Author Topic: ActLabs - MAME - Readl Arcade RGB Monitor? Only works outside of MAME (Read 3059 times)

P-r0t · « **on:** March 24, 2003, 09:13:47 pm »

Hi

I'm trying to get this Act Labs usb game gun to work on with my mame cabinet setup.

I'm using the following:

Real arcade RGB monitor.
ArcadeVGA agp card from ultiimarc
Windows XP (sigh.... only went XP for gun compatibility)
P4 2.2Ghz 512DDR ram.

I made the appropiate changes in the mame.ini
lightgun 1

Now heres the tricky part. The gun will work with the windows based games/web based games Act Labs has provided, but not while inside mame.

I chose "point blank" as a game to test with. The game loads and 2 cross hairs appear. After I caliberate the gun I'm able to get one shot off, usually points the P1 cross hair to the bottom left of the screen. After that no more shots are accecpted.

Has anyone seen activity like this?

any help would be greatly appreciated!

thanks!
-P-r0t

Anonymously · « **Reply #1 on:** March 24, 2003, 10:41:11 pm »

Is the Hardware streaching enable or not?

P-r0t · « **Reply #2 on:** March 25, 2003, 08:50:58 am »

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

No hardware stretching is disabled. Does this need to be enabled for the gun to work ? Also, a bit off topic, but is there a way to enable HW stretching without the filtering effect? I prefer the natural look

Thanks
P-r0t

pocketz · « **Reply #3 on:** March 25, 2003, 06:00:58 pm »

my act labs light gun works in mame with my 27" wellsgardner vga arcade monitor. if you havent already, theres a setting to turn on the light gun in mame...

in mame, click options, then default options, then click enable light gun input.

also, try using the gun in an exidy game like chiller or who dunit. those games are the ones i play and they work fine, ive tried playing some of the nintendo playchoice-10 light gun games and they didnt work correctly.

other than that i dont know what could be the problem.

-pocketz

P-r0t · « **Reply #4 on:** March 26, 2003, 08:57:55 am »

hmm I'll give the tab menu a shot. I had thought that enableing it in the config file would have worked, but hey if this works i won't complain

Thanks for the tip!

-P-r0t

Chris · « **Reply #5 on:** March 26, 2003, 09:04:44 am »

Try Sharpshooter as a test game. It seems to be the easiest and most accurate with the Act-Labs gun.

--Chris

P-r0t · « **Reply #6 on:** March 26, 2003, 08:34:26 pm »

well i didn't think it would make a difference, but it apparently did. Enableing hardware stretching WORKED!!! but sadly I don't like the blurry look on the cabinet, almost defeats the purpose.

Also the gun appears to be horribly inaccurate! the grey calliberation screen doesnt come up with hw stretching enabled but for the most part its accurate except for games that require a reload and point off screen... that part takes about 10 or so tries to work.

It also might be the think piece of plexi glass i have in front of the monitor. I'll try it later tonight with it removed.

For the most part I've heard good feedback about this gun, so I'll assume that either my gun is defective or it simply doesn't like my monitor.

if anyone's intersted i have a Sharp 26" monitor in this pirticular cabinet.

P-r0t

Chris · « **Reply #7 on:** March 26, 2003, 08:40:22 pm »

There's a patch to MAME that fixes the shoot offscreen and reload bug. I've applied it and it works perfectly.

The gun's calibration calibrates it to the actual full screen, so if your image doesn't fill the screen, the gun will be accurate near the center but off near the edges. If the grey calibration screen doesn't come up, the gun certainly won't be accurate. My grey calibration screen does come up with hardware stretch on...

--Chris

Zinfari · « **Reply #8 on:** March 26, 2003, 08:45:15 pm »

You may have already read this on the Ultimarc site, but in the forum over there is a thread going regarding this. Sounds like they are having mixed results. Maybe they will have some tips. In looking over the threads I haven't seen anyone with XP run it successfully, but not everyone is posting their specs.

http://www.ultimarc.com/wwwboard.html

Oh yea and here was another thread here regarding this issue.
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=4949

Good Luck,
-Zinfari

P-r0t · « **Reply #9 on:** March 27, 2003, 10:42:16 am »

Hmm intersting news!

Thanks for the replies, any chance you can point me to the location to that mame light gun patch? i checked on mame.net and didn't see it as an official download.

Thanks
P-r0t

Chris · « **Reply #10 on:** March 27, 2003, 11:12:11 am »

It's not official, but I just posted it in another thread at http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=6017;start=0#lastPost . Of course, you have to recompile MAME to install it...

I have it compiled for MAME .65, but .66 requires DJGPP 3.0, and there are other things I can't compile with 3.0, so MAME .65 is the end of the line for me for a while...

--Chris

u_rebelscum · « **Reply #11 on:** March 28, 2003, 07:22:25 am »

Quote from: P-r0t on March 27, 2003, 10:42:16 am

Thanks for the replies, any chance you can point me to the location to that mame light gun patch? i checked on mame.net and didn't see it as an official download.

It's in Mame:Analog+ if you don't want to compile, and works for both Area51 and MaximumForce. see sig

P-r0t · « **Reply #12 on:** March 28, 2003, 10:01:23 am »

kick ass!

thanks i'll try this tonight !

P-r0t

tom61 · « **Reply #13 on:** March 28, 2003, 04:31:35 pm »

Quote

but sadly I don't like the blurry look on the cabinet, almost defeats the purpose.

Change the effect setting to 'sharp', doesn't look as blurry.

Anonymously · « **Reply #14 on:** March 30, 2003, 12:24:56 am »

Quote from: tom61 on March 28, 2003, 04:31:35 pm

Quote
but sadly I don't like the blurry look on the cabinet, almost defeats the purpose.

Change the effect setting to 'sharp', doesn't look as blurry.

Hmmn tom61 How do you do that with Hardware streaching?

StephenH · « **Reply #15 on:** March 31, 2003, 02:45:32 am »

It could be that your monitor is 15Khz and the guns were designed for true VGA or SVGA (31Khz or higher).

radiator · « **Reply #16 on:** March 31, 2003, 04:40:58 am »

Quote from: Anonymously on March 30, 2003, 12:24:56 am

Quote from: tom61 on March 28, 2003, 04:31:35 pm
Quote
but sadly I don't like the blurry look on the cabinet, almost defeats the purpose.

Change the effect setting to 'sharp', doesn't look as blurry.

Hmmn tom61 How do you do that with Hardware streaching?

load up yer mame.ini file and look for the line 'effect none' (may be set to something else if you've enabled scanlines or something) - simply change it to sharp to get a better image

Chris · « **Reply #17 on:** March 31, 2003, 01:41:06 pm »

I thought all the effects were disabled when hardware stretch was active...


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