What I mean is that I've seen quite a lot of arcade games where they have those fixed guns which I think are just kind of analog guns, eg. , and you're not pointing in the same way as you are with a standard light gun (like the ones used in House of the Dead or Time Crisis).
They are called "positional guns" and they work just like an analog joystick. (potentiometers + analog encoder)
Terminator 2,
Operation Wolf 3 (the original used an optical sensor),
Alien 3: The Gun, and other cabs used this type of control.
I've tried with the left stick of an Xbox 360 controller and the cursor moves way too quick to be able to aim at anything which moves accurately, plus as it's always centered when untouched, it is quite tricky to use it for
this kind of games I think.
I've bought a flight stick and I'll see if that improves the experience somehow, but I think those sticks have quite a lot of deadzone, so not sure if they'll be any good if one needs accuracy either. I've not received yet so it might take a while until I give this a shot.
Do you guys know if something similar exists to be able to move/aim a cursor in those kind of games in a similar way on a PC version?
PS: I've seen the aimtrak devices which emulate a mouse, but I was trying to find more like an analog gun rather than a light gun/mouse as such.
Some of the deadzone may be the result of the pots (s-curve vs. linear) or the interface, but be sure to adjust the deadzone default setting in MAME because it is WAY too high for positional gun games.
Check out the 270° wheel (potentiometer) info in
this driving sub-forum sticky for related useful info.
As you observed, thumbsticks often lack the fine control for many positional gun games.
Positional guns are designed to work at a certain distance from a particular size screen so the range of motion corresponds to the area of the screen.
Though these guns were used in a number of dedicated cabs, they are seldom used for MAME setups.
I can't think of any manufacturer that makes home-use positional guns for MAME.
Scott
EDIT: You can use an analog joystick, analog triggerstick, Star Wars yoke, or positional gun with an analog encoder like A-Pac, U-HID, KADESTICK, or KADE miniArcade 2.0.