TOPGUN LCD GUN

[seanx820]

i got two working at this time and they seem to work in mame... but i have 2 questions

my 2 questions.....!

1) as you move your laser towards corners, does the laser and mouse cursor become more and more off? mine is and i am making sure that is normal...

2) i installed the guncon2 drivers and it seems to just 'work' as soon as the gun comes up.. do i still calibrate the topgun lcd guns like i would if i was using their driver, maybe that would make it more accurate..., maybe there is something else i need to change...  (the wiki on arcadecontrol has a install guide for lcd topguns, but it needs to be rewritten, it took me like 5 hours to get stuff even close to what i wanted...)

-sean

[Kabukiman]

I just ordered Two TOPGUN LCD Gun's as well so this info would definitely help, I checked the 45 page thread but have not gotten through it all.

[seanx820]

yeah that thread is defiantley old too, and lots of people were just 'trying' stuff,
i am also wondering, i am using an old sony VGA monitor and was wondering if a TV would change anything at all...
i really didnt think it would

[fano78]

sean Wow... you actually got 2 top guns to work!!!  Can you please explain how you did it?  So an idiot can understand?  I've been trying for days trying to get them to work and I just can't.  I'm currently running vanilla mame .122.  The guns only work with the emstopgun drivers 3.2.  But my problem is they both control player 1, and not both players.  Also, only "mouse buttons" work on mame.  If I program any "keyboard buttons" on the gun they won't work on mame.  It's killing me that I can't figure this out.

I tried installing the guncon2 drivers but my guns don't show up at all under that driver.  Maybe I'm just not installing it correctly, or maybe I got the wrong version.  I don't know.  All I know is the only bit of success I've had is using the emstopgun drivers.

PLEASE... any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[Afterburner]

I got one for Christmas and I've been playing with it trying to get it to work as well.

I too have noticed the same problem with the cursor drifting off the pointer near the corners.  It will be dead on near the center area of the screen.  At any of the four corners it is off by as much as an inch on my 17" CRT.

I've tried different calibration techniques to try and adjust out the difference.  I've aimed just outside the corner and just inside the corner.  Neither fixed the problem.

I've not found it to be usable for cursor control.  It's too erratic and imprecise. 

All of the buttons work just fine.

I've read all of the 45 page thread and it sounds like most people are having success using it.  I don't see how, unless they are using very large screens.

[TPB]

At any of the four corners it is off by as much as an inch on my 17" CRT.

Are you standing back the recommended distance from the screen, being a minimum 3:1 ratio (ie, a minimum of 3 feet back, for every 1 foot distance between your LCD sensor bars) ??  This is a restriction on the use of the LCD Topgun.

For anyone with a CRT display, the Act Labs light guns are probably still your best option.

The technology may be a bit dated, but it's stable, proven, reliable, accurate, and arcade authentic.

And who cares about dated technology, when we're talking about equipment to play games from the 80's and 90's ??   

With the Act Labs light guns, you DON'T have to "stand back a mile" from the screen, and you DON'T need to fuss around with LCD sensor bars.

The LCD Topgun's still appear to be flakey ... you may get lucky and find they operate great for you (they do for some), but others have driver problems, USB connectivity issues, accuracy issues, etc.

I wouldn't go for the LCD Topgun unless I had no other option ... which means anyone NOT using a CRT display ...

... and even then, if you're patient, there's bound to be a "Wii remote to PC" solution available soon ... already, there are Wii lightgun frames (incorporating the Wii remotes), and it's only a matter of time until a product is released that interfaces these to a PC.

Apparently, the Wii LED sensors are superior to the LCD Topgun's, as they don't have the same restrictive requirement to stand "so far back" from the screen to obtain accuracy.

[Kabukiman]

My two guns were delivered yesterday and I was able to get 1 working on everything in Mame, all I did was install Smog's drivers, I havent tried using the second gun yet but I will post my findings when I get around to it, It took some time calibrating etc to get everything to work but everything seems to be working

[ark_ader]

I could never get both guns to work at the same time all the time.  I must have changed the drivers a dozen times.

It would have been more fun poking my eye out with a rusty nail, then to get those two guns working 100%. 

Please advise as I would like to get them to play HOTD on the Xbox.

Thanks

[seanx820]

sean Wow... you actually got 2 top guns to work!!!  Can you please explain how you did it?  So an idiot can understand?  I've been trying for days trying to get them to work and I just can't.  I'm currently running vanilla mame .122.  The guns only work with the emstopgun drivers 3.2.  But my problem is they both control player 1, and not both players.  Also, only "mouse buttons" work on mame.  If I program any "keyboard buttons" on the gun they won't work on mame.  It's killing me that I can't figure this out.

I tried installing the guncon2 drivers but my guns don't show up at all under that driver.  Maybe I'm just not installing it correctly, or maybe I got the wrong version.  I don't know.  All I know is the only bit of success I've had is using the emstopgun drivers.

PLEASE... any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

yeah to get the guncon2 drivers finally to work i followed this page EXACTLY its kind of hidden...
(they don't just show up automatically until you do this)


go to http://xoomer.alice.it/guncon2/
then click on Documents on the top bar
then go to Tutorials
then go to Installation and update guide
then do that
then when you open the guncon2 program the guns will show up

for mame i pretty much followed the act-labs guide
http://www.act-labs.com/products/Act%20Labs%20Light%20Guns%20on%20XP.htm

but skip crap about act-labs, just follow the MAME stuff---, it should work on the latest version of mame
ive tried several versions

tell me if you have problems

seanx820@gmail.com is my email seanx820 is my aim

[seanx820]

For anyone with a CRT display, the Act Labs light guns are probably still your best option.

 i had act-labs gun and they came in a crap box wrapped like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, were inaccurate by over 2 inches and had no way to calibrate them more then kind of slowly going over the monitor with the gun, i tried 2 different monitors, 2 different guns, and 2 different vga boxes, besides the fact that they cost like 200 dollars if you want 2 guns where as i got 2 topgun lcd with motors for recoil for less then 100, i think i made a better choice and will figure out how to get it more accurate, i even finally talked to someone in their company who thought my computer was just too new for the guns and that there was nothing i could do so i sent them back, by the way its in british columbia so expect a heavy shipping bill if you video card happens to not support the guns..

[seanx820]

My two guns were delivered yesterday and I was able to get 1 working on everything in Mame, all I did was install Smog's drivers, I havent tried using the second gun yet but I will post my findings when I get around to it, It took some time calibrating etc to get everything to work but everything seems to be working

how accurate is it, and did you need to calibrate with smogs drivers? explain how you did that

[Kabukiman]

well in Mame it's almost dead nuts on accurate, I did the  hardware calibration listed in the EMS installation guide, I had to do this several times, at first I ran into issues with LED interference. Once I had that figured out it was pretty much trial and error to get thing's perfect. The only calibration I did in Smog's was setting the edges, and mapping the buttons. Last night I unpacked the second gun. I have not been able to get it to work in Mame but I really didn't have the patience to screw around with it. Using the Actlabs troubleshooter, I was successful in getting both to work in House of the Dead 2, which let me say is badA$$ with two guns  , tonight when I get out of work I will mess around a little bit more with Mame, and post what happens.

[Afterburner]

At any of the four corners it is off by as much as an inch on my 17" CRT.

Are you standing back the recommended distance from the screen, being a minimum 3:1 ratio (ie, a minimum of 3 feet back, for every 1 foot distance between your LCD sensor bars) ??  This is a restriction on the use of the LCD Topgun.

The LCD bars are currently temporarily clamped to the sides of my cab.  They are about 30 inches apart.  I have to stand back at least 7 feet.  That is *way* too far back for a little 17" screen!  I may try some double-sided tape and stick them directly to the plexi over the display.  That will get them as close together as possible.  The display is right on the other side of the display (in fact the monitor bezel is touching the plexi) so I don't think that is causing the distortion.

Eventually I'd like to go with a nice large LCD.

I've not tried the TOPGUN on my large 65" DLP TV, but that's because I don't have an xbox or ps3 or anything to hook it up to.  Nor do I have a PC attached to it.

[seanx820]

check out this video on 100 inch screen

[Afterburner]

OK...had some time to fiddle around with the gun some more last night and got it working better.

I ended up scrapping the EMS drivers and going with the GunCon2 drivers.  I'm not convinced that the EMS drivers wouldn't work just fine, but as I've got the other ones working, I'll stick with them.

First I taped the LED bars directly to the bezel plexi to get them as close to the actual screen as possible.  That let me stand a good bit closer.  Unfortunately, even with the GunCon2 drivers, I still noticed that the cursor would overtake the pointer from the gun near any of the edges of the desktop.  It's like there is a weird gain on it or something.  I tried adjusting numerous settings, but couldn't get that to go away.

I fiddled around with the mame.ini file and some of the settings in mame32 that I saw in other threads about lightguns.

So, I fired up Terminator 2, calibrated the gun hardware to the T2 resolution.  Then I calibrated the gun inside the service screen from T2.

At first it was a little irritating.  The mame generated crosshairs didn't always track well with the sight in the game itself.  Not sure what's up with that.  So I hit F1 and turned them off.

After that T2 was much better.  I didn't notice any problems with the sight overtaking the pointer during the game.  Everything seemed dead on and much more playable.

I'll try again this evening with Operation Wolf and see what happens.

I also need to hook my second trackball back up.  I had to disconnect it to use the lightgun, but I feel pretty sure I should be able to use all three now.

[milhouse]

So, I fired up Terminator 2, calibrated the gun hardware to the T2 resolution.  Then I calibrated the gun inside the service screen from T2.

Can you explain this?  I was able to get my gun working in Operation Wolf, but now I am having a problem with T2.  When I go load the rom, the gun continues to track.  I can then go into service mode and it seems to be tracking and calibrating.  But when I start a game, only the buttons work - I get no tracking from T2 (though the mame crosshair tracks).

Is there something else I should be doing?  Thanks

[Afterburner]

Can you explain this?  I was able to get my gun working in Operation Wolf, but now I am having a problem with T2.  When I go load the rom, the gun continues to track.  I can then go into service mode and it seems to be tracking and calibrating.  But when I start a game, only the buttons work - I get no tracking from T2 (though the mame crosshair tracks).

Is there something else I should be doing?  Thanks

Sounds like a configuration problem in mame.  I think mine was doing the same thing and I had to use the -lightgun option or something like that.

Keep in mind I'm also using mame32UI v0.116.

Take a look at your controllers and make sure you have them mapped correctly.

[lanman31337]

Which versions of mame are you guys using?  .116 i know had no problems, seems like after .121 it broke for the light guns

[milhouse]

I'm using .122u8

[BASS!]

To all of you who can't get both your guns working at the same time i recommend a different build of mame. I use mameui32fx, it has an option under controls that lets you check/uncheck enable 2nd light gun. I think there is a hack for mame that they just throw right in to the build. There are a couple 3rd party mame builds that work great and have even better playability then the standard mame binary.

[lanman31337]

I'm going to try to uninstall and reinstall the guncon2 drivers.  It works great in windows, not at all in mame.  I've tried the build you just discussed, mame+32 and mameui32.

edit: guncon2 drivers were wonky.  uninstalled, reinstalled them, they're picking up properly now.  they're a teeny bit shaky, but I can live with that.  nice build by the way

[milhouse]

I'm going to try to uninstall and reinstall the guncon2 drivers.  It works great in windows, not at all in mame.  I've tried the build you just discussed, mame+32 and mameui32.

edit: guncon2 drivers were wonky.  uninstalled, reinstalled them, they're picking up properly now.  they're a teeny bit shaky, but I can live with that.  nice build by the way

If you are able to get T2 to track, can you let me know what your mame lightgun settings are, or if you had to go into the service manual to calibrate?  This is driving me nuts.

Thanks

[lanman31337]

T2 is a goofy game - it won't let me use light guns.  It was a reversed mouse in the arcade, not a lightgun game like you would think.

[Silver]

T2 used positional joysticks, not guns, and can not be played correclty (IMHO) with Act labs or guncon2 guns that flash the screen. LCD Topguns can be used to play the game perfectly.


Although I have not tested the most recent EMS driver, Smog's driver generally worked out easier and superior for mame.

The Topguns are very accurate - I have 2xTopguns, 2xActlabs, 2xBlaze Guncon2's.  When everything is calibrated, there is not much between them but both the Actlabs and Guncon2's occaisonally have an "off-shot", say 5% of the time. Never had that issue with the Topguns - there only problem is range (can't get too close).

NB, you should have no problem at all using windows with topguns - I can use it to double click on icons on a 17" crt no problem. If its all over the shop, you may have infra red interference from your lights/sunshine etc...


Topgun Calibration. This is what causes most problems getting mame up and running.

1) There is an in-built hardware calibration for the topguns that must be performed before anything else. Read the manual/wiki etc...

2) Driver install - Smogs driver has pre-set config for Topguns (this is because all topguns give identical data ranges on X and Y, so once hardware calibrated you don't *need* to calibrate the driver. If I recall there was an option in the driver config panel for Topguns (but its been a while!).

3) At this stage you should be able to control the windows mouse accurately with both your guns. If you can't - don't even bother running mame, something else is wrong.

4) Assuming you have windows mouse control, you can start with mame. Remember that:

a) lightguns are treated as mice by mame. (It can not and should not be able to tell the difference). running with "-v" or verbose will show you what mice/lightguns mame is detecting (if you are using command line mame).

b) you need to tell mame what 'mouse' you want to use for what input. There is some info for doing this here: http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Mame_Lightgun_Setup

c) Once all that is set - you then need to configure the game itself for the guns. This is the step that is often missed out or forgotten. It varies for game to game - often light gun games will do this at first start it if there is no nvram file present (i.e. you never ran it before). Or you can access it by running the service mode once the game is running. e.g Termiantor 2 - press f2 for service mode, select "calibrate guns" and calibrate with your gun....


NB Range of Topgun2's.

Note you can reduce the distance you have to stand back by:

1) mount the LED bars top and bottom of the monitor (makes them closer together). Get them working normally first though, remember you will need to re-calibrate when you move the bars.

2) Hack the bars and move the leds closer together. (there are vids on yotube of someone doing this with wii sensor bars - its the same principal)

[lanman31337]

Just something I'd like to add - I'd been messing around with some things.  Make sure that in your mame.ini that dual_lightguns is 0, and make sure you have mouse for your lightgun controller, not lightgun.  I'd been trying everything, I had it working, and then it broke.  So I figured out what broke it, and now it's working great.

I'm still having problems with getting the guns to track at all in T2 - I changed ADStick to mouse in mame, and still won't track, but the triggers for the guns work fine.

[milhouse]

Interesting --

Instead of mouse for my lightgun controller, I use lightgun and it works.  Not sure if mouse does.