2 Act-Labs PC TV Lightguns - Working

[nfdavenport]

Hey guys,

I am trying to get 2 Act-Labs PC TV lightguns working with MAME.  These are the guns that work on the S-Video out to a TV.  Their documentation is horrible and user support non-existant, so I am flying blind.

Details:
- I have no trouble getting one gun to work in normal MAME.
- I tried both guns, connected in serial (PC -> gun -> gun -> TV) and get things to look correct in windowsXP desktop.
- Trying any game in AnalogMame (74, XP build) I can't seem to get the trigger pulls to register at all.
- Apparently some 2 player games are really one gun games where it just alternates turns??? (VS Hogans Alley?)
- As far as I know I have my analogmame.ini setup correctly

Has anyone gotten this to work?  Any details would be greately appreciated.  I am trying to get this setup for Christmas for someone here at work.  It would be very good if I can get both guns working, I like being employed.

-Thanks!!!!


edit: changed the subject to indicate success.  

[Jakobud]

Your employment is dependant on whether or not you can get two Act-Labs guns working at the same time?

[nfdavenport]

Ok, so that was a slight exageration... only slight.

edit:  You don't read these forums do you Eric?

[Jakobud]

Have you tried searching for this topic on this board?  I know its been discussed many times before. There have been tons of topics on Analog Mame XP alone.  I know there are other topics on getting two Act Labs guns to work with it.

[Lilwolf]

I only have one... and the non-tv version...

but...

Get 1 working first in normal mame..

Then get the both working in mame under player 1 (ie, both buttons register player 1).

If you can't do this... your hosed...... Get the guns working.... Not a config issue..

Next...

Get analogmame working with one..  But at this point it will be following the exact directions.

TAKE NOTE:  The last few versions of analog mame will NOT save the mouse settings.  So you might want to go back a few versions.  I don't know if ANY of the XP versions has saved the mouse config.  

good luck

[nfdavenport]

Thanks, I will take that approach.  Whatever is stopping me from getting anything to work with analogMame is probably the core issue.  When you have been messing around all day it is hard to remember to step back, start over, and logically attack it one issue at a time.

I have searched this, act-labs, and lightgun.tk forums without luck as to how people have actually gotten this to work.  I did try a little due diligence, not that I might not have missed something.

Thanks again all.

[nfdavenport]

Ok, I have found part of my problem.    The player1 button1 is still mapped to the Left-Ctrl key.  I have tried making a new controller file and making A-mame us this controller and that doesn't work.  I tried not choosing a controller and changing default.ini and hogalley.ini  (Hogan's Alley) and nothing seems to affect the input mapping.  

Is this what you meant by the mouse settings not saving or do I just not understand how the input.ini files work?  I will go look for info on this, but any pointers would help.

Thanks.

[nfdavenport]

 

Well, I thought I should post a follow-up.  I got it working finally.  The problem I had have to do with how the lightgun was designed to work in 2-player mode.  They have it setup as a 4 button mouse.  When the gun switch is set to be the second gun it sends  mouse2 and mouse3 button clicks as opposed to a mouse0 and mouse1 clicks.  (At least that is how they registered with Analog+ mame, a zero based count 0,1,2,3).

This proves to be totally useless because in Analog+ mame there apparently is no mouse_button3 available to assign.  I guess this may be useful in normal mame or something when it only registers as one mouse?  However, in analog+ mame because you have 2 separate mice, they both can use their own button 0 and 1.  I don't have the config in front of me, but it is something like this:

1PlayerButton1 = mouse1_button0
1PlayerButton2 = mouse1_button1
2PlayerButton1 = mouse2_button0
2PlayerButton2 = mouse2_button1

This worked great for Area51, Aliens3, and a slew of other 2 player 2 button games.  However, the only way I could make these assignments was in the Tab menu while running MAME itself.  None of the config files seemed to do anything.  The changes made in mame caused an area51.ana file to appear in the config directory alongside the normal .cfg files.  The appear to be binary and I don't think they can be setup ahead of time outside MAME.  However, the assignments did persist to the next time I played the game with the version I was using.

I used the XP build of MameA+ ver. 0.74.2 from here: http://www.urebelscum.speedhost.com/dl/analogplus74xp.2.zip

The only trick is that some 2 Player lightgun games are turn based and only use one gun.  These worked best just running from normal mame.  You can use both guns, the just both register as gun 1, which is what you want.

Anyway, thanks again all.  I hope someone finds this useful.

-Nathan

edit:  If I left something out or wasn't clear please reply and I will try and help as I can.

[slycrel]

  Thanks for letting us know of the success.  I've been wondering if I should do something like this a bit later on, and I'll refer back here when I do.

[u_rebelscum]

The problem I had have to do with how the lightgun was designed to work in 2-player mode.  They have it setup as a 4 button mouse.  When the gun switch is set to be the second gun it sends  mouse2 and mouse3 button clicks as opposed to a mouse0 and mouse1 clicks.  (At least that is how they registered with Analog+ mame, a zero based count 0,1,2,3).

This proves to be totally useless because in Analog+ mame there apparently is no mouse_button3 available to assign.  I guess this may be useful in normal mame or something when it only registers as one mouse?

Official mame currently only does 3 mouse buttons, IIRC.  Analog+ has the same limit.  However, I've read hints that maybe mame will be able to see four mouse buttons "soon".  If so, analog+ will also (I hope).

Also, the button numbering in analog+ and official mame are the same.  Based from the C language arrays starting with 0, and directX & mame following that format.


And thanks for doing all the hard work, nfdavenport.  I (still) do not have winXP, which makes testing a little harder.

[nfdavenport]

No problem guys, I am just glad it works.

I went into detail about the zero based stuff just in case there were some non-developers out there doing mame      I am a programmer myself, but one who deals all day with those who aren't.

And really all the credit and thanks has to go to you/U rebelscum for doing the analog mame stuff in the first place.  Thats where all the real work is.  All I did was tweak with the configging until it worked.

[Generic Eric]

Do the recent changes in mame (version 0.78) affect how you configure the two guns to work together?

[nfdavenport]

I don't know myself what the changes are so I couldn't say.  I had to use version 74 of analog mame just to get my setup working.  

[davidsz]

Just curius, I was thinking of trying to set up to Light Guns, what games in Mame support dual light guns?

1) Area 51
2) Max. Force
?

Thanks,

David

[nfdavenport]

I don't remember off the top of my head, but it seemed there were at least 15-20 that actually worked with two guns, enough to make it worth playing especially on a 27" TV.

Area51
ZeroPoint I & II
Leathal Enforcers II

were some I remember thinking were pretty cool.  And all the old VS classics like Hogan's Alley were fun too.

[gprime]

If you go to the Act-Labs website ( http://www.act-labs.com/gun1.htm ) it gives some nice information, along with a list of MAME compatible games ( http://www.act-labs.com/gun_gamelisting.htm ).

For you lazy bums that won't click the link, here's the list:

Alien 3
Area 51
Bang
Beast Busters
Catch-22
Cheyenne
Chiller
Clay Pigeon
Combat
Crackshot
Crossbow
Desert Gun
Dragon Gun
Golly! Ghost!
Gunbuster
Gun Bullet
Hit 'n Miss
Jurrasic Park
Lethal Enforcers II
Locked 'n Loaded
Lucky and Wild
Maximum Force
Mechanized Attack
N.Y. Captor
Night Stocker
One Shot One Kill
 Operation Bear
Operation Thunderbolt
Operation Wolf
PlayChoice 10: Duck Hunt
PlayChoice 10: Wild Gunman
PlayChoice 10: Hogan's Alley
Point Blank
Police Trainer
Revolution X
Sharpshooter (Rev 1.7)
Showdown
Space Gun
Steel Gunner 2
Target Hits
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Tickee Tickats
Triple Hunt
Turkey Shoot
Under Fire
Vs. Duck Hunt
Vs. Gumshoe
Vs. Hogan's Alley
Who Dunit
Zero Point
Zombie Raid
 
And here's the page with additional information for each game, including their marquee and a nice screen shot:

http://www.act-labs.com/gun_mamegames.htm


edit:  just noticed he said dual guns. meh. i'll leave this post anyway.

[patrickl]

Does Terminator 2 work with 2 guns? I remember playing that in the arcades with two guns anyway.

[Lilwolf]

And drop another 1/2 of those off the list where the original used a gun sitting on top of an analog joystick.

These don't play well with an act labs since it expects you to keep the trigger down.

[atog]

would it be possible to make a toggle switch to make those other 1/2 work?  IE: always open instead of always closed (or vice versa)

[1UP]

BUMP

I would be interested to know *exactly* how you got the dual guns working.  I have 2 PC Virtual guns, and so far all I can do is get both working as one mouse, or get two separate trigger inputs with one of the guns unable to do any aiming.  I just can't seem to get the multimouse thing working right...

The confusion for me stems from the inclusion of options such as -lightgun, -dual_lightguns, -multimousexp, -lightgun2a/b etc.  It's unclear when to use what.  Should I use my guns as lightguns or mice?  What is all this 2a/2b crap?  I've tried almost every possible combination of settings, what am I doing wrong?

[Spaced Invader]

1UP,

I think Einstein said something like, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results."

So, I think you should troubleshoot with a pair of USB mice. Who knows, maybe when you plug the guns back in they'll just work....it's an idea...it COULD happen...

Let me know.