Light Gun Games without Light Gun?

[Tiger-Heli]

Pretty basic question, but I haven't seen it asked anywhere.

I am using the basic windows port of MAME 0.62 (mamew) with a PC monitor and was wondering how to play these games.

I would think the mouse would work best, but it doesn't seem to.

The crosshairs are controlled by the arrow keys.  I don't know if a PC joystick will control them or not.  I tried enabling mouse and lightgun and tried just enabling mouse and the mouse doesn't do anything.  The mouse works in games like Centipede.

Also, F1 turns the crosshairs off, but I can't find a way to turn them back on.

What are you guys using???

All help appreciated.

[Silverwind]

I've tried operation wolf.. not quite the same using a keyboard. hehe.

eventually I'd like to get a pair of lightguns.. sounds so far like light-guns are hit and miss?

[Xiaou2]

 Some games that appear to be lightgun games actually used an analog joystick (like T2).   The mouse should work in these games tho... so maybe your configurations need to be deleted.  

  Go into the cfg folder and delete them, and also the NVram, and delete it.  

  Also for games that used Rapid machinegun type fire... wont work with current lightguns,  because of realtime tracking issues.   The mouse or an analog joy will work best for these.

 

[TaskyZZ]

You need to enable the mouse in your front end.  If you use command line, then I think it is -mouse, but I am not sure...

As for the light guns.  If you are playing on a monitor, the current Act Labs gun works great.  But you can only have one of them...

[BASSOFeeSH]

I've tried operation wolf.. not quite the same using a keyboard. hehe.

eventually I'd like to get a pair of lightguns.. sounds so far like light-guns are hit and miss?

I think only 1 lightgun will work.

[TaskyZZ]

You need to enable the mouse in your front end.  If you use command line, then I think it is -mouse, but I am not sure...

As for the light guns.  If you are playing on a monitor, the current Act Labs gun works great.  But you can only have one of them...

[greenacarina]

I've run into this one quite a bit. Most of the Exidy shooting games (Crossbow, Chiller, etc...) seem to work pretty good with a mouse, although some of them won't accept the mouse button as the "fire" button in the config menu. Games like Hogan's Alley and Duck Hunt don't seem to work at all with mouse or keyboard. I'm guessing they're set up to work strictly with a light gun. That's my 2 cents,anyway.

Chris

[u_rebelscum]

I use a trackball for all the games.  I suggest enabling the mouse but not the lightgun if you are using just a trackball/mouse (example: mame duckhunt -mouse -nolightgun).  The -lightgun option should work with a mouse just as well as a lightgun, but has a coarser grid than the -mouse option (257x257 w/ -lightgun option vs. screen resolution w/ -mouse option)

BTW, greenacarina, Which games are you having problems with the mouse button?  I haven't ran into this in any lightgun game yet, although I haven't played all of them.  Also, I am not having problems with duck hunt or hogan's alley with my trackball.  I wonder what your setup is that give you these problems....

[Howard_Casto]

The mouse buttons analog controls and other misc. goofy inputs are often bothersome to redefine within mame itself.  The "proper" way to do it is to define these buttons in a ctrlr.ini file.  What? You haven't switched to strictly ctrlr files yet?!?  Well now you know why you should.  

For the record every single gun game I have played (execpt t2 which technically isn't a gun game and is goofy anyway)  works fine with either a mouse or an analog joystick. Just turn mouse on and joystick on and lightgun OFF.  If you don't have a lightgun and turn on both lightgun and mouse you can sometimes have conflicts.  

[greenacarina]

Maybe I'm running the wrong version of MAME (.56), but I can't find an option for lightgun anywhere. As far as the games that wouldn't accept the mouse button......I tried them again and now they are accepting it (some kind of conspiracy, I tell ya!) so never mind about that. Should I get a newer version of MAME? Is it worth it?
TIA
Chris