\exe\hotd3pc.exe
TS2 points to the launcher file as default pre configured, should it point to the game exe file above instead? i have tried this... didnt work
i have tried the patched version of the exe that allows no-cd, this still doesnt work.
any suggestions or ideas from anyone that got this working?

any feedback or assistance would be really appreciated

[Connorsdad]

I couldn't get this to work either, got no response so think maybe it just doesn't work with pc HOD3.

[majorspawn]

I couldn't get this to work either, got no response so think maybe it just doesn't work with pc HOD3.

im sure someone would have gotten this to work, its like the last thing that i need to setup on my new cabinet and its killing me! (bit of a perfectionist by nature)

im totally clueless on how to get this working at all with hotd3

[Connorsdad]

I couldn't get this to work either, got no response so think maybe it just doesn't work with pc HOD3.

im sure someone would have gotten this to work, its like the last thing that i need to setup on my new cabinet and its killing me! (bit of a perfectionist by nature)

im totally clueless on how to get this working at all with hotd3

Did you manage to get this working ?

Sent from Amstrad CPC464

[majorspawn]

Hi Guys,

HOTD3 and 2 PC versions work fine with the original troubleshooter app and dual aimtraks. I also have troubleshooter installed and used exclusively for m2 emulator

the problem that i found is that sometimes the m2m aimtrak assignment stops and one of the guys stop working, i then need to go back to the settings and manually try a different device id and test. This happens randomly without unplugging or adding any other mouse devices that might result in the device id changes.

[Connorsdad]

Hi Guys,

HOTD3 and 2 PC versions work fine with the original troubleshooter app and dual aimtraks. I also have troubleshooter installed and used exclusively for m2 emulator

the problem that i found is that sometimes the m2m aimtrak assignment stops and one of the guys stop working, i then need to go back to the settings and manually try a different device id and test. This happens randomly without unplugging or adding any other mouse devices that might result in the device id changes.

How did you get it to work with TS1?
Could you tell me what steps you took please, I've spent an age trying to get it to work. As for the device id changing, I'm having the same problem, changes every time I switch the pc off/on even though nothing is getting unplugged/plugged in. I have posted here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,133787.0.html hopefully someone can help us.

Update
Take a look here majorspawn http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,64859.msg651260/topicseen.html#msg65126 may help, I'm at work so haven't tried it yet.

Update2
So this didn't help me, still looking for a solution

[Connorsdad]

Could someone tell me how I get this app to work with a pc game please?
Utter noob I know but I take it I need to issue a cli command of some sort   

Thanks

[ant2]

Hotd3 works off ts1. I didnt do anything special to get this working. It just worked with no customisation the same as virtua cops snd hotd2

[Connorsdad]

I can't get it to work with TS1 or TS2.

Sent from Amstrad CPC464

[Runzelblunze]

I'm trying to get TS2 1.2 to work on my new 64Bit Windows 8 computer.
I get the same 429 error as I got on my Windows 7 machine, but when I try to fix it by means of "regsvr32 c:\windows\syswow64\dx8vb.dll" I get a message like


The module "c:\Windows\syswow64\dx8vb.dll" was loaded but the call "DllRegisterServer" failed with error code 0x80070005.

Further information is available online

If I try to register it without providing the full path or in windows\system\ I get "file not found"
Has anyone got it to work on Windows 8 x64?

EDIT: So awesome! As soon as I post something, I'll find the answer myself:
you need to run regsvr32 as administrator. Just open cmd as administrator and run it from there - done ^^

[BadMouth]

EDIT: So awesome! As soon as I post something, I'll find the answer myself

That's why we regulars don't always bother answering right away. 

Thanks for updating your post with the solution for other people who might have the same issue. 

[Connorsdad]

Can somebody please give me some advice on how to use this with pc games?

I have it working with model 2 emulator perfectly but I don't understand how to get it to work with pc games at all. Ticking the box "Have Troubleshooter launch game" doesn't do anything, if I launch the game myself, troubleshooter doesn't launch too which surely it needs to. I'm trying to get Remington Super Slam Hunting Africa to work as player 2 uses joystick for controls so my thinking is in ts2, set player 2 gun settings to joystick and it should work, right?

I gave up trying to get hod3 to work 

[BadMouth]

Can somebody please give me some advice on how to use this with pc games?

I have it working with model 2 emulator perfectly but I don't understand how to get it to work with pc games at all. Ticking the box "Have Troubleshooter launch game" doesn't do anything, if I launch the game myself, troubleshooter doesn't launch too which surely it needs to. I'm trying to get Remington Super Slam Hunting Africa to work as player 2 uses joystick for controls so my thinking is in ts2, set player 2 gun settings to joystick and it should work, right?

I gave up trying to get hod3 to work 

It doesn't work on all games, only the ones on the supported games list.
http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/static.php?page=aboutTS2

[MydknyteStyrm]

I'm having a bit of trouble setting this up. Few questions.

1) Do I unzip TS1.2 into the same folder as my Model2 emulator?
2) On the GUI, I chose to have Save as Default as my option with all of my gun games, rather than each one separately. Is that wrong?
3) My Aimtrak's ID is #1, yet when I load up HOTD, I dont get a cursor or fireable sound.
4) Am I supposed to copy any of the files from the TS2 file tree to my Model 2 tree?
5) I don't have a second gun at the moment, but have the mouse as player 2. What is the setup I'm supposed to have on Page 2 of TS2?

Thanks for any information you can provide.

[BadMouth]

I'm having a bit of trouble setting this up. Few questions.

1) Do I unzip TS1.2 into the same folder as my Model2 emulator?
2) On the GUI, I chose to have Save as Default as my option with all of my gun games, rather than each one separately. Is that wrong?
3) My Aimtrak's ID is #1, yet when I load up HOTD, I dont get a cursor or fireable sound.
4) Am I supposed to copy any of the files from the TS2 file tree to my Model 2 tree?
5) I don't have a second gun at the moment, but have the mouse as player 2. What is the setup I'm supposed to have on Page 2 of TS2?

Thanks for any information you can provide.

It's been a long time since I messed with it, but I'll give it a shot:

1 - If you want, but it isn't necessary.  This is covered in the instructions in the Readme file
2 - Are you talking about Model 2 or PC games?  Probably ok with Model 2, probably not with PC games.
3 - Are you talking about Model 2 or PC game?
4 - No, TS2 will copy the needed files to your model 2 folder after you specify the path.
5 - You'd have the device ID of the mouse as Player 2.  You might have to test a few to find the right one.

[MydknyteStyrm]

Thanks for the info. To elaborate:
Its all Model 2, not PC games

Im also having the issue of a Troubleshooter2 RunTime error 76, path not found, when I start up the emulator.exe. I cant imagine why

[mitsurugi]

Hi. Thanks for your wonderful program!
I want to remap coin and start buttons y model 2 emu to aimtraks buttons. Could it be possible?
Thanks.

[BadMouth]

Thanks for the info. To elaborate:
Its all Model 2, not PC games

Im also having the issue of a Troubleshooter2 RunTime error 76, path not found, when I start up the emulator.exe. I cant imagine why

Bit late, but it probably didn't install correctly because there wasn't a cfg folder in your m2emulator folder for it to place the needed files.
See pg1 of this thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,130784.msg1339736.html#msg1339736

[mitsurugi]

When i try to remap keyboard buttons: change some keyboard code, click save as default config in the Troubleshooter 2 aplication and close, but when i open again it returns to original configuration in keyboard buttons.
When i try to remap coin and start buttons in setting page 2 and assing numbers, the aimtrak buttons don't do anything... Where could be the problem?
Dual aimtraks guns move, shoot and reload fine in model 2 games.

[RedTail]

Hi, I'm trying to get TS2 to work with Virtual-On. I set it up to work with just outputs. Made sure to manually add "cfg" folder on setup. I was getting error 429 when trying to run VO through m2emulator.exe, but I followed the instructions here and installed dx8vb.dll in SysWOW64 through command prompt run in administrator mode. Now I'm getting error 13 after launching VO. Also, I believe TS2 is supposed to launch upon running m2emulator.exe, but it never does. If I run TS2 itself and try to do the setup for VO, I get error 9. I'm not really sure what to do at this point.

[mitsurugi]

I have configurated Troubleshooter 2 and works fine with model 2 emu, but when i launch the roms in mala frontend, lightguns (aimtrak) doesn't respond...

[RedTail]

Anyone?

[Homietheclown]

Troubleshooter 2 had a special section in the readme for this particular game. Did you read that part?

[GreatLamer]

I tried with EMS Topgun IIs. TS1 works with hotd3, model2emu. The TS 2 not working... M2 cursor shows in the corner, and don't register any moves or shots.

[romshark]

I spent a while getting this to work. I actually got it running with my older installation, but not a clean install. I'm not sure why, probably need to check the settings.

Surprisingly, Version 1.1a of Model 2 was just released. I tried to get TS2 working with that first, but to no avail. HoTD crashes after initializing sound drivers, and other games like Gunblade NY (or whatever it is) don't seem to recognize the guns at all. I'm thinking enough changed in the code that screws up the TS2 program. Anyone else got 1.1a working with LS2, and I've just got something wrong with my installation?

Running Windows 7 Home Edition with 2 Aimtrack guns.

[BadMouth]

Anyone else got 1.1a working with LS2, and I've just got something wrong with my installation?

It only works with v1.0

[romshark]

Ok. I don't really see much difference when running 1.1a anyway. So I'm not in a hurry to get Troubleshooter working with it.

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry guys, I've been in Mortal Kombat 9 land.... I'm slowly starting to awaken from my slumber. 

The reason it doesn't work in 1.1a is because I'm hacking memory locations directly and obviously if the program is changed those locations can be changed.  I spent literally months finding the current locations, so I'm not real excited about doing it all over again.  Fortunately many of the games share the same locations, so if somebody wants to fire up cheat engine and search, perhaps using the current ini files as a guide, the program can be updated for use with 1.1a.  I've actually decided to go ahead and work on ts2 and mamehooker again. 

It's been too long between releases, particularly with mamehooker and it's getting to the point to where my gaps on working on them are so great that I'm forgetting what is left to do.  I need to scale my scope back and get these out there and the yet unannounced "big" features can wait until I take an interest again. 

[Howard_Casto]

*Update*

I just wanted to see how difficult it would be... not terribly, but still difficult. 

I got the input and output addresses for bel and gunblade in about 15 minutes.  This is because the existing ini files tell me the bit-masking (what the value is when the output is on) and the relative position of the addresses from one another. 

So a quick scan looking for the known values with each game should do it for the inputs and outputs.  It's time consuming, but not that bad. 

The NOP entries will be the hard ones.  We aren't changing variables there, but rather assembly code.  The only way I know to do it is to run the old version of m2emulator, use the "browse this memory region" option in cheat engine to find out the raw assembly bytes... write those down and then fire up the new version of the emulator and look for the same bytes. 

And that's just for the ones without pointers... the pointer ones might will have to be walked back to find the first pointer... which is a pain in the butt. 
If any memory hackers want to volunteer let me know.

[cack01]

Hey HC

Happy to see you tackling this again.  I thought I read somewhere that ElSemi recently passed the source for Model2 over to Haze at mamedev/mameworld.

I am not a programmer, but I bet if you get your hand on that code it might be able to simplify your searching for that haystack needle. 

[kaskd]

Another user needing help here.  I'm having trouble getting the guns to register movement with Model 2. (Each gun worked in Model 2 before using TS2, obviously not at the same time)

When I enter the setup menu in the games (like vcop2) trigger presses register, however the game registers no movement from the guns.  This leaves the crosshairs being stuck in the top left corner upon game loading then disappearing after a few seconds.

Using the RawTest file Howard posted in Page 1, I can get both guns to move the red square, but never the blue square.  Could this be somehow related to my problem?  Both guns are assigned unique IDs within the Aimtrak Utility and work with mame as separate guns.  I've also assigned the guns in the TS2.exe file to the numbers that work in the RawTest file.

I've tried calibrating the guns in each model 2 game, but since no movement is being registered it ends up being fruitless.  I'm not getting any install/run dialogue errors the previous people are posting.  I've started over and used a clean installation of model 2 v1.0, still no dice.  Any ideas?  I hate to have to give up on using 2 guns.

Edit:  I checked the TS2 program in the bottom right corner while model 2 was running and both guns are registering movements and trigger presses.  TS2 is working, why isn't it Model 2 picking up on what TS2 is picking up?  The crosshairs don't move in Model 2 and after calibrating the gun shoots in the same spot repeatedly. 

Edit 2:  I started from scratch, new windows, new install, new everything.  It works now.  Unsure what I was doing wrong previously, but it's fixed and I'm a happy camper.  Big thanks to Howard_Casto and all the others who worked on this wonderful tool!  Reading through this thread and the original RamjetR thread, I can't thank you enough for the work you guys put in.

[The Big Man]

Hey Howard! I seem to have an issue that no-one else has came across. For the most part my model2/Troubleshooter2/aimtrak setup works pretty well(no light gun game issues) except for 3 individual games, when I launch Sega Rally Championship and Virtual Fighter 2 I get a Run time error 13 type mismatch and the troubleshooter app crashes, this obviously doesn't effect the running off the game but it causes an ugly error box and wont allow me to exit with the escape key as Troubleshooter isn't running. Also when I run Virtual Striker it launches fine with no error but again wont exit with the escape key as Troubleshooter doesn't appear to be running.

Edit: If I run the TS2 configuration itself Virtual Striker doesn't appear in the drop down list Of available games, also there is one titled TRBLSHTR and if I highlight it the app crashes with the same Run-Time error 13.

[ArcadeBliss]

nice to see that you are looking at this again. If you need someone to test the miceid identification changes just let me know. I am not hell bend on moving from ver. 1.0 it just works.

Cheers

Sorry guys, I've been in Mortal Kombat 9 land.... I'm slowly starting to awaken from my slumber. 

The reason it doesn't work in 1.1a is because I'm hacking memory locations directly and obviously if the program is changed those locations can be changed.  I spent literally months finding the current locations, so I'm not real excited about doing it all over again.  Fortunately many of the games share the same locations, so if somebody wants to fire up cheat engine and search, perhaps using the current ini files as a guide, the program can be updated for use with 1.1a.  I've actually decided to go ahead and work on ts2 and mamehooker again. 

It's been too long between releases, particularly with mamehooker and it's getting to the point to where my gaps on working on them are so great that I'm forgetting what is left to do.  I need to scale my scope back and get these out there and the yet unannounced "big" features can wait until I take an interest again.

[MydknyteStyrm]

Hi guys,

Okay, this has me completely baffled. I tried for about 4 hours to make this work with two guns for Virtua Cop, and nothing seems to take.

Im using Model2 v1.0, not 1.1a. I tried it with both versions and same issues.

I installed everything correctly, CFG folders, dll's, etc. and here's what my problems are.

According to controllerRemap, my guns are on ID=0 and ID=2, although the Aimtrak utility I have them set to device 2 and 3. Confusing.
In the Emulator.ini, RawInput is at 1, and there is RawP1=5, and RawP2=5. I tried to change these to match the ID's of my guns from Windows (0/2).
In the TS config, I've tried to set them at 0 and 2, then 1 and 3, and so forth.
Also, TS is causing games like Bel and HOTD to crash, but not vcop.

If someone can give me a better idea of what I should or shouldnt be doing I would appreciate it. I have clean installed Model 2 and Troubleshooter well over 10 times.
When I run a game, I right click on the TS2 icon in the taskbar. It shows both guns moving and clicking away no problem.
When I load up Vcop, I cant even get crosshairs to move on the screen. Sometimes I can see one crosshair when I move my mouse.
I also have a Logitech gamepad in a port, and I believe it's deviceID=1

Should I be changing the Raw input in the Emulator.ini file? Should I turn it off to calibrate the guns in-game? The game always registers a trigger when I check out the Input in the service menu, but I cant see crosshairs nor calibrate the guns correctly.

Please please please help. I've spent more time on this emulator than Demul and Mame combined.
   

[MydknyteStyrm]

Ok ignore me. I was using 1.1a. I downloaded 1.0 from the site, but it turns out their links all go to 1.1a. Just ignore the ravings of a lunatic mind. Everything is kosher now on 1.0

[ericitaquera]

Thanks for this software. It´s much better to play with a friend than forever alone.

[gamer83]

Hey guys,just wondering if someone could help me out getting troubleshooter 2 to work with pc games.I can get it working perfectly with model 2,but i cant it to work with any pc games.i click the setting in the setting in the app ts2 gui to launch game and set the exe directory but it still wont work.namely im trying to get house of the dead 2 pc going.and yes i already set the controls to keyboard in the config util.can someone please explain how to get ts2 working with pc games .or should i just try ts1 for pc games?

[ArcadeBliss]

Howard,

would you mind releasing this Version with the miceID strings? If you do not want a wide release, I could test this version privately to ensure unpluging mice and reboots do not affect the gun chosen.

Cheers.

Hooked up devicestrings for the mice as well.  Now I need to get back to the scripting that I was originally working on.

[Psymaniac]

Hey Howard, i found out that if i play with german keyboard layout, it is not possible to trigger correctly. if i switch keyboard layout to U.S. then everything is fine. Is there any possibity to fix that in an ini file?

[Vigo]

Just a fair warning, Howard will probably not get back to you anytime soon. He abruptly quit this forum a few months back. No idea when he will decide to come back here.

[Psymaniac]

hey vigo,

thanks for your reply. I finally found out how to fix this issue.

Now everything is working fine. The good thing is that from the beginning when i tried to get TS2 to work - i had all the problems that were mentioned in this thread.

I'll look forward to give a complete tutorial in this forum and maybe on hyperspin-fe.

It's fairly hard to understand whats going on if you don't read this thread over and over again.

:-)

[Vigo]

Glad to hear it.  Look forward to your tutorial!

[Psymaniac]

is there any section for tutorials on this board? im new here :-)
we just finished our first arcade cab

[Vigo]

Nothing dedicated to tutorials, so I would just keep it in the software section.

Oh, and welcome aboard! Feel free to start a project thread for your cabinet as well. 

[Psymaniac]

Ok thank you.

Yes maybe i will do that. But this is only our prototype. It's clearly rough and we used cheap parts and old stuff we had at home.

Our next project will be more professional .

Here in germany these things are very unusual....

By the way...

Did anybody find out a way to modify the mice id#s after rebooting the system?
If not i could try to write a little tool for that which will look for the hardware id and write down the correct id number in the ts2 ini file after rebooting the system...

[PL1]

is there any section for tutorials on this board? im new here :-)

Please consider cross-posting your tutorial to the wiki, too.

That way it's easy for someone else who might want to update or improve it after you finish working on it.

LMK if you want a wiki login.


Scott

[TimeCrisis]

Howard_Casto you mentioned you were able to change some functionality in HOTD 1 with LUA scripts.

Would it be possible for you to add reloading without having to shoot outside of the screen, but instead just move the mouse pointer outside of the screen, this would mimic house of the dead 2 in the arcade.

[BadMouth]

Howard_Casto you mentioned you were able to change some functionality in HOTD 1 with LUA scripts.

Would it be possible for you to add reloading without having to shoot outside of the screen, but instead just move the mouse pointer outside of the screen, this would mimic house of the dead 2 in the arcade.

Just a fair warning, Howard will probably not get back to you anytime soon. He abruptly quit this forum a few months back. No idea when he will decide to come back here.

[ParkerLewis]

For information, I have made a quick guide to use TS2_1.2 with PC games :

===> SETUP GUIDE FOR DUAL IR GUNS WITH TS2 <===

edit : since the forum hosting the tutorial is now readable by members only, I will post a copy directly here, as I want this info as easily accessible as possible (I had so much trouble with it, I'd just wish I'd easily found such a tutorial).

Guide for Dual AimTrak guns with "TS2" (the dragonking one)

This assumes you have each of your AimTraks already calibrated "as usual" (ie each one can correctly control the mouse on the Windows desktop). Don't forget to set them up to two different Device ID's (usually you'd choose 1 and 2) in the AimTrak software.
Also make sure your PC game is configured to use keyboard inputs only, as it is required by all existing solutions (be it either "TS2" or the original TS) to the problem at hand.

Last quick note : if you end up using xpadder like me (which I totally recommend, ended up being quite easy, made everything far better for controls, and also means I never have to change them around in the slow / unstable AimTrak software again), then I also recommend, in the AimTrak software, setting up your controls so as to maximize "activable" buttons. For example :

TRIGGER : Mouse Left when onscreen, Mouse Right when offscreen
LEFT : GP Button 1 when onscreen, GP Button 2 when offscreen
RIGHT : GP Button 3 when onscreen, GP Button 4 when offscreen

And then never change it again.

Xpadder will allow you to redirect several Buttons to the same key anyway if you don't want onscreen/offscreen to matter, so definitely have them set up this way. For games where you'll want it to matter, you'll be able to use them for different purposes, and for games where you don't want it to matter, you'll be able to use them this way too []

That's it, let's go for the actual guide.

Installation of TS2

1) Get "TS2_1.2.zip" from http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/static.php?page=aboutTS2
2) Unzip it anywhere. I unzipped it in a TS2 folder in my Games folder.
3) Check that you have "dx8vb.dll" somewhere on your computer (expected in your C:\Windows\System32 or C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder). If you don't, just Google for it and get a copy of it. Then put it in C:\Windows\SysWOW64 (if you're running a 64 bit Windows), C:\Windows\System32 otherwise. Then go to Start->Run and type the following command :

Code: [Select]

regsvr32 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dx8vb.dll(of course adapt the path to C:\Windows\System32 if you have a 32bit Windows)
Windows should acknowledge.

Configuration of TS2

At this point, the Read Me provided with TS2 should be enough to guide you, but I'll clarify a few points.

4) Launch TS2.exe. This is the configuration interface. On Page 1, Select the game you want to configure from the list. Be careful to select the correct version. Note the game's name 'shortcut' (indicated between parentheses in the drop menu), as you'll need it later in the Playing section of this guide.

5) On Page 1:
- If you're not planning to use MAME (for example because you've selected a PC game), you can untick the Send outputs to MameHooker option. For HotD 3 PC, I had everything unchecked on Page 1 and all went well.
- The "Game Exe" field is critical. You shouldn't have to edit it. If you have to edit it, this probably means the version of the game you have does not match what is expected by TS2.
- The "Exe Path" information is useful only if you want TS2 to launch the game for you. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. Since you'll most probably be using a .bat file to automate the few steps required for playing anyway (see .bat provided in the "Bonus" section of this guide [] ), there's not really any point selecting it.
- You shouldn't have to edit Keyboard Input, unless you want to change your game's default Keyboard controls. Which you shouldnt need since in the end all of this is being done so that you can play with your gun and not a Keyboard... !

Don't forget to save when you are done. BEWARE, don't "Save as Default", as it will erase the default exe information for all games (which would be annoying).

6) On Page 2 :

- Lightgun/IR Gun (Mouse Based) is what I have selected for both Gun Settings. This is also the default setting selected in the AimTrak software ("Emulate Mouse"). They should match if you want to things to work. I'd advise keeping this setting both here in TS2 and in the AimTrak software.

- Device #: here you have to 'guess' which device number is each of the guns. Honestly, it's actually not difficult. Usually you'll be in a configuration with 3 mice : your regular actual mouse, and the guns (even though the menu goes up to 16 or something). Thus all chances are your guns will be among 0/1/2. In my case, they were devices 2 and 1.
The nice thing with TS2 is that you will have an easy way to check things are ok and pinpoint potential issues to quickly solve them (more on that later).

- Buttons :

I have 0 for both players' Trigger, and 1 for both players' Reload. The other buttons are of less importance, you can bother configuring them if you want, in any case you now know how to do so if you want. Note that regular keyboard presses continue to work, so even if you keep "NONE" selected, you'll always be able to push start and/or give coins by using your physical keyboard.
[Basically I figure that (if configured that way) the AimTrak Software assigns your physical trigger to "Mouse Left" command, which is command 0 for a mouse ("Mouse Right" being command 1). Then here, TS2 is being told that when it sees a "0" command, it should interpret it as a physical trigger pull from the player, which TS2 will then automatically / invisibly adapt to the keyboard input matching the game's controls as indicated in Page 1 (which by default are filled with the selected game's default controls, so you don't have to edit it).]

Unfortunately, only triggers have been actually working this way for me, and I have still to find a way for TS2 to retrieve inputs from other buttons by itself (between TS2 settings and AimTrak settings, I have tried pretty much every combination possible, just wouldn't work).

So, I ended up using the well-known program "xpadder" which allows easily setting up controls profiles for each device and game (plus at the end of this guide is a bonus section to automate profile selections for each of your games so that you only have to do it once per game). I recommend you do the same. I had never used that program before and it was quite intuitive. Don't worry about xpadder profiles management, you'll only have to create them once, because for day-to-day usage I have provided a .bat template below (Bonus section [] ) that will do all the switching automatically for you.

- Finally, don't forget to Enable both Player Controls.

Then Save.

You should now be done with configuring your game ! Yay ! [] You shouldn't have to do this ever again for this game and you can now close the TS2 window.

Playing your game (step-by-step explanation)

This is a manual, step-by-step explanation of what needs to be done for launching the game with everything in place. This need to be done everytime you want to play your game. In practice, all of these steps can be done automatically by simply executing a .bat file like the one I provided in the next "Bonus" section. Still, you can take a few minutes reading this section as it will give you better understanding of what's going on in case you encounter an issue.

0) Don't forget selecting your game's xpadder profile for both guns.

1) You have to issue a DOS command to tell TS2 to listen for your game's exe being launched. For that you need to know the adequate name 'shortcut' for your game. The game's shortcut is indicated between parentheses in the drop menu from Page 1 Settings (example for HotD 3 is hotd3). To issue the DOS command, Start->Run, then type (example for my TS2 folder path and for HotD3)

Code: [Select]

start "" "D:\Jeux\TS2\TS2.exe" hotd3
At this point you should see a TS2 icon in your taskbar. If not, or if it disappears when you mouse over it, then something is not right. If you get a 429 error, this means you're missing a dll (usually the dx8vb.dll from earlier, so if you installed it like instructed you shouldn't have that problem).

On the other hand, if you have the TS2 icon showing up, try double clicking on it. A small window should appear, saying something like

Code: [Select]

Status: Waiting for The House of the Dead 3and indicating "Player1:" and "Player2:".

2) If that is indeed the case, you can now launch your game and everything should work as expected []

In case it doesn't, try to run your game in Windowed mode, so that you are able to see the previous TS2 window at the same time you're playing and moving your guns (or put the TS2 window on a second screen). The TS2 window should display

Code: [Select]

Hooked: The House of the Dead 3 and position + command (trigger, reload, start, coin) information for each device. This will allow you to check that, for example, maybe you have set a wrong Device ID in the TS2 configuration. It will also briefly show registered commands (ie if you pull the trigger, the number "1" should quickly flicker in front of the line named this way). In all cases, this should help you greatly in identifying and solving any problems.

Bonus : DOS script to automate playing a game

As a bonus, here is the .bat template I'm now using to autolaunch any game with dual AimTraks. Of course, you'd have to edit the relevant parts with your path, game and xpadder profiles information, and put the resulting .bat file where the game's exe is. So you end up with one adequate .bat file in each of your game's folders, and you can just edit your usual game shortcuts or create new ones to point to the .bat instead of the .exe so that everything is now completely transparent to the user.

Code: [Select]

@REM ! START uses first quoted string as window name and NOT the path
@REM ! thus the need to add "" before the path if it is behind quotes.

@REM ! Launches xpadder with appropriated config for each gun
start "" "D:\Jeux\Xpadder\xpadder.exe" /M "HOTD 3 P1.xpadderprofile" "HOTD 3 P2.xpadderprofile"

@REM ! TS2 in listen mode...
start "" "D:\Jeux\TS2\TS2.exe" hotd3

@REM ! A short pause seems necessary after calling TS2
TIMEOUT /t 1

@REM ! Launches the game exe
start "" "hod3launch.exe"

Voilà, I hope this can help someone sometime

[milhouse]

Has anyone seen an issue with TS2 not using the correct mouse device?  I am having a weird issue that is driving me nuts.

I have 4 active mice devices:
1. Keyboard Trackball
2. OptiPac Trackball/Spinner
3. AimTrak #1
4. AimTrack #1

But in device manager, I have 7 HID-Compliant Mouse entries.
Using Controller Remap, I think I was able to connect them:
   1.  'HID#VID_04B4_PID_0201_MI_00#9_869de7c_0_0000#' <- Trackball/Spinner
   2.  'HID#VID_04B4_PID_0201_MI_01#9_2c411c3e_0_0000#' <- Unknown Device
   3.  'HID#VID_0A91_PID_3801_MI_01_Col04#7_55cbfae_0_0003#' <- nMediaPC Trackball
   4.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_0501_MI_01#7_126ec518_0_0000#' <- Unknown Device
   5.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_0502_MI_01#8_24588317_0_0000#' <- Unknown Device
   6.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_1601_MI_02#7_6f69e7b_0_0000#' <- AimTrak 1
   7.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_1602_MI_02#7_23fea4a1_0_0000#' <- AimTrak 2

The problem I am hving with TS2 is that I can get it to work great for a while (a game or two), but then if I try to switch to HOTD2 from HOTD3 (or really any other lightgun game), it randomly stops working (in game, no mouse movement or triggers etc.).  I suspect it has to do with the above and is trying to use the wrong mouse device sometimes (but not all the time).  With Troubleshooter 1 its not an issue (when I had it working) because it assigns the mouse based on the HID, but TS2 does not.  SO my questions are:
Has anyone else had this issue?
Has anyone else solved this (in any related context)?
And does anyone know of any utilities to force Windows to be assigned in the same order every time? I think there are utilities for joysticks, but I'm not aware of any for mice.   

Thanks.

[trick72]

Hi,
I'm trying to get Model 2 emulator to work with Troubleshooter 2 (shoot harder).
It seems this only works with M2 Emulator version 1.0
The current version is 1.1a, but I cannot find the older version 1.0 anymore for download.

Does anybody know where I could find version 1.0 to try to make that work with TS2 and 2 guns?
Thanks

[BullClip]

Hi,
I'm trying to get Model 2 emulator to work with Troubleshooter 2 (shoot harder).
It seems this only works with M2 Emulator version 1.0
The current version is 1.1a, but I cannot find the older version 1.0 anymore for download.

Does anybody know where I could find version 1.0 to try to make that work with TS2 and 2 guns?
Thanks

Ditto on request for 1.0..  Anyone have a link?

[andrewsgxs]

I am running Windows 7 64-bit. Found a little bit of time this evening.  I made a function to enumerate all the joystick names and their instance serials as well as a function to find a joystick via a name/instance string. 

I'll try to go ahead and do the mice as well as Android recovery.  Apparently I can get the real name of the mouse by reading the registry.... I'm not 100% sure that it's worth the effort, but I might go ahead and do that just so that mice instances look like the di ones.  It might be possible to actually use direct input just for the enumeration, but I'll have to confirm that di enumerates in the same order as raw devices does.

[ArcadeBliss]

Has anyone seen an issue with TS2 not using the correct mouse device?  I am having a weird issue that is driving me nuts.

I have 4 active mice devices:
1. Keyboard Trackball
2. OptiPac Trackball/Spinner
3. AimTrak #1
4. AimTrack #1

But in device manager, I have 7 HID-Compliant Mouse entries.
Using Controller Remap, I think I was able to connect them:
   1.  'HID#VID_04B4_PID_0201_MI_00#9_869de7c_0_0000#' <- Trackball/Spinner
   2.  'HID#VID_04B4_PID_0201_MI_01#9_2c411c3e_0_0000#' <- Unknown Device
   3.  'HID#VID_0A91_PID_3801_MI_01_Col04#7_55cbfae_0_0003#' <- nMediaPC Trackball
   4.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_0501_MI_01#7_126ec518_0_0000#' <- Unknown Device
   5.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_0502_MI_01#8_24588317_0_0000#' <- Unknown Device
   6.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_1601_MI_02#7_6f69e7b_0_0000#' <- AimTrak 1
   7.  'HID#VID_D209_PID_1602_MI_02#7_23fea4a1_0_0000#' <- AimTrak 2

The problem I am hving with TS2 is that I can get it to work great for a while (a game or two), but then if I try to switch to HOTD2 from HOTD3 (or really any other lightgun game), it randomly stops working (in game, no mouse movement or triggers etc.).  I suspect it has to do with the above and is trying to use the wrong mouse device sometimes (but not all the time).  With Troubleshooter 1 its not an issue (when I had it working) because it assigns the mouse based on the HID, but TS2 does not.  SO my questions are:
Has anyone else had this issue?
Has anyone else solved this (in any related context)?
And does anyone know of any utilities to force Windows to be assigned in the same order every time? I think there are utilities for joysticks, but I'm not aware of any for mice.   

Thanks.

Yes I have this problem. Howard was working on this before he left. My knowledge of lua is not enough to solve this problem unfortunately  .

[ArcadeBliss]

I am running Windows 7 64-bit. Found a little bit of time this evening.  I made a function to enumerate all the joystick names and their instance serials as well as a function to find a joystick via a name/instance string. 

I'll try to go ahead and do the mice as well as Android recovery.  Apparently I can get the real name of the mouse by reading the registry.... I'm not 100% sure that it's worth the effort, but I might go ahead and do that just so that mice instances look like the di ones.  It might be possible to actually use direct input just for the enumeration, but I'll have to confirm that di enumerates in the same order as raw devices does.

Because I have hot swapable USB Panels, it would be great if you could choose the direct input name and the tool would automatically find the corresponding enumaration. This would solve the usb hot swap problem. Let me know if you need a tester.

[ericitaquera]

I use devcon.

https://support.microsoft.com/pt-br/kb/311272

The below lists all devices.

h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon hwids =mouse
h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon status =mouse

So I disable all devices but my two aimtraks before to start emulator_multicpu.exe

h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon disable "HID\VID_D209&PID_15A2"
h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon disable "HID\VID_04F3&PID_0230"

After I quit the emulator, I reenable my mouse and touchpad.

h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon enable "HID\VID_D209&PID_15A2"
h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon enable "HID\VID_04F3&PID_0230"

[ArcadeBliss]

I use devcon.

https://support.microsoft.com/pt-br/kb/311272

The below lists all devices.

h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon hwids =mouse
h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon status =mouse

So I disable all devices but my two aimtraks before to start emulator_multicpu.exe

h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon disable "HID\VID_D209&PID_15A2"
h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon disable "HID\VID_04F3&PID_0230"

After I quit the emulator, I reenable my mouse and touchpad.

h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon enable "HID\VID_D209&PID_15A2"
h:\Utils\devcon\x64\devcon enable "HID\VID_04F3&PID_0230"

you sir are a life saver. I I will try this today. I if it works you deserve a beer

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[mrradicaled]

I need some help. I cannot get TS2 to work.. I get this Runtime error: RunTime error '429' (ActiveX component can't create object), after I set everything up per the instructions. I want to use this to play Virtual On, but I am clueless as to how to identify my controller and assign keys or buttons.

[Cuh]

Hi all, i hope anyone of you can help me (:

I followed all the tips and tricks to get my 2 Aimtrak Guns work with my Model2 emulator.
I use Troubleshooter2 but i dont get this to work : /
First i got the 2 Crosshairs but if i moved my Guns ingame the Crosshairs just moved quickly from one to another corner.
Then i used the 1.2 Version of TS2 with the new exe Data from Howard_Casto then i got a lot of Run-time errors.
I added the .ddl thingy etc.
Now i always get an Run-time error '-2147024770 (8007007e)':
                                Automation error.

pleaaaaaaaaaaaase can anybody help me get this to work. I tried it on 4 PC´s and now im kinda frustrated : /
I would be so happy to play Hotd and Virtua Cop with my brother to get back some childhood memories.

thx and sorry for my english xD

greetings from germany ^^

[what2be]

You will never get ts2.exe to work with m2 ver 1.1 or 1.1.a, only works with 1.0

[scoodidabop]

Finally got both guns working but suddenly I'm encountering the dreaded mouse click/window minimize issue.  Isn't the RamJet fullscreen fix incorporated into TS2?  I reinstalled the TS2 files again and the issue remains.  Any ideas on fixing this?

Thanks!

[lisowskikevin]

Finally got both guns working but suddenly I'm encountering the dreaded mouse click/window minimize issue.  Isn't the RamJet fullscreen fix incorporated into TS2?  I reinstalled the TS2 files again and the issue remains.  Any ideas on fixing this?

Thanks!

Nope they are independent. Install ramjet then give ts2 a whirl. I just got mine working a while agai and they work amazing. Never any window minimizing and 2 guns work perfectly! Great programs.

[scoodidabop]

Finally got both guns working but suddenly I'm encountering the dreaded mouse click/window minimize issue.  Isn't the RamJet fullscreen fix incorporated into TS2?  I reinstalled the TS2 files again and the issue remains.  Any ideas on fixing this?

Thanks!

Nope they are independent. Install ramjet then give ts2 a whirl. I just got mine working a while agai and they work amazing. Never any window minimizing and 2 guns work perfectly! Great programs.

I see.  Thanks - I'll give that a go.  The other issue I'm having, while unrelated to TS2, is the esc/exit button.  At the moment pressing esc just minimizes the window.

[lisowskikevin]

Finally got both guns working but suddenly I'm encountering the dreaded mouse click/window minimize issue.  Isn't the RamJet fullscreen fix incorporated into TS2?  I reinstalled the TS2 files again and the issue remains.  Any ideas on fixing this?

Thanks!

Nope they are independent. Install ramjet then give ts2 a whirl. I just got mine working a while agai and they work amazing. Never any window minimizing and 2 guns work perfectly! Great programs.

I see.  Thanks - I'll give that a go.  The other issue I'm having, while unrelated to TS2, is the esc/exit button.  At the moment pressing esc just minimizes the window.

Crap I don't remember if I had to change anything. I believe that esc by default in model 2 is return to windowed mode.

Can anyone else chime in on this?

[ericitaquera]

... I'm hacking memory locations directly and obviously if the program is changed those locations can be changed.  I spent literally months finding the current locations, so I'm not real excited about doing it all over again.  Fortunately many of the games share the same locations, so if somebody wants to fire up cheat engine and search, perhaps using the current ini files as a guide, the program can be updated for use with 1.1a...

Hey Howard, first of all, thank you for TS2. It´s amazing to be able to play our favorite games.

Secondly, could you please write down a tutorial so we can to this job of hacking memory?

Please don´t abandon us. Think about Hawking leaving Astrophysics or Messi leaving Football.

Best Regards

[Howard_Casto]

I'll see what I can do. 

[argonlefou]

Thanks Howard for your amazing job ! I had in mind for a very long time to make a "complete" lightgun emulation rig and a that time your TS2 was nearly born.
I'm back now to this project after a few years break, what a great soft it has become ! It's perfectly working with 2 aimtrak on model2emu 

Unfortunately, some of the best arcade railgun shooting games are still unavailable for 2 players....because Demul still does not support rawinput 
And moreover, having no choice at all to configure anything for shooting game, the mouse is controlling P1 and P2 at the same time with same inputs...

So you gave me the idea, to de more or less the same thing as you did: "when something does not exists, do it !"
So, I started playing with Demul memory this week (latest build :  DEmul x86 v0.7 Alpha BUILD 221215) to make what could be...say....Troubleshooter3 maybe ?? ( if that's OK for you Howard about the name? )

So far,  with a few days of work with C# programming, I'm finally able to properly hack the memory of House of The dead 2 and simulate inputs for 2 differents players
I'd say the first milestone is OK ! I don't know if a lot of people would be interested in this ? I made a short screen capture video of this if there are people interrested...just ask !

Next step will be to play with RawInput (never did that till today) so that I can use something real to send as Inputs for the memory hack....

[burn_654]

argonlefou I for one am very interested in what you come up with! If you need someone to test I have a 2x guncon2 crt arcade monitor setup...not 100% stable yet but I can do some testing with the Wingun driver and the topgun driver (topgun driver uses rawinput)

I'm not sure if I can run up to date demul however, my rig uses xp for now. But I'll be following!

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry, I forgot to reply to this one. 

argonlefou:

Unless you just want to make your own, we can probably take what you discovered and integrate it into ts2.  Afterall, the ini files are designed to allow you to manipulate any game that you can find the proper memory addresses for.

I'm working on other projects atm, but PM me if I can help or ect...

[argonlefou]

Make my own is not an obligation, I just though you quit the project and didn't support TS2 anymore !
thanks for your proposition, I just sent you a PM 

[argonlefou]

argonlefou I for one am very interested in what you come up with! If you need someone to test I have a 2x guncon2 crt arcade monitor setup...not 100% stable yet but I can do some testing with the Wingun driver and the topgun driver (topgun driver uses rawinput)

I'm not sure if I can run up to date demul however, my rig uses xp for now. But I'll be following!

Latest Demul build needs directX 11, and I'm not sure WinXp is compatible with it :/ What's your Demul version ? I could look into it for older shooting rigs (I'm sure you're not alone ! )
As for now I just finished an alpha version working perfectly with my two Aimtraks 
I just need to make a quick minimalist gui for those who want to test it, and add memory addresses for other games (this will not be long, the list is short)

[ArcadeBliss]

argonlefou I for one am very interested in what you come up with! If you need someone to test I have a 2x guncon2 crt arcade monitor setup...not 100% stable yet but I can do some testing with the Wingun driver and the topgun driver (topgun driver uses rawinput)

I'm not sure if I can run up to date demul however, my rig uses xp for now. But I'll be following!

Latest Demul build needs directX 11, and I'm not sure WinXp is compatible with it :/ What's your Demul version ? I could look into it for older shooting rigs (I'm sure you're not alone ! )
As for now I just finished an alpha version working perfectly with my two Aimtraks 
I just need to make a quick minimalist gui for those who want to test it, and add memory addresses for other games (this will not be long, the list is short)

Also very interested. I have two aim tracks win7 on a cab willing to test. Because I have switchable panels,  will the tool be able to locate the guns in a changing USB device environment? This problem is what stops me from using ts2.  It wants a stable mouse configuration that I do not have.

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[argonlefou]

I'm using pid/vid on usb devices name so it should work, no matter the order or the number of plugged usb devices
I ran into the same issue with TS2 but fortunately on my cab I only have 2 aimtraks plugged

I'll create a new thread soon (to keep this one clean) with a first version to test :-)

[ArcadeBliss]

I'm using pid/vid on usb devices name so it should work, no matter the order or the number of plugged usb devices
I ran into the same issue with TS2 but fortunately on my cab I only have 2 aimtraks plugged

I'll create a new thread soon (to keep this one clean) with a first version to test :-)

two thumbs up

[bryhud]

Has anyone seen this issue before?

I am running Windows 7 64bit with latest Model 2 1.1a and have TS2 configured just for HOTD to test

When starting up HOTD  I see sound initializing window that moves to the upper left and then M2 crashes. emulator_multicpu.exe has stopped working

It runs fine without TS2 starting

Any thoughts?

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   BEX
  Application Name:   emulator_multicpu.exe
  Application Version:   0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:   52c542e3
  Fault Module Name:   StackHash_0a9e
  Fault Module Version:   0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:   00000000
  Exception Offset:   041f0020
  Exception Code:   c0000005
  Exception Data:   00000008
  OS Version:   6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
  Locale ID:   1033
  Additional Information 1:   0a9e
  Additional Information 2:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:   0a9e
  Additional Information 4:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

[burn_654]

Troubleshooter 2 was designed with Model2 1.0 in mind - you probably just need to track that version down. I think a few people have attached it here. 

[bryhud]

thanks that fixed it!

[Endprodukt]

I just made the switch so Win 7 and while TS2 basicaly works I can't shoot with P1 Gun. The crosshair moves, though! I can confirm that p1 gun works without problems in Mame, and p2 works flawlessly in TS2. just can't shoot with P1. Any ideas?

[Howard_Casto]

It's probably just your key mappings.  Read further back in the thread and you will get your answer.

[Endprodukt]

I didn't change them. Not in Model or TS2.

[Endprodukt]

It's probably just your key mappings.  Read further back in the thread and you will get your answer.

Could you try and point me in some direction? I was checking all keymappings and they're perfectly fine.

[burn_654]

Maybe Windows 7 changed the raw number on the mouse buttons? Ie, mouse0 and mouse1 may now actually be mouse1 and mouse2...just a thought, I'd try increasing or decreasing your button numbers. It looks like you have the right ID's set if your crosshairs move.

[Endprodukt]

Did a second fresh install and it seems to work now. Thanks!

[mDang]

hello !

i can't get to work, i tried all the thing i found here, but nothing work. i don't know if there's an inssue with my windows 8.1...
i have the error 9 when i click on virtual on setup. any idea ?
thanks

[Brian74]

I have been trying to use TS2 but I keep getting the run-time error 76. I added the folder all the files look like they are there but I keep getting the error. On another machine I am getting the 429 error.

[MydknyteStyrm]

Are you using Model 1.0 or 1.1? TS only works with 1.0. You should check out DemulShooter though. It works perfectly with Model 2 1.1 as well as Demul


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[Brian74]

Trying to set it up now. Got demul working, dolphin kind of does. Imvstill trying to figure it out.

[USSCrazybat]

I'm having trouble finding a copy of TS2. The original website is down - does anyone have a mirror I could download from?

[thet0ast3r]

Here`s one from my dropbox, if you havent found it somewhere else already.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43546129/TS2_1.2.zip

thet0ast3r

[leslie]

Anyone had manage to make this work in Virtual On Cybertroopers model 2? I got TS hooked but still uses the controls from model 2 and not overriding the keys.

[bluebabylon]

Hi,

I am in this old topic to reply about Virtual On, trouble shooter 2, and sega model 2 emulator.
This will be a full guide on how to get two-player, single computer virtual-on setup working and all the caveats that the internet doesn't provide answers for.

Specifically, how to JUMP in virtual on.


1.) Trouble shooter 2 was coded around 2013-2014. The latest sega model 2 emulator is ~2016. It turns out the first step to any of this working is to find Sega Model 2 version 1.0 named "M2Emulator1.0" in the sega model 2 sites archives. The latest version will allow Troubleshooter 2 to launch, and TS2 will show inputs, but not actually send them to the newest version. So officially step 1 is get version 1.0 of sega model 2.
2.) Retrieve 'TS2_1.2' or troubleshooter 2, from google.
3.) You require 'vbrun60sp6.exe' which is visual basic runtime version 6. Simply googling this EXE will give you the direct download from Microsofts site. Without this you'll have Active X errors. Install this EXE from google.
4.)  You require 'dx8vb.dll' which is the direct X 8 library. This is included in the DXNT.CAB file. IF you google 'DirectX End-User Runtimes' and grab those packages, it should be included. Once you have this zip file, unzip it somewhere. My mistake was dragging the .dlls into the system 32 folder on my windows 7 machine. When I restarted days later I had corrupt drivers and couldn't boot back into my machine until I swapped harddrives and removed them. Don't let that scare you. you can simply install them outside of system 32 folder.
- Open the start menu
- Search for powershell and open it. should be blue command window
- Type in these commands:
cd C:\virtual on\dxnt
regsvr32 "C:\virtual on\dxnt\dx8vb.dll"

- Simply change the directory to your directory location
For more help, specifically 'directx_jun2006_redist.exe' is what you want to install for direct x. and 'VB6.0-KB290887-X86.exe' is what you want to install for VB6.0

Installing DX8vb, vbrun60sp6.exe and having version 1.0 of the segamodel 2 emulator should resolve pretty much every problem found on google with troubleshooter 2 not working with Virtual on. You may proceed to follow other guides on TS2 configuration etc.

For two player coop on the same machine you will need to create a file 'm2network.ini' into your sega model 2 emulator folder. It's contents should be:
[Network]
RxPort=6113
NextIP=127.0.0.1
NextPort=6114
framesync=1


You may change the ports. But 127.0.0.1 specifys its ont he same machine. And your first port should be unique and available. And your next port will play into the next part.

You need to have two folders, one for player 1 , and one for player 2. My setup is as follows.
Virtual on\
Virtual on\player 1
Virtual on\player 1\m2emulator 1.0\m2network.ini
Virtual on\player 1\m2emulator 1.0\
Virtual on\player 1\TS2_1.2\

Virtual on\player 2
Virtual on\player 2\m2emulator 1.0\m2network.ini
Virtual on\player 2\m2emulator 1.0\
Virtual on\player 2\TS2_1.2\



I install TS2 and M2Emulator twice. The only difference being the ports inside the .ini should reference eachother. So, the m2network.ini for player 2 is:
[Network]
RxPort=6114
NextIP=127.0.0.1
NextPort=6113
framesync=1




Note:
If you get:
"The module.... was loaded but the call to DLL registerse3rver failed error 0x80070005
Then you are an idiot (this is my note calling me an idiot because i did this), run setup for ts2 (and everything really) as ADMIN.



I will add this. Virtual on needs the start buttons, but you cannot map them to Joybuttons within the TS2 GUI. For some reason you can map pretty much every button except start and coin. I have found that the config files let you change these, as they default to -1.

virtual on\virtual on\player 1\TS2_1.2\joycfg\von.ini
StartButton=0   
and coinbutton too if you didn't go into the settings of sega model 2 to change it to free to play.
Do not forget to do this for player 2 as well.




When you first launch the Sega Model 2 emualtor as both player 1 and player 2, you have to press F2/F1 to navigate to its BIOs setup screen.
onetime setup instructions for this:
1.) LAunch sega model 2 and load VON
2.) Press F2
3.) Navigate with F1 to GAME assignments.
4.) Press F2 to navigate to 'network link attribute' and make one MASTER, and other SLAVE.
everything else in the BIOS screens needs to be identical for your games to sync up. I recommend doing a full setup of player 1 bios, and copying the whole segamodel 2 folder to 'player 2'.
Then after you copy, change the port in the network INI, and you will be golden and free of config mistakes. Just make sure TS2 gets installed on both locations as well.



Unrelated, if you are a super powershell programmer, I created a script that manipulates windows 'window' API to remove border, and menu from a process and changes its positioning and it's size to effectively
1.) Launch two sega model 2s
2.) Load VON
3.) have both windows take up your entire screen on each monitor. erase borders and menus to 'look' completely full screen without actually being so (think two windows borderless full screen apps).
You can decipher this work here:
https://pastebin.com/t3x4M9fQ





Edit:
Another Caveat with networking I've experienced is if I boot both emulators up in any order, One will say 'MASTER' and another 'SLAVE' but they freeze on this screen. I 100% every time, have to press F2 which brings me to the bios of both emulators, then I press F2 again to leave the bios. This somehow syncs up the emulators and they will join eachother 100% of the time after doing this step. You may get away with just F3 for refresh as well. You should be able to map these to joy buttons too in the 'joycfg\von.ini'

[ahofle]

Has anyone been able to get this running in win10? Just trying to get the House of the Dead 2 PC version working.  Got the DX8 dll registered, configured the empire edition of HOTD2 and I get the following when running "ts2.exe thotd2emp" as administrator:

Run-time error '9':
Subscript out of range

[bluebabylon]

Has anyone been able to get this running in win10? Just trying to get the House of the Dead 2 PC version working.  Got the DX8 dll registered, configured the empire edition of HOTD2 and I get the following when running "ts2.exe thotd2emp" as administrator:

Run-time error '9':
Subscript out of range

I def remember getting this error, but on windows 7. Try and check out my post for dependencies, and install everything as admin.

[purbeast]

I know this is an old thread, but I'm trying to get my Happ guns working on a PC now and am trying to get it working with model 2 stuff.

I have TS2 and have v1.0 of the emulator.

I did all of the setup in TS2 and start it up with the command line and vcop.ini, however when I load the ROM I get a runtime error with a bunch of numbers than says "Class not registered".

I had this happen on both v1.1 and v1.0 of the emulator.

Anyone have any idea what this could be?

I'm on Windows 10 if that matters.