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| Ok we have lightgun support, now what? |
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| Frostillicus:
speaking of sonic technology, anyone ever own a 3dzonemaster from techmedia? That had the L-shaped receiver that was mounted on the upper corner of the monitor. I first thought of using my old one for mame(tracks the mouse and felt like a gun), but could not find a driver for xp :( I think the manufacturer went out of business - can't find a driver anywhere on the web. too bad, it was rather fun to play with many many moons ago. ;) It doesn't look very sophisticated - and the receiver could be a bit less-klunky looking if it's intended use would be for a cabinet. plus it plugged into the serial port - so it didn't matter what type of screen you used. I agree with Lilwolf that sonic should have been the way to go. |
| neo777:
I looked up some reviews on the zonemaster. I originally thought people were refering to inferred sensing... and I couldnt see that as being too accurate... But, I found that it used a form of sonar. In any event... the reviews pointed out the the accuracy was pretty aweful... and prefered the standard mouse. Heres part of a review from http://www.joy-stick.net/reviews/other/3dzonemaster.htm -------------- Performance 60%- The overall performance of the 3D ZoneMaster can be summed up in one word- "Yuck". No matter how used with different configurations the control in mushy and inaccurate. With Quake II I bounced off the walls no matter if I used the placement of the controller in the air or the hat switch for movement. trying to hit a switch button with this thing was very difficult if not possible. Moving targets were even more difficult to frag. Every first and 3rd person shooter I played gave the same poor performance and control. The only game was playable was Virtual Squad. The controller allowed me to aim at the various targets with success but my scores were higher and I was less frustrated by simply switching to my mouse. Plus the graphics of the game are weak by today's standards. The 3D ZoneMaster gave decent performance as a Windows remote/mouse. I used it as a navigational device in Netscape and to get around the Windows environment. Control wasn't superb but did get the job done. I still prefer the system mouse any day. The biggest factor for comfort was having to extend your arm to keep the controller in "the range" of the receiver. Extended use results in a sore arm. Its just not a natural way to control anything. -------------- Even if the technology could be a little more updated... the cost would probably be a nice $100+ And, I wonder if 2 devices would actualy work together. Not to mention, this still leaves developers the need for special drivers for 2 players. And finally, the L-bar may not be long enough for some tvs, or too big for thier monitors. What then?! Make a few different versions? That would add to the cost too. |
| Howard_Casto:
--- Quote ---speaking of sonic technology, anyone ever own a 3dzonemaster from techmedia? That had the L-shaped receiver that was mounted on the upper corner of the monitor. --- End quote --- |
| u_rebelscum:
--- Quote from: Lilwolf on July 14, 2002, 08:59:51 am ---button1 is for player one. button2 is for player two.. mouse presses come in together (ie, if you press both buttons on the mouse, since they come through as two different mouse events...). --- End quote --- With mame at least, you could run into a timing problem since both guns are seen as one mouse, and mame does not buffer inputs. Outline: gun 1 fire = mouse button 1, gun 2 fire = mouse button 2, both treated as same mouse. Mame reads mouse input from directX's unbuffered current state (not the mouse events*). Example: gun 1 and gun two both fire. gun 1 gets into the buffer first, with the mouse event (x=1,y=1, button 1 = click), gun 2 is right behind with mouse event (x=5, y=5, button 2 = click). For gun 1 location to be correctly read, mame must poll the mouse after the gun 1 mouse event is stored in directX's mouse current state, but before the gun 2 mouse event over writes the location with its coordinates. If directX processes the gun 2 mouse event before mame reads the mouse current state, the old state is lost, and mame will think both guns have gun 2's coordinates. So: gun 1 event => mame mouse poll/read => gun 2 event is fine. But: gun 1 event => gun 2 event => mame mouse poll/read is not. * Mame lets directX process the mouse (& joystick) events. directX takes the mouse events, processes it, and stores the data in a "current state" memory location, that mame can poll and read the data from. Almost all directX games let directX process mouse events for them, unlike most applications that use the win32 or java mouse APIs. --- Quote ---only trouble... you could only have 1 button each... --- End quote --- directX mice can have 4 buttons in 3.0, 8 buttons in 5.0 and up. No trouble with number of buttons. --- Quote from: Howard_Casto on July 14, 2002, 02:06:20 pm ---I've been thinking about this lightgun frequency problem and I'm beginning to wonder why everyone sees it as such a problem. Yes the aiming calculations of the gun are dependant upon the refresh rate as well as hor/vert frequencies, but your telling me that a driver couldn't be made that let you configure this? I mean how hard could it be.... Setup a calibration program that puts a very tiny dot in the center of the screen. Hold the gun to this dot, pull the trigger, and blamo! Now the computer knows how long it takes that monitor to draw half the screen double the value, divide by the bit depth and you know how long it takes to draw one pixel. Am I wrong on this? --- End quote --- This is exactly how the new actlabs lightgun is going to work. With a calibration program and everything. Calibrated a little differently than the way you discribed, but basically the same: start calibration program, move gun straight up & down past edges of screen, move gun left and right past edges of screen. This way takes into account CRT monitors' 17" == 16" visible property more precisely. Actlabs even has a stupid video on-line. --- Quote ---As for this 1/60th of a second debate. Let me assure you that you CAN have two players shoot at exactly the same consistently. Me and my cousin did it all the time, but we were both trying to shoot the same thing. :) Fortunately game designers are aware of this and make lightgun games to where the player 1 side of the screen has targets altenating to the player 2 side of the screen. The only exception are boss characters but as they are as big as a house generally both players are shooting in the same direction in which case it doesn't really matter as your both hitting the target. If you don't believe me go to your local arcade witha couple of your friends. Have one play the game with you and the other stand in the back and take note of your hits. What you'll find is once in a while (and i mean very rarely) player 2 will get credit for a shot player 1 made and vice versa. That's part of this natural flaw in lightgun technology regarding firing at the same time. I think they might have a solution now though, as this doesn't seem to happen on most of the newer gun games, just the older ones. --- End quote --- Okay, I'll take your word on it. I'm looking at it from an (input) programmer's point of view, and if the real arcade games had the problems I've been discribing, mame should not try to fix them, IMO. But many (non "real emulation" type) people think these "bugs" should be fixed, so they might not like it. And thus poor sales (and poor reviews, and bad press for actlabs). Thus the second reason actlabs is reluctant to put out a two gun model. (The first being that all games would need to be patched.) |
| bob sanders:
have you guys played that real fire fighters gamee look a system16.com for info well it had a water hose and it was constantly on the screen does not flash and the water goes where you point it so no gyroscopes i didnt see any big ass L bar on the 60 inch screen either the room was also well lit as optical guns only work full time if its in a real dark location what technology are the water hoses using i dont got a clue |
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