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| Billkwando:
--- Quote ---No. It's a matter of hardware, timing, resolution, and "marrying" the lightgun to windows. Think of lightguns much like all other inputs: "if it works in windows, it should work in mame." Get the lightgun positioning working in windows, and it will work in mame. --- End quote --- This is very helpful and I appreciate your patience in explaining. The problem is I don't know how to tell if it's working because I don't know how to test it. Does anyone know which kind of system the Sega Saturn used for lightguns, or how the Virtua Cop arcade guns work? Meaning if it's like the NES gun or like arcade guns? What sort of light would you recommend pointing the gun at to try it, or is there some other possible test? Is gun calibration something Mayflash would have to write into the driver/calibration utility do you think or do you think it's possible to "test by the seat of one's pants" using an incandescent light or other means (what would be the opposite, a black screen?)? --- Quote ---Think of lightguns much like all other inputs: "if it works in windows, it should work in mame." Get the lightgun positioning working in windows, and it will work in mame. Mame does not, should not, cannot, and will not do the hardware/driver level processing of any inputs. --- End quote --- See, I don't know how it's possible to make it "work" in MAME (and asked about the drivers) because when you hit Tab in a game to configure controllers, all the average light gun game lists are the lightgun options, which were designed for the actlabs gun, so I don't know how I'd go about setting it up. I mean, I can configure it in a fighting game....but that's not exactly gonna help right? Anyways I appreciate the input. Mayflash is pretty cool about making updates so it would be cool if I had some idea of what to ask them to do for the next driver update (assuming it's not just a complete impossibility) Thanks!! Bill |
| Billkwando:
--- Quote ---Does anyone know which kind of system the Sega Saturn used for lightguns, or how the Virtua Cop arcade guns work? Meaning if it's like the NES gun or like arcade guns? --- End quote --- I played some Virtua Cop on Saturn last night and noticed that the whole screen flashes white when you fire. |
| shadowdrak:
All of the modern guns work pretty much the same way. From a hardware standpoint, they are just timed pulses. Since every gun is slightly different, MAME has no way to understand them as raw data. Commercial light guns all have a certain level of abstraction. This is necessary because the i/o bus on most systems isn't fast enough to transmit the data of every pulse. Every type of gun has an indeterminate level of hardware abstraction in its design. It would be possible to make a driver for all light guns from a specific console, but not all light guns. Mouse input in my opinion is the best way to represent gun input on a computer. They are both a point-and-click interface, so why reinvent the wheel? I don't know anything specific about console guns, but assuming your adaptor would even support using it for this function, you would still have to write a windows driver so that your computer can understand the data. Like, rebel said, that is not mame's job. It only understands input from the same type of devices windows can understand(i.e. mouse, keyboard, and joystick, or more generally a HID.) The screen flashes white when you pull the trigger bacause the sensor in the gun is more reliable at detecting white or cyan light than any other color. Some guns do continuous tracking, but that requires the screen to be pretty bright to work properly. The gun basically generates a pulse when it sees a pixel being drawn, so white is the easiest to see flash. There was a more in depth discussion about arcade guns in an earlier thread, so you may want to check it out. It is pretty interesting actually. http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=23576 Your console gun probably can work. It probably sends some other data to the computer when you pull the trigger. From your post, it seems like the adaptor works like a joystick? So from the same screen you were seeing the trigger on, do you see the axis twitch or anything like that. If not, I don't know. You might try to build something like the direct pad pro; then you would get all of the data that the controller sends back. No clue how it does that though. You would probably have to look it up someplace, an SDK for the console or something(no clue). my guess is, that even if you got it working, it would only work properly at resolutions similar to a tv. |
| Billkwando:
Wow shadowdrak! I'd like to thank you on various levels for your post....that's alot of useful info...plus the link! I'm working right now (at work) but will examine your post more closely and try to use some of the helpful insights you've shared and reply with something semi useful. I CAN tell you that "working at TV resolutions" is fine with me....I knew that was going to be an issue in explaining but I've been using TV-Out all along so I should be fine. Also, it does recognize it as a joypad as you asked, and it uses Mayflash's HID driver for the XBox controller.....more later... Also, chances are if someone wrote a driver for the PSX gun it would work with PSX and Saturn guns, because my gun is has a connector for both on the plug....so I'd assume the technologies are close if not identical. On a side note if anyone needs the HID driver for the 40 button Steel Battalion controller it can be found here: http://www.tamanegi.org/prog/vtchid/ One of the readme files is english so don't worry..... |
| Billkwando:
Hi! I got a very useful peice of info about XBox guns from another message board. Quoting post: What is the yellow wire used for? Allow me to quote "Hacking the XBox" by Bunnie Huang: "The video sync signal is a 3.3V CMOS or TTL-compatible signal. It is a basic 15.734 kHz positive polarity pulse train synchronized to the horizontal line time of the composite video output, with a single longer pulse at the beginning of every video field. This signal enable peripherals that are pointed at the TV screen, such as a light pen or a light gun for shooting games, to derive position information." What does this mean? A device that as of yet does not exist would use this signal combined with a lens & photodetector to determine where at the screen you are pointing. I doubt that it will ever be utilized at this point, unless the Linux guys write something to use it. from url: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=6134&st=75 Hopefully this helps anyone looking into using an XBox light gun. |
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