ACT LABs Response to Requests!

[mc-escher]

Hi Jeremy,

I wanted to inform you that our website has been updated in regards to the specifications for our TV USB Light Gun.  The good news is that it now supports S-Video input only and either S-Video or Composite video output to your TV.  This is in response to many requests we have been getting about the improved picture quality of a pure S-Video signal compared to Composite.  A second improvement we are going to implement is an increased light gun cable length.  We will extend this cable to 10 feet.   For an increased USB cable length, we suggest purchasing a USB extension cable but we may extend this cable lenght as well.  Also, for the two player light gun issue, we are looking into this matter and working alongside game developers.  Future light-gun-supported-games may have a two player option as a result.    

I'm also glad to inform you that, with all these improvements, we plan to keep the price point for our TV USB Light Gun at approximately USD $39.99.  Please feel free to inform anyone and everyone who is interested in our TV USB Light Gun of these improvements.

Regards,

Jimmy Mui
Electronics Technologist
Act-Labs Ltd.
www.act-labs.com

  -----Original Message-----
  From: ********
  Sent: December 14, 2002 3:14 PM
  To: orders@act-labs.com
  Subject: TV based lightgun


  Hi,

  I recently saw your announcement about preorders for a TV
based lightgun,  and while it would normally be a product I
would buy instantly, there are  some limitations that keep
me from ordering it at the moment:

  1)
  The chief being SVideo input to the TV.  Basically, I (and many
in the mame cabinet development community) have spent a lot
of cycles in design time creating our systems to support SVideo
from the card to the TV, for reasons of  improved video quality.

  The idea that to use this product we would then have to
DOWNGRADE to Composite is unacceptable to many of us.

  I personally (and likely many others) would  be willing to
pay more for a product that meets my specifications rather than
none at all for one that  doesn't.

  2)
  The issue of dual gun support is also a stopping factor. As I
understand it,  this is because the ACT-LABS interface uses the
USB HID mouse support and windows can only handle a single
pointing device. I would vote, instead,  for something more
flexible like the HID Joystick interface.  MAME and  others
could easily add support for multiple joysticks whereas Windows
is locked to one mouse (though I'm running in linux and do not
have that restriction)


I would be more inclined to create my own positional gun setup
where I could  connect two guns rather than purchase a
product that limited me to a single  gun.

  In this case I would also be willing to pay more for  something
that meets my needs as opposed to nothing at all for something
that doesn't

  3)
  The size and shape of the gun has caused some consternation among
  individuals in the community. (gun too short, USB cabling too short,
  Reload button with odd placement for left handed people, or people
  who would want to play with BOTH guns simultaneously)

  I'd be overjoyed if these issues were addressed, but it would not
  hinder me from buying a gun if issues 1 and 2 were addressed.

  Thanks for your time.

[Smack]

That is mint!

[tom61]

  Now posted to news.

[SirPoonga]

svidio imput only, that sucks too.  why not gie customers the coices the of doing svideo or composite with just a cable.

[BASSOFeeSH]

The site mentions an included S-Video->composite cable.

Are there even cards that have composite out?

[SirPoonga]

The site mentions an included S-Video->composite cable.

Are there even cards that have composite out?

There are tv cards with composite out.

[Anonymously]

The good news is that it now supports S-Video input only and either S-Video or Composite video output to your TV.  

I think Act-labs is doing a great job of listening to some of our request.  Hard to find with most company.  I'm ordering 2 right now for that matter.  (Just incase that I make a cabinet with TV in it.

[ITrek]

Yes!  This is certainly a company that is listening to it's customers and trying to provide as good a product as possible within reason.  Hopefully they'll develop two player guns if they see good support on the single player version.  I for one don't have any problem supporting a company like this.  I just pre-ordered one too.

[Xiaou2]

 Can I get a Hell Yeah ?!    

  All it takes is a demand, and several voices.   Thanks all who have took the time and energy to tell ActLabs what we really wanted.

  Whhooo  


 Sincerely,
 Steve

[Sasquatch!]

YES!

[darkmanx]

wow, I am going to write them a letter complimenting them on listening to thier customers, i suggest everone do the same!

[Howard_Casto]

The site mentions an included S-Video->composite cable.

Are there even cards that have composite out?

There are tv cards with composite out.

First off I went ahead and pre-ordered mine, I suggest everyone go do the same.....  What are you still doing here?  Go get it now!!

For those that are still here.  There are cards that have a seperate port for both composite and svid.  This isn't a prob as it only takes about 2$ worth of electroinc bits to merge a svid signal into a composite.  As act-labs posted on thier site, they give you a cable with the bits in it so you can still use composite in on your tv.  Yes they do make cards with only composite out but those are oooooold cards.  If that's the card you have in your mame machine then you have other issues as you might barely be able to play duck hunt on it.  

[BASSOFeeSH]

Now all we have to worry about is whether or not enough people will pre-order.

[Ghoul]

My only regret is that it looks like its shaped funny.

I love the feel of the time crisis guncon, so comfy.

However, if this means I'm playing area 51 s-video on my cab then it's as good as purchased.

[Jakobud]

I don't think the shape of the gun is THAT bad.  It could be worse.  I have a feeling that when a manufacturer make some sort of toy gun like this, that they do NOT want it to look too real.  I mean all it takes is some kid to walk out into the street with a toy gun and possibly get shot by police or something if the gun looks real enough.  It's happened.  Remeber the original Nintendo Lightgun?  Remember how it was originally gray but then soon changed to bright orange?  That was because of accidental shootings like this.

Could be worse.  I wonder how hard it will be to hack into a different body...

[Anonymously]

Okey now that we (hopefully) have it for the S-video TV, I wonder how can we use it (or modify it) for the Arcade Monitor?

This dude says he made it possible but he has not posted any info so far(only in italian).  So I'm not sure if it's true or a hoax.

[nipsmg]

I'm not even sure if I'm going for a TV or a D9200 yet, but I STILL think I'm gonna pre-order a TV gun, if not for any other reason than to help make sure these get released.

I'm really impressed with the way that Act-Labs is responding to customer requests.  It's refreshing to see a company that's not taking the "you'll eat whatever we feed you" philosophy, and is actually redesigning a product around what the CUSTOMER wants.

--NipsMG

[Jungle]

Great news!

I'm on my way to preorder!

I wonder how many they need to produce this thing.....

[JQ]

The lack of the s-video option was the only thing that kept me from placing an order when I first saw a post about this.  When I saw the update, I immediately ordered one.  Now if the minimum order can be met.

Daniel

[Howard_Casto]

I don't think the shape of the gun is THAT bad.  It could be worse.  I have a feeling that when a manufacturer make some sort of toy gun like this, that they do NOT want it to look too real.  I mean all it takes is some kid to walk out into the street with a toy gun and possibly get shot by police or something if the gun looks real enough.  It's happened.  Remeber the original Nintendo Lightgun?  Remember how it was originally gray but then soon changed to bright orange?  That was because of accidental shootings like this.

Could be worse.  I wonder how hard it will be to hack into a different body...

Man why are we agreeing so much lately?  I've got to agree with you on this one too.  I still have an original grey nintendo lightgun before the controversy, and let me tell you, since then the design of guns, arcade and otherwise has went downhill.  Anyone remember Maddog MacCree?  They took a REAL gun and put optics in it.  Now all of the new guns are some nasty orange or blue color.  Now the act-labs gun, granted looks nothing like a real gun, but at least it isn't ugly.  To be honest I would be rather ashamed to have my nice clean, black cabient trimmed in chrome and blue have some p.o.s. orange gun mounted to it.  And although I think that the gun "censoring" legislation regarding this issue is complete and total b.s., I can't really complain about trying to portray gun violence in a negative light when the games are meant for children.  

Would I like to have my arcade gun as realistic as possible?  Your damn right I would.  Would I like little Timmy with the mental condition down the street to have his arcade gun look like a real one?  Are you crazy?  That kid eats his own poop I don't want to even begin to confuse him.

So for the greater good I would rather have a gun look like a phaser (which every star trek freak knows is only set to stun, not kill)  than a 45.  

Also if you can keep the optics/lenses aligned which merely requires some good cutting/gluing skillz it should be fairly easy to put it in another shell.  to be honest though it should match my cab quite nicely.  Hmm... perhaps i could get my buddy to chrome plate the casing.

Ok there's my bit of social commentary for the week, don't hold it against me.

Now go buy a lightgun NOW!!!

[Jakobud]

lol

yes, everyone go preorder now

[Sasquatch!]

I don't think the shape of the gun is THAT bad.  It could be worse.  I have a feeling that when a manufacturer make some sort of toy gun like this, that they do NOT want it to look too real.  I mean all it takes is some kid to walk out into the street with a toy gun and possibly get shot by police or something if the gun looks real enough.  It's happened.  Remeber the original Nintendo Lightgun?  Remember how it was originally gray but then soon changed to bright orange?  That was because of accidental shootings like this.

[Warborg]

So for the greater good I would rather have a gun look like a phaser (which every star trek freak knows is only set to stun, not kill)  than a 45.  

Also if you can keep the optics/lenses aligned which merely requires some good cutting/gluing skillz it should be fairly easy to put it in another shell.  

Dude, don't give me any ideas...  I already have enough work to do!!  Hmm...  A lightgun mounted in a phaser rifle...  

[1UP]

I'm still waiting until they confirm that it will be 2 player.  I'm too busy/lazy to keep up with things and cancel my order in time if it ends up being only 1 player...

Dammit, I've already hacked together a dual positional gun system that works as either a single mouse, or dual joysticks.  I can't see why they can't get this working, using joystick emulation rather than mouse, or maybe even both!  And since it's using a TV signal, you've got 2 fields to work with.  They should be able to just have the guns use scanlines to figure out where theyr'e aimed (like they do now) and then assign each gun to alternate fields (i.e. gun 1 gets field 0, and gun 2 gets field 1) to figure out which gun is which.

Sorry, I know everyone wants this gun, but I'm not willing to spend money on a product that only has half the functionality that I need.  It's like me buying a joystick that only goes left and right.  "Well, 1UP, isn't it better to go left and right than not at all?"  Nope, a joystick is useless to me until I can go up and down as well.  This is the same reason I wouldn't buy a digital camera when they only did 640x480.  Now that I can get a camera with at least double or triple that res, (basically approaching the quality of film) at a much better price than the old ones, I'm seriously considering it for Christmas!    All the folks who just couldn't wait and bought the old, expensive, slow, low-res ones paid for the R&D to get it to the point where it's now worth the money for me to get one.  Thanks!

Anyhoo, no manufacturer can expect to get all their potential customers in one swoop.  Getting new customers is yet another incentive for them to improve their product.  And Act Labs just doesn't have me yet...

[Howard_Casto]

I'm still waiting until they confirm that it will be 2 player.  I'm too busy/lazy to keep up with things and cancel my order in time if it ends up being only 1 player...

Dammit, I've already hacked together a dual positional gun system that works as either a single mouse, or dual joysticks.  I can't see why they can't get this working.  Using the TV, you've got 2 fields to work with.  They should be able to just have the guns use scanlines to figure out where theyr'e aimed (like they do now) and then assign each gun to alternate fields (i.e. gun 1 gets field 0, and gun 2 to field 1) to figure out which gun is which.

Ok 1Up your a nice guy so don't take this personally when I say.... let it go man.  

For the millionth time I will explain this to you like countless others have in this thread.  Not having dual guns is a limitation of WINDOWS.  Act-labs has absolutely nothing to do with it.  They decided to make a gun that emulates the mouse and thus only one mouse can been read at a time. This was probably a smart move on thier part as ALL gun games use mouse emulation on the pc.  The guns will work in dual mode right now, but it requires special software calls and custom drivers so that windows see's the second gun as a joystick and the game in question has to be coded to take all of this into account.  

In other words the guns do support 2 player but there isn't a single game, mame, or other wise that will support more than one gun.  Is this act-labs fault?  No it's not because up until now the gun didn't exist and ALL pc gun games are 1 player only.  They are walking on uncharted terriotry onthis project and when they say "we will work with developers to get 2 player support" what they mean is we will try to make it possible to get 2 player gun support in mame and hopefully pc game developers will try to comply as well.  

Again man I'm not being mean here it's just that literally just about everyone is excited about this product and you keep coming with the negativity and bringing up issues that have already been explained and can't be helped for now.  Your bumbing me out man.  Just be happy, the guns are good.  

Did I remind eveyone to go buy a gun?  No?  Well go buy one NOW!!!

[Lilwolf]

Howard, you are a nice person also... so don't take this personally (had to).

They don't support 2player.  In win98 you can have 2 or more mice working with analog mame.  Act labs will now work in this setting because the drivers will conflict with each other.  

They also wouldn't work in a system that handles multiple mice well (linux) because of this.

They are considering fixing this, but at the same time they will go to a joystick... but this sucks unless it's done right because the last versions acted as a joystick, and you have major calibration issues (calibrating the lightgun itself, then for the application).

I would like them to fix it so they can work next to each other as a mouse like a real mouse... and let people use analog mame... then write a generic joystick driver for XP and windows as an after thought... but this is really what sucked about the last ones.

[Brax]

So make it work like a joystick.

There's other options you know. You can't just blame windows. (although thats MY favorite part time)

The point is that it COULD be done, its not totally impossible. Of course theres other factors to weigh in, but my point is that it's theoretically possible.

[Lilwolf]

Actually you can't get xp to recognize 2 mice without a TON of troubles... This IS Microsofts fault.

You would have to create your own driver.  You would have to make the item NOT look like a mouse.  

Then after all that you would have to find a way that software could get the information.

Then after that, you would have to find companies to support it.... and hopefully add hooks for older games (House series ect).  this is by far the hardest part.  Why?  They already tried and failed.  The old gun system worked great... for the 2 demos it came with.  If there wasn't an ingame calibration, it wasn't worth playing at all.  The resolution seems about the same (I have both the usb and the game system).  

Trouble is that MS has lumped all the mices on top of each other (like they always did) but removed the ability to ask for information from an individual mouse.  So in 98 you can get generic mouse info (any of them) or one....

Trouble with joysticks that you have two maps.  One calibration for the screen... then one for the joystick to the game.  And only one can be done automatically (like the USB).  The other is ingame.  

Also, any game that uses the joystick as a relitave move (ie, left on the joystick is move left instead of location on the left side of the screen) will never ever work with a joystick lightgun.

[Howard_Casto]

Howard, you are a nice person also... so don't take this personally (had to).

They don't support 2player.  In win98 you can have 2 or more mice working with analog mame.  Act labs will now work in this setting because the drivers will conflict with each other.  

Actually they do support 2player... gathering from the various cryptic emails that act-labs has sent people it appears that they already have a hid joystick interface in place and it's in testing.  I am aware of joystick inteface problems regarding the old guns, but those issues were due to the fact that act-labs tryed to treat the guns as joysticks in the games as well.... that was the blunder.  The games have to be coded specifically for lightgun input, even though it will come through as raw joystick data.  

Yes as mice they won't work, but they won't be interfaced as mice in 2 player mode.  

Also something you said which I can't let go (sorry )  

Put out a patch for XP as an AFTERTHOUGHT?!?  Afterthought?!?  Where have you been?  Every new mame cab in the past 6 months has pretty much had xp on it unless it ran an arcade monitor.  Also xp is the standard windoze os now.  To code a driver scecifically for 98 would be crazy at this point.  Regardless of the application and the target market, i this day and age programs have to be written for xp first and the older versions second.  

Sorry, I had to pick on you on that one.

Ok go buy a gun.  You already bought one?  Well go buy a spare, what are you still doing here?

[Anonymously]

Hey folks those are very informative topics.  (I almost got lost on that one )  But lets not forget the main thing.  

GO AHEAD AND BUY IT ALREADY!!!
 

(Sorry, I just want to break the Ice a bit)

[1UP]

Look, Howard, it's just not worth it to me at this point.  I already have a dual gun system that works, and there ARE Mame games that support this.  I can use these on any game that used positional guns, but obviously, the lightgun games wouldn't work with two, since these use mouse emulation.  I can still switch one of my guns to mouse mode in software to play the lightgun games.  I don't know if I need another input device that does the same thing.  And I AM married, so it would be nice to keep all the controls 2-player friendly!

Now what would get me to buy one of these guns is if Act Labs stated that they would make a 2-player addon later on, that would allow me to just buy one other gun that would work alongside their current model.  If they made one that could be switched from mouse mode to joystick mode, either in sofware ore hardware, this would basically accomplish what I want.  I already have enough unused hardware in my closet, I don't want to buy a $40 gun that is going to be incompatible with whatever they release 6 months later.  Sorry.

Hey, look at it this way, you've got until February to convince me I'm wrong!  Don't get so bummed, man!  

[BASSOFeeSH]

I'm going to order my tonight(cashing my check!)

Do it!

[rampy]

I had seen in another thread in another board (a.g.e.m. ? mame.net A@H?) that the magic number was 200 pre-orders...

*shrug*


rampy

[eightbit]

Any1 have any idea how many they have?

[rampy]

Any1 have any idea how many they have?

nope... google newsgroup thread where i "heard" this

I read in another forum somewhere else that they were either just below or at halfway (and that was a while ago) although take that with an ocean of salt...

rampy

[Jakobud]

They need 200?? Man...I just don't think there are enough of us for that....

People seem to still think that spending $40 on the gun means that all you are doing is buying a gun.

What you are really doing is investing in Act-Labs.  You are supporting Act-Labs to come up with newer and better ideas and products.  

I can't believe that so many people on this board spend so much money on their cabinets (and lots of people even have multiple cabinets) but they are too cheap to shell out $40 for good cause/investment like this.

[Howard_Casto]

Agreed... some people (cough cough, 1up, cough cough) have spent literally hundreds of dollars on controls alone, but yet they aren't willing to spend 40 more bucks.  Unless your so broke that you can't afford to spend 40 extra bucks on anything, it is practically your duty to get one.  (And if your a hot chick it's your duty to please my booty but that's another issue.)

[rampy]

They need 200?? Man...I just don't think there are enough of us for that....

People seem to still think that spending $40 on the gun means that all you are doing is buying a gun.

What you are really doing is investing in Act-Labs.  You are supporting Act-Labs to come up with newer and better ideas and products.  

I can't believe that so many people on this board spend so much money on their cabinets (and lots of people even have multiple cabinets) but they are too cheap to shell out $40 for good cause/investment like this.

Hey jaco,

I bought a usb light gun (well technicall mrs.rampy did... but still)  and I want more MAME-er/cabinet catered products out there...

But I don't believe in corporate welfare... I don't look at actlabs as a benevelent company trying to help gamers...  

If 200 is really the magic number for them to justify production, and there isn't 200 TV  monitor mamers out there... well.. that sucks.  But it doesn't justify people who don't need a TV gun purchasing them.  it just means a smaller company/outfit, who hopefully listens better to target customers, creates a product that better fills our need (tv, svid, duelie gun capable)... (but probably at a higher price, initially)

OR maybe someone comes up with a way to hack the existing USB light gun or one of the other light guns around...

sorry Actlabs isn't the redcross.. and supporting them today doesn't guarantee that they'll make better/more useful products that I will buy down the road.

just my opinion, nothing else...

rampy

[Brax]

For some of us it's not JUST 40 dollars.

Its 40 dollars plus Canadian exchange plus the 20 bucks American they'll charge us to ship within the same bloody country. That cheap lightgun is all of a sudden 80 dollars.

And it doesn't do everything I want? No thanks. If they don't come up with the product I need, someone will someday. I'm patient.

[atog]

Sorry Howard.  I have seen hundreds of MAME and other arcade projects and not one has ever been done by a hot chick.  I would imagine that 100% of the people who post on this board are men, no chicks at all (hot or not).