Act-Labs Light Guns?

[eyal8r]

Hey guys-
It's been about a year since I've been around. Just got my MAME cab up and running again, and I want to add some light guns to it. I'm running a tv for the monitor, and a 2-player CP setup, complete with dual spinners and dual trackballs. I believe I have the Opti-Pac under the hood (dont quite remember everything I did).

I'm looking at these Act-Labs light guns, and they seem pretty cool. It says they're USB, but- will they work with my setup?  Will they work with a TV monitor?  Also- do I need to go through the Opti-Pac for these to work, or, can I just plug these into the USB and they're ready to go?

Thanks for all the help...

[Lilwolf]

you might be a good candidate for a few guncon2 hacks. 

search around and see.  It requires a little hacking and using 3rd party drivers... But they are as accurate or more then actlabs... and they look cooler... and theirs wireless versions... and theres laser pointer versions... and BEST are they are 1/5 the price!

[markb]

If your runnning a TV for your monitor then don't bother with the Act Labs guns, if you've been out of the loop for a while then you'll not know that someone has written a driver to use PS2 Guncon 2 guns on the PC using a TV via the USB ports.

http://www.acornscity.com/guncon/faq.php

Firstly, it works
Secondly, its alot cheaper than a pair of act labs guns
Finally, it supports 2 guns.

There's a load of threads knocking about the boards so I would start with some of them as i can't remember all of the details.

[eyal8r]

Maybe I'm wrong here, but, it seems as tho there's still quite a few bugs left in this method. ie- Mame32 not working.  If I wanted something RIGHT NOW that is guaranteed to work, looks like the Act-Labs is the way to go, even tho it is more expensive.  Do you guys know of any problems with the Act-Labs guns?

[Samhain]

I ordered an Act Labs light gun from their last round.  The gun itself works well on my (running MAME .79 with a 27" TV) and seems fairly accurate.  I have two problems with the Act Labs gun.

1)  The trigger on the gun is worthless.  The first gun I recieved, i played for a few days, the trigger would not pull back if I tried to pull it with my whole finger.  I had to only use the very tip of my finger.  When my brother-in-law came over to play one day he ended up snapping the trigger because of this.  I contacted Act labs and they sent me a replacement gun... the same problem existed with this one.  One of my friends ended up snapping the trigger this time while playing the game.  (I ultimately ended up having to superglue it back together.)  You can read other places in the forum where people talk about the shoddy triggers.

2)  In order for the gun to be accurate for me I had to calibrate it every time I started a new game under MAME (I use MAMEWAH as a frontend).  This isn't really the bad, just kind of an inconvenience.

Because of these problems (mainly #1) I decided to try the GunCon2 route (I didn't know how thrilled I was about this because it all sounded like kind of a hack that may or may not work).  I am soooo glad that I tried it.  I love me GunCon light gun.  It is just as accurate if not more so than the Act Labs gun, it has only needed to be calibrated 1 time and as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, they are much cheaper.  I paid $100 for my act labs gun.  I got 2 GunCon2 guns off of e-bay for $20 TOTAL (Brand new in box)!!!  I wish I wouldn't have wasted my money on the Act-Labs gun.

I will say this for Act-Labs.  Their gun was fairly accurate and they had good customer service.

[eyal8r]

Awesome- this is very helpful- thanks for posting guys.  Looks like I need to start a search and figure out how to add this thing in.  Is it as easy as plugging it in and loading a driver?  Or, is it more intensive than that?
Thanks!

[Samhain]

For the Act Labs gun, you just need to plug it in and you are ready to go.

For the GunCon2 gun, you need to first install the driver, then plug the gun in (if you are using a TV, and you're ready to go).

For both guns you will need to setup mame.ini properly in order to enable them.  Make sure you enable lightguns under the input section of this file.

[eyal8r]

If I'm running Analog+ on XP, will this be a problem? I also have dual TBs and Dual Spinners...
Thanks!