Multi Lightgun Game Arcade : USB2Gun with Recoil

[Jollywest]

EDIT

Here's a video of the completed project;



ORIGINAL POSTS BELOW

Hi all,

Just a little heads up on an upcoming project;

I have a non-working but complete Global VR America's Army machine arriving some time this week.
The idea is to utilise the USB2Gun board inside and the Happ guns to make it into a Multi Lightgun Game Arcade using a PC and Emulators. (Hopefully the board is working or this may be a very short project )
I'm hoping that this board will create or more accurate arcade lightgun experience over the AimTrak or Actlabs guns.

I'll most probably do a blog on the project and will post the link here once I get started.

For now though I have a lot of reading up to do on which Emulators to use to play which games and how to incorporate the recoil (if it's possible), As well as the bumf on the USB2Gun board.

[maffewl]

Found this while searching your response in my shooter cab post. 

Subscribed.

[Jollywest]

So the cab turned up... eventually... and the overall condition was pretty good. There was the odd expected scrape to the side art and scuffs to the guns but nothing major .
The machine arrived complete as well, apart from the top marquee box section. I should be able to fabricate this though, at some point down the line.

On firing up the cab for the first time, there were obvious problems. The monitor had no orange neck glow, very muffled sound and some of the cab cathode lights were out.

On further investigation the monitor was found to be shot; 

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,139365

However, the lights were just a matter of re-connecting some loose wiring and the sound was sorted by replacing the two 3.5mm audio jack cables from PC to USB2Gun interface.

The HAPP Guns won't register shots on an LCD monitor using the version of USB2Gun in the machine, but I slapped in a 20" LCD monitor to test the video signals all the same. The results were good and I could navigate into the test menu and test the inputs.
All the inputs worked great including the gun triggers and recoil. Although I can't be 100% sure that the USB2Gun is fully functional as to register shots on a CRT monitor, everything tested on it so far is good.

The next job was to check out the PC specs to see if I could utilise the PC for my needs.
Unfortunately the specs of the CPU (Intel E2160 1.8ghz Dual-Core) and GPU (Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT  256mb) were too low but I have a Intel Xeon E5240 2.5ghz Quad-Core (with LGA775 to LGA771 socket adapter) and Ati Radeon HD 4670 spare that I can use in there instead. The 1Gb of DDR2 Ram in there may be adequate enough.
The plan is to use a Dual-boot setup to keep the Americas Army dedicated side of things the same, which uses Linux and have a Windows XP OS to run all the Emulated stuff.

Acquiring a full replacement monitor is also the plan but that may take a while to sort, so I'm looking at temporary measures to be able to test the USB2Gun fully and that's were I may need some input from you guys on here please.

Contined in the Monitor section ===> http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,139939.0.html

[Jollywest]

Update time ...

After doing a bit more reading up, I realised that there was little chance of the TV setup damaging the USB2Gun board, so I tried it out.
The best I could muster was a faint, rolling, doubled image by swapping around the jumper. This was nowhere near good enough for testing out the guns.

However, I acquired a WG D9410 chassis and screen from two different sources this week and have it all fully working in the cab as of this morning 

The guns and recoil work great and are perfectly accurate, so I now know the USB2Gun is 100% working as well

I've changed my mind on the Dual-boot setup because I think I will have issues getting the ATI GPU set up within the Americas Army Linux OS. I'm going to setup another PC with XP instead to run the emulator stuff and just swap the cables over to switch between PC's. I will have to purchase a few components though to build the 2nd PC.....that's the next job 

 

[mcseforsale]

Pics or it didn't happen.   

Anywho....I'm thinking about a lightgun game...BIGTIME.  Subscribed!

AJ

[Jollywest]

Pics or it didn't happen.   

Anywho....I'm thinking about a lightgun game...BIGTIME.  Subscribed!

AJ

Ok, ok, you got me .... it was all just an elaborate lie 

.... Only joking  ... here some pics;



I need to adapt the bezel to fit the pure-flat tube, hence why its missing;



The innards... USB2Gun on the right;



The WG D9410 installed;



The WG D9400 uninstalled;



I've just ordered all the 2nd PC parts required, hopefully they'll all land this week.

[mcseforsale]

Sweet!  I'm in.  Wife just walked by and said "Your son would love one of those".  Hmmmm.  Interesting.

What kind of proc do you need to run these games and hardware?  I got some old PCs laying around but nothing with any good hardware in it.

AJ

[Jollywest]

Sweet!  I'm in.  Wife just walked by and said "Your son would love one of those".  Hmmmm.  Interesting.

What kind of proc do you need to run these games and hardware?  I got some old PCs laying around but nothing with any good hardware in it.

AJ

I haven't worked with Linux at all and the cab PC came pre-configured with it on, so not sure how it runs the game and hardware, sorry.

The 2nd PC is the one I'll be using to see if the USB2Gun will work in a windows environment.

[mike boss]

Long, long, long ago I was working on a project like this.
I got my hands on a free Virrtua Cop machine (that was gutted).
Was going to go with an LCD monitor, a pair of Aim Trak's housed in a pair of GunCon2's. I completed a custom MaLa layout for the project and had compiled a list of games for MAME + various other emulators. I was really excited for the project, but at the time lacked the skill set to complete it. I'm super stoked to see how your project turns out as I think the idea is SUPER F'N COOL!
I decided I would just add the Aim Trak units to another project and import the MALA lists to have a unique list (per console) of the Gun games.
I still have the PC actually................reminds me I gotta sell a ton of stuff!

Keep up the awesome work !

[Jollywest]

Long, long, long ago I was working on a project like this.
I got my hands on a free Virrtua Cop machine (that was gutted).
Was going to go with an LCD monitor, a pair of Aim Trak's housed in a pair of GunCon2's. I completed a custom MaLa layout for the project and had compiled a list of games for MAME + various other emulators. I was really excited for the project, but at the time lacked the skill set to complete it. I'm super stoked to see how your project turns out as I think the idea is SUPER F'N COOL!
I decided I would just add the Aim Trak units to another project and import the MALA lists to have a unique list (per console) of the Gun games.
I still have the PC actually................reminds me I gotta sell a ton of stuff!

Keep up the awesome work !

Thanks, its been slow going but finally getting somewhere with it now  ... I just hope the USB2Gun will work with Windows or the project may come to an abrupt halt! 

That PC (if it is of modest spec) may come in handy if you were to replicate the project 

[Jollywest]

It took a while for all the PC parts to arrive (the Ram took 10 days for some reason) and the MOBO was faulty as well so I had to wait for a replacement but I got it all built last night.
I only had about an hour to connect it to the cab and do some brief testing.
The guns actually show up in the Windows Controller menu as Lightguns but they both report as being GUN 1 (even though each has its own calibration menu). edit -> see post below
When I calibrate and test the guns in the Windows controller menu, the cross in the test box follows the gun movements dead on accurate and the triggers report different button presses when fired on and off screen.
However, I had a brief try of HOTD3 PC Game and the calibration is way off.
I never had chance to try much tweaking though and I've got 3 busy days in the real world, so hopefully I'll jump back on this early next week.

[Jollywest]

I had some more time on this last night and had some luck with getting the guns to work.
The guns actually report in windows as analog joysticks, but the USB2Gun board is named as Lightgun 2.03.
The guns are both also named as Gun 1, which is why I initially thought they reported as lightguns.
Still no luck in getting them working right on HOTD3 PC game, even when gamepad is selected as the input, the calibration is way off.
However, they are working great in MAME. I had to change a few settings in mame.ini to get them to work though.
I had to enable joystick and off screen reload in device input, have joystick as the lightgun and positional controller and had to change joystick deadzone from 0.3 to 0.0 and joystick saturation from 0.85 to 0.95.
The games that originally used a lightgun that I've tested so far (Beast Busters/Lethal Enforcers/Time Crisis) work highly accurately and the games which used a mounted gun (T2/Alien 3) work ok and are accurate but the gun only registers a position on the screen on each individual trigger press, so if you were to hold the trigger down it would only register shots in the one position no matter where you moved the gun whilst holding the trigger down.
The white flash on screen on each trigger press is a bit much on these games as well.
Also the guns work in Supermodel (Lost World/Star wars) spot on accurate too. The only setting I had to change in supermodel.ini was to enable inputautotrigger for reloading.
Other emu's I've tried are SM2 and Demul but I can't even get games to boot in Demul yet and the SM2 emu won't save anolog controls after I've changed the inputs, I'll have another bash at these tonight.
.... Oh and nothing on the recoil side of things yet either.

[BadMouth]

Good to hear that the MAME and Model 2 games are working!
I thought there was a good chance they'd track like mounted guns since they show up as analog joysticks.
Is there a white flash like the light guns of old?  IIRC, the one guy who tested this board before said there wasn't.

It's understandable that they wouldn't work with HOTD3 with the game viewing them as analog joysticks.
If you think about how the game would have interpreted analog joysticks, there was no reason to have an analog joystick held in your hand to correspond 1:1 with screen position, nor a reason to calibrate it as such.

Howard Casto's Troubleshooter 2 can take input from wii controllers (seen as analog joysticks) and inject that into the game.
It might work for these too.

If they don't work in Demul, a workaround (for player 1 anyway) would be to run an autohotkey or glovepie script to convert the joystick location to system mouse location.  At least with older versions, Demul was hard coded to get light gun input from the system mouse.

[Jollywest]

Good to hear that the MAME and Model 2 games are working!
I thought there was a good chance they'd track like mounted guns since they show up as analog joysticks.
Is there a white flash like the light guns of old?  IIRC, the one guy who tested this board before said there wasn't.

It's understandable that they wouldn't work with HOTD3 with the game viewing them as analog joysticks.
If you think about how the game would have interpreted analog joysticks, there was no reason to have an analog joystick held in your hand to correspond 1:1 with screen position, nor a reason to calibrate it as such.

Howard Casto's Troubleshooter 2 can take input from wii controllers (seen as analog joysticks) and inject that into the game.
It might work for these too.

If they don't work in Demul, a workaround (for player 1 anyway) would be to run an autohotkey or glovepie script to convert the joystick location to system mouse location.  At least with older versions, Demul was hard coded to get light gun input from the system mouse.

Yea it's model 3 (supermodel) that the guns are working with, still struggling with saving configured analog controls in SM2 but I've just been reading a post of yours about only having 1 analog device connected at a time to map properly, I'll try this tomorrow.

There is a white flash on a trigger press and the crosshair does track on screen with the gun movement.

I've got demul to load games now (had to use directx11 plugin) but they are running very slow. I can map the analog movements of the gun and trigger presses in the pad plugin but it's not relating in game. The mouse works fine. I'll try that workaround tomorrow if I can't get them working, thanks.

Thanks for the tips about troubleshooter 2 as well, I'll give that a go too.

[BadMouth]

The gun games in Model 2 emulator don't support analog controls, at least not directly.
There's a way to get it into a strange debug mode where they work, but the emulator will use X's and O's for the crosshairs and you have unlimited ammo.

To use two guns in Model 2 emulator, you need Howard's Troubleshooter 2 and you must use M2 emulator version 1.0

[Jollywest]

Bit more progress last night...

The guns are now working in HOTD 3 PC game by using Troubleshooter 2.

Model 2 games Rail Chase, Virtua Cop 1 & 2 and Gunblade are working on player 1 by enabling 'use player 1 as system mouse' in TS2 as well, but I couldn't get player 2 working.
However, I've just realised that even though I clicked on the Model 2 version 1.0 download link on the nebula website it actually downloads the current, version 1.1a. I'll source 1.0 tonight and give it another blast.

In a previous post I stated that the guns create a white flash on screen on a trigger press and that the crosshair follows gun movements on screen. Well I've now realised that it only tracks the movements on the lighter parts of the screen. I've turned the brightness up a bit and it works to a point on some games that need to track movements for continuous fire (Gunblade/Rail Chase), but T2 is too dark for it to be of much use.

Anyone know how to calibrate guns in Rail Chase 2?... The F2 test menu doesn't seem to have a gun calibration section.

[Jollywest]

More success last night...

I found version 1.0 of SM2 emu and now the guns work a treat on HOTD, VCOP 1 & 2 and Behind Enemy Lines, by using Troubleshooter 2. (Thanks to Howard Casto for that, great work!)
I'm struggling to calibrate the guns in Gunblade though because the calibration screen is black, and is done with axis movement rather than trigger presses. I'm also still looking for a way to calibrate the guns in Rail Chase 2 if anyone has an idea, thanks.

Tonight ..... Demul!

[Jollywest]

No joy with Demul yet unfortunately, I can get the guns to register shots and reload but no axis movement.
As Badmouth mentioned the mouse is hard coded into the emu, and I've tried a joystick to mouse auto hot key script but the movement is too erratic to be of any use.

As for the recoil... I'm hoping to be able to use mamehooker to get this going.

EDIT

Well that was short and sweet! .... Looks like Mamehooker doesn't support the USB2gun, so the recoil is going to be a no go I think unfortunately.

[BadMouth]

No joy with Demul yet unfortunately, I can get the guns to register shots and reload but no axis movement.
As Badmouth mentioned the mouse is hard coded into the emu, and I've tried a joystick to mouse auto hot key script but the movement is too erratic to be of any use.

As for the recoil... I'm hoping to be able to use mamehooker to get this going.

EDIT

Well that was short and sweet! .... Looks like Mamehooker doesn't support the USB2gun, so the recoil is going to be a no go I think unfortunately.

If all games are going to be emulated, can't you just disconnect the solenoid wires at the USB2GUN and run them to a different setup consisting of an LEDWiz or Pacdrive and some transistors?  It might even be possible to utilize the transistors on the USB2Gun, but I wouldn't want to fry that thing!

[Le Chuck]

I just want to say how impressed I am that you've got USB2Gun board up and running with the happ guns on a PC.  Well done, this has been a huge nebulous question for years - mostly because nobody wanted to fork the cash and be wrong - that and the other op that had one didn't really know what he was doing it felt like.  Kudos to you and thanks for sharing.  One of these is definetly in my future now!

[Jollywest]

No joy with Demul yet unfortunately, I can get the guns to register shots and reload but no axis movement.
As Badmouth mentioned the mouse is hard coded into the emu, and I've tried a joystick to mouse auto hot key script but the movement is too erratic to be of any use.

As for the recoil... I'm hoping to be able to use mamehooker to get this going.

EDIT

Well that was short and sweet! .... Looks like Mamehooker doesn't support the USB2gun, so the recoil is going to be a no go I think unfortunately.

If all games are going to be emulated, can't you just disconnect the solenoid wires at the USB2GUN and run them to a different setup consisting of an LEDWiz or Pacdrive and some transistors?  It might even be possible to utilize the transistors on the USB2Gun, but I wouldn't want to fry that thing!

Yea I suppose I could do something like you suggest to get it going. I'm trying not to interfere with the cab wiring too much though, so it's just a matter of swapping out PC's to switch between Windows and the dedicated Linux side of things. For the moment I may just leave the recoil and come back to it later.

[BadMouth]

It's nice to know it works, but I'm still curious as to exactly how it works.
If the guns track (albeit with the brightness turned up), then they are not working like the guns of old...yet the guns themselves ARE the guns of old!

I wonder what the camera on the Happ gun is capable of detecting, being that nothing in the gun itself has changed since they worked by flashing white and analyzing what part of the screen was being drawn? 
Maybe the USB2Gun still does this, but does it automatically and repeatedly (without the flash) since faster processors are now available that might be able to take the refresh rate into account and make sense of everything in a timely manner.

Are these emulated games running at different resolutions and refresh rates?

With the original cameras in the guns I can't imagine they're working off too different of a principle than the originals, but I'd still be tempted to see if they do anything at all with an LCD screen.

[Jollywest]

I just want to say how impressed I am that you've got USB2Gun board up and running with the happ guns on a PC.  Well done, this has been a huge nebulous question for years - mostly because nobody wanted to fork the cash and be wrong - that and the other op that had one didn't really know what he was doing it felt like.  Kudos to you and thanks for sharing.  One of these is definetly in my future now!

Thanks, It's a question I'd asked myself for sometime. I even pm'ed the other guy who had one to see if he'd sell it to me as he's based in the UK as well, but no go.

The cab wasn't actually that pricey, A forum member on a UK arcade site put it up in a valuations section for spares/repairs so I made him an offer and bingo! The monitor replacement cost the most but was still reasonable.
My thinking was even if the USB2gun didn't work in windows, then I still had a dedicated Americas Army for pretty cheap looking at what they sell for and could of always sold it for what I put into it or even more maybes.

To sum up, the guns work flawlessly in MAME games that originally used a lightgun, on the ones I've checked so far (about 25 or so), once calibrated the aim is absolutely dead on.
They work spot on in Supermodel on the 2 supported Model 3 gun games.
They also work great on HOTD 3 pc game and Sega Model 2 gun games (apart from Gunblade/Rail Chase 2, which have calibration issues) using TS2.
There are limitations to the setup though... The recoil obviously at the moment, the white flash on screen on a trigger press can be a bit much in games that require constant shooting, the games which originally used a positional gun in MAME don't track on dark areas for constant firing and no axis movement in the Demul emulator.

For the moment I'm just going to get all the MAME gun games calibrated and tested but if I get any success with any other emulators or the recoil I'll update.

[Jollywest]

It's nice to know it works, but I'm still curious as to exactly how it works.
If the guns track (albeit with the brightness turned up), then they are not working like the guns of old...yet the guns themselves ARE the guns of old!

I wonder what the camera on the Happ gun is capable of detecting, being that nothing in the gun itself has changed since they worked by flashing white and analyzing what part of the screen was being drawn? 
Maybe the USB2Gun still does this, but does it automatically and repeatedly (without the flash) since faster processors are now available that might be able to take the refresh rate into account and make sense of everything in a timely manner.

Are these emulated games running at different resolutions and refresh rates?

With the original cameras in the guns I can't imagine they're working off too different of a principle than the originals, but I'd still be tempted to see if they do anything at all with an LCD screen.

Yea its a bit strange isn't it but you could be right with how the USB2Gun may work, that would make sense.
The tracking isn't of much use anyway, as to get the tracking to work somewhere decent you have to turn up the brightness till the blacks are light grey and then it looks naff.
I can't remember whether the guns tracked on the dedicated side of things, I'll swap the PC's back at some point and have a gander. It's maybe just a windows thing.
At the moment I have all the games running at one resolution, 800 x 600. The refresh rate is 60hz. (I think... I'll double check that). The plan is to use GrooveyMame to have the games run at there native resolutions/frequencies to make use of the Quad-sync monitor.
Do you think the switching of resolutions will cause issues with the setup?... for eg, constant re-calibrating.
I plonked an LCD in there when I first got the cab to test the video signal and the guns never registered shots on it, I may try an LCD again with the Windows PC if you think it may make a difference.
I'll be knocking some videos up at some point as well and I'll post them here.

[BadMouth]

Kind of sounds like they work like the guns of old.  Maybe they sense position when they see the white screen and if it's nothing but light colored screen maybe it cycles.  Just speculating. 

At the moment I have all the games running at one resolution, 800 x 600. The refresh rate is 60hz. (I think... I'll double check that). The plan is to use GrooveyMame to have the games run at there native resolutions/frequencies to make use of the Quad-sync monitor.
Do you think the switching of resolutions will cause issues with the setup?... for eg, constant re-calibrating.

I'm not sure.  If they work like the old guns (and act labs guns), the device needs to know the resolution and refresh rate to work.
With the act labs guns, you had to move the gun vertically and horizontally across the screen for it to determine this.  You had to redo it anytime you played a game with a different resolution.  Fortunately with emulators I could just set them all the same.

Since the video signal is passing through the USB2Gun, the device may be able to determine it on the fly....or they could be made to only work at one resolution and refresh rate. 

[sgtsocko]

Hey guys,

Another owner of a working usb2gun setup here!

I was coming to make a post about my findings with the board but I noticed this topic so I'll just add some info here for anyone looking. I purchased the board and two Happ guns in March and was meaning to come and make a post about them but was just having too much damn fun!   

First off, I'm currently running a dual boot of America's army and XP (for MAME), running everything at 640x480 60hz off of a temporary IBM e74 monitor.

The guns themselves are super accurate in the games I've tried in MAME (Area 51, Lethal enforcers 1&2, Point Blank 1&2, etc). I had some issues getting off-screen reload to work (in MAME) but since shooting off-screen triggers button 2 in Windows I just used XPadder to map that to a combination of up+ another button (mapped to trigger) on the keyboard and set the digital cursor speed to max. Since there is an area at the top of the screen for reloading, shooting off-screen instantly brings the cursor to the top and activates the trigger.  Works perfectly, problem solved!

As, for whether or not the guns will need recalibration upon resolution change. The guns (in Windows) are mapped to coordinates just like any other joystick. The Min/Max values should remain the same, the only thing that might change with a resolution switch might be the center point of where the joystick is mapped to. I'm going to conduct further testing on this, but as long as all those values stay the same it's conceivable to think that we might get away with not having to recalibrate every time the resolution changes. More info on this coming soon!

My next step is to find a proper monitor (hopefully capable of 15khz and 30khz) as for now I'm limited to 640x480 and up.

[Jollywest]

The guns themselves are super accurate in the games I've tried in MAME (Area 51, Lethal enforcers 1&2, Point Blank 1&2, etc). I had some issues getting off-screen reload to work (in MAME) but since shooting off-screen triggers button 2 in Windows I just used XPadder to map that to a combination of up+ another button (mapped to trigger) on the keyboard and set the digital cursor speed to max. Since there is an area at the top of the screen for reloading, shooting off-screen instantly brings the cursor to the top and activates the trigger.  Works perfectly, problem solved!

Hi! ... Nice to know I'm not alone on this and good idea with the reload issue. I found it only to be in a few MAME games so far. In Area 51 for example, I was just shooting at the top of the screen but think I'll give your idea a go, thanks.

Did you buy the America's Army game disk & USB2Gun direct from Global VR?

[sgtsocko]

Hi! ... Nice to know I'm not alone on this and good idea with the reload issue. I found it only to be in a few MAME games so far. In Area 51 for example, I was just shooting at the top of the screen but think I'll give your idea a go, thanks.

The more the merrier!

As for the reload, yeah, not the most elegant solution, but MAME doesn't want to see the second button as "off-screen" from what I can tell.

This method does work perfectly though, you just have to make sure that the analog control values are maxed to ensure instant reload.

Did you buy the America's Army game disk & USB2Gun direct from Global VR?

I got the usb2gun board, 2 Happ guns, a pc, and the game from Jammaparts. I figured (much like you) that if I couldn't get it to work in Windows or Linux that at least I could build a dedicated America's Army cabinet. Luckily, everything works good in XP.

I was a little worried, having done my research and coming across another guy who couldn't seem to get it work. But I believe that he was using Namco guns and also was expecting the guns to track on screen perfectly. The guns do track (on bright surfaces) but they don't need to, because of the screen flash.

I then found this topic http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=82460.40. There was a guy who mentioned he got it working and figured I'd give it a shot. Quite an investment for "might work" but I was desperate hahaha.

Having tried some of the other light gun options (Topgun, Aimtrak) and having grown up in arcades playing the classics, I'm definitely happy with this setup!

The end result I'm hoping, will be building a cabinet (once I get a proper monitor) and having the perfect gun setup, with joysticks and buttons as an after thought : )

[AlienInferno]

Glad to have ran across this.  I'm working on gathering parts for a dedicated light gun cabinet and this seems like it will fit the bill great.  Subscribed for sure.

[Jollywest]

I got the usb2gun board, 2 Happ guns, a pc, and the game from Jammaparts. I figured (much like you) that if I couldn't get it to work in Windows or Linux that at least I could build a dedicated America's Army cabinet. Luckily, everything works good in XP.

I was a little worried, having done my research and coming across another guy who couldn't seem to get it work. But I believe that he was using Namco guns and also was expecting the guns to track on screen perfectly. The guns do track (on bright surfaces) but they don't need to, because of the screen flash.

I then found this topic http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=82460.40. There was a guy who mentioned he got it working and figured I'd give it a shot. Quite an investment for "might work" but I was desperate hahaha.

Having tried some of the other light gun options (Topgun, Aimtrak) and having grown up in arcades playing the classics, I'm definitely happy with this setup!

The end result I'm hoping, will be building a cabinet (once I get a proper monitor) and having the perfect gun setup, with joysticks and buttons as an after thought : )

Your a brave man! ... All that must of cost a pretty penny, that's for sure. All worked out in the end for you though

I also tried the Topgun as well as the Actlabs, and I can say the accuracy on the USB2Gun setup trumps them both.

Good luck with building your cab, keep us posted.

[Jollywest]

Glad to have ran across this.  I'm working on gathering parts for a dedicated light gun cabinet and this seems like it will fit the bill great.  Subscribed for sure.

I've messaged a member on here who mentioned he may be able to source the USB2Gun for cheaper than Global VR sell it for.
Once he gets back to me I'll post the details here.

[yotsuya]

Glad to have ran across this.  I'm working on gathering parts for a dedicated light gun cabinet and this seems like it will fit the bill great.  Subscribed for sure.

I've messaged a member on here who mentioned he may be able to source the USB2Gun for cheaper than Global VR sell it for.
Once he gets back to me I'll post the details here.

Do it. I'm in for one.

[AlienInferno]

Glad to have ran across this.  I'm working on gathering parts for a dedicated light gun cabinet and this seems like it will fit the bill great.  Subscribed for sure.

I've messaged a member on here who mentioned he may be able to source the USB2Gun for cheaper than Global VR sell it for.
Once he gets back to me I'll post the details here.

Awesome man.  Hope he's able to do it.  I've got the cabinet (a metal behemoth of a Sega Virtua Tennis cab *representational pic attached*) and a CRT to fit.  I was really not happy with the idea of using the Aimtracks with the CRT. 

[Jollywest]

Right well I've had a reply from the guy who may be able to source these boards.
Basically he owns a sourcing company and when he gets to work Monday he is going to be all over this. 
Either I'll update as I hear anything or he may update here himself.

I'm back on with trying to get the recoil working and sgtsocko's remapping idea got me thinking.
When I go into controller settings Player 1 Gun (seen as a Analog Joystick) has 14 buttons and Player 2 Gun has 6.
Trigger on-screen is button no.1, Trigger off-screen is 2 and start is 3 on both guns.
4, 5 and 6 are unknown for both guns and the rest of the buttons on player 1 are the rest of the cab stuff, ie. coin slot, service panel buttons etc...
Would it be plausible that either 4, 5 or 6 is the recoil?
If so, is there anyway to remap them or run a script to have button 4 for example activate when Button 1 (trigger on-screen) is pressed?

[sgtsocko]

Hey guys ,

 Super busy this weekend but nanotechs website for the optigun ( usb2gun) has some really good info about whats supported ie: recoil, resolutions.

http://www.nanotechent.com/optigun.php

I'm not using recoil in my guns so i can't test with this aspect (yet!) but, more info from me soon early this week!

[sgtsocko]

When I go into controller settings Player 1 Gun (seen as a Analog Joystick) has 14 buttons and Player 2 Gun has 6.
Trigger on-screen is button no.1, Trigger off-screen is 2 and start is 3 on both guns.
4, 5 and 6 are unknown for both guns and the rest of the buttons on player 1 are the rest of the cab stuff, ie. coin slot, service panel buttons etc...
Would it be plausible that either 4, 5 or 6 is the recoil?
If so, is there anyway to remap them or run a script to have button 4 for example activate when Button 1 (trigger on-screen) is pressed?

Any luck with this theory? Not sure if there would be a way to trigger those buttons off hand, I'll take a closer look when I get some free time.

According to this http://nanotechent.s3.amazonaws.com/support/OptiGun-User-Guide.pdf

Pins 5 and 7 are used for force feedback in conjunction with a 24V input (J2). I should note also that this document shows a different layout for the USB2Gun than what my board looks like, so I'm going look for something that can confirm this information. I'm pretty sure I've seen a document that explained how to hook up recoil though. I'll have a look through my manual and check the web again for anything relevant.

I'm curious Jollywest, how many pins are your guns? Mine are 4. If the pinout information is correct, it could be that in order to get force feedback you would need 6 pins and an external 24V power input. I know my optical boards in my guns only have 4 pins out as I've replaced one board. So maybe the other 2 pins come right from the recoil mechanism? Hopefully someone with some experience can answer that question.

[Jollywest]

When I go into controller settings Player 1 Gun (seen as a Analog Joystick) has 14 buttons and Player 2 Gun has 6.
Trigger on-screen is button no.1, Trigger off-screen is 2 and start is 3 on both guns.
4, 5 and 6 are unknown for both guns and the rest of the buttons on player 1 are the rest of the cab stuff, ie. coin slot, service panel buttons etc...
Would it be plausible that either 4, 5 or 6 is the recoil?
If so, is there anyway to remap them or run a script to have button 4 for example activate when Button 1 (trigger on-screen) is pressed?

Any luck with this theory? Not sure if there would be a way to trigger those buttons off hand, I'll take a closer look when I get some free time.

According to this http://nanotechent.s3.amazonaws.com/support/OptiGun-User-Guide.pdf

Pins 5 and 7 are used for force feedback in conjunction with a 24V input (J2). I should note also that this document shows a different layout for the USB2Gun than what my board looks like, so I'm going look for something that can confirm this information. I'm pretty sure I've seen a document that explained how to hook up recoil though. I'll have a look through my manual and check the web again for anything relevant.

I'm curious Jollywest, how many pins are your guns? Mine are 4. If the pinout information is correct, it could be that in order to get force feedback you would need 6 pins and an external 24V power input. I know my optical boards in my guns only have 4 pins out as I've replaced one board. So maybe the other 2 pins come right from the recoil mechanism? Hopefully someone with some experience can answer that question.

I haven't had much time on this lately but I'll get time tonight to have another go on this.

My board also looks different.

Your theory is right there are 4 pins from the guns and 2 direct from the solenoid, and a 24v power supply connected to the USB2Gun to power the recoil.

The recoil works fine in the dedicated Americas Army Linux side of things, it's getting it to work in windows somehow.

[Jollywest]

I did have some time on this last night, unfortunately I'm no further forward on the recoil element.

I've tried Auto HotKeys scripts and Xpadder to map the keyboard buttons to the joystick but so far it's a no go, I can map the joystick to keyboard buttons easily enough but not the other way round.

I've had slightly more success in Demul, using Xpadder to map the joystick to mouse.
I had to select the 'spring' option in xpadder mouse settings and reduce the deadzone to 1% in normal settings, now about the first 5 inches in every direction around the centre point of the screen are accurate, but then the cursor accelerates past this and the accuracy is about 2 inches off by the time it gets to the edge of the screen. I'm using Windows 8.1 and have tried a registry hack to stop mouse acceleration but it makes no difference.

[Purple Tophat]

Hello all,

As mentioned previously by Jollywest, I have been working on sourcing these boards at a discount price. There is good news and bad news on this front. I have started a thread about it here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,140666.0.html

Thanks!

[Howard_Casto]

BadMouth gave me a heads up.

Just FYI, anytime you need help with something mamehooker related, post in the software forums... I don't check the main forum anymore. 

Why don't you PM me what you are trying to do exactly and I might be able to help.  I did glance over the document on the optigun briefly.  If it's needing a generic data string sent to a hid device, then mamehooker already supports this.  It's the "Generic HID Send Data" function.  Or at least in theory it'll work for you.  When I wrote the function I tested it on some generic usb devices I had lying around like Missile Launchers and ect and they all responded.  A little work might be necessary.