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| Multi Lightgun Game Arcade : USB2Gun with Recoil |
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| Jollywest:
--- Quote from: BadMouth on August 04, 2014, 03:14:57 pm --- --- Quote from: Jollywest on August 02, 2014, 02:56:58 pm ---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. --- End quote --- 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! --- End quote --- 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:
--- Quote from: Le Chuck on August 04, 2014, 03:53:32 pm ---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! --- End quote --- 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:
--- Quote from: BadMouth on August 04, 2014, 04:37:04 pm ---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. --- End quote --- 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. --- Quote from: Jollywest on August 04, 2014, 05:25:38 pm ---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. --- End quote --- 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. :dunno |
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