Truth about ACT GUNS please.

[Demon-Seed]

Hi
I was wondering on the status of the light guns. I use mame (windows command) I heard that there was problems with the guns but there may be fixes? can anyone explain? can u get the guns to work in a PC Cabinet? do they work in anything else besides mame? please let me know.


thx in advance
Jim

[slug54]

Yes they work and yes there are issues.

I'm using a 17" PC monitor in my cab for now. My results have been mixed, There are some games it works great on
and some that it barely works. There is a mame build on act-labs site that supposedly addresses some issues but the zip file is bad , It says it should be 3mb but it DL's at 256k.
I'm hoping this fixes some of the mame games.
here are my results with mame.

Zeropoint - Aiming is off to the left and up a little, I'm really
                  hoping this is  fixed by the Actlabs build.

Exidy games  - Very accurate, but man some of these  
                       games were cheesey.

Police trainer  -  very accurate, but if I try to squeeze off
                         6 or 7 shots fast it looks like one shot
                         registers off screen when it was dead on.
                         This is now my favorite game.

Under fire    -    I can not get the gun to re-load. so after 6
                         shots I'm done. If anyone knows
                         how to fix this please post.

Terminator 2 -   I tried to get it to get it to work
                         but it wouldn't calibrate properly.
                         someone posted a fix on this board.
                         but I haven't tried it yet.

                       
                         General MAME issues

Aiming sight - Since some guns were joysticks the aiming
sight would follow where ever the gun was pointed.With this gun since it's optical the sight will remain whereever you last shot, this can be distracting. This can give problems
in some games, I think it was COMBAT  the grenade would go wherever the last shot was and this did not seem right
though I've never played this in an arcade so it may be normal.

Calibration - Since a lot of shooting games use different resolutions you need to calibrate at the start of each game.
not really an issue just be aware of it.


All in all I am happy with the gun. It does work with other games, since it behaves like a mouse, pretty much any game that you could use a mouse on will work.
I have not tried FPS games  because I can't see shooting
with 1 hand and moving and choosing weapons with the other I just don't think it will work , although it could be fun for hiding and sniping! It will work with the latest windows command line version of mame. I'm hoping actlabs fixes their mame build or someone else makes a lightgun build
that addresses some of the issues.
If you have any questions or want me to test a specific
game let me know and I'll check it out.

                               Slug54

[OSCAR]

The good MAME32 binary is in 6MB source file download.  I tried Zero Point with the Act Labs version of MAME32, and the targeting now seems dead on.

I only played a couple rounds of Zero Point so far, and I'm not sure what else they fixed.

[Demon-Seed]

Personally I use Lazarus so I need the windows command line version is it fixed??? does it work?

Where the best spot to score act gun? their site? what games have you tested that work right on??

thx
Jim

[OSCAR]

The WinMAME binary is in the source file download as well, but I haven't tried it yet.  I actually just downloaded the file a little bit ago, so I haven't had a chance to try it with much other than Zero Point yet.

I purchased my gun through a ZTNet store (Mameworld) since ZTNet is in Ann Arbor which is only forty minutes away from me.  I had my gun the day after I ordered it, but I still haven't had much time to really play with it yet.  I have picked up some extra springs, and I'll gonna swap out the trigger spring with a lighter one and see if that works better.

[slug54]

The Actlabs mame build definitly fixed zeropoint, It is dead on acurate now as far back as the gun will reach. Thanks for the tip oscar for finding the executable.
One thing though I tried police trainer on this build and the graphics are all messed up. wrong colors ,missing words , etc. Oscar or anyone else can you confirm this problem.
I will test some of the other games and report on any other problems fixed tomorrow.

                            Slug54