Act Labs lightgun reload button

[doctorhifi]

I am using MAME .126 and two USB TV light guns.  They work really well with one exception.

Both the FIRE and RELOAD buttons register as Player 1 button 1.  This makes it impossible to map the RELOAD button to do something else, like launch a grenade (which I would like it to do for Operation Wolf)

Anyone else experience this?
I have the first gun's switch set to the middle position and the second guns switch set to the top position.
What am I missing?

thanks

[u_rebelscum]

What am I missing?

I'm going to get technical.    You have mame's -offscreen_reload enabled.  This translates lightgun button 2 to button 1 & the location of one of the corners.  What it's translated to is what many of the original games expected to get on a reload, as most didn't have a second button.  The reason it's needed is that your guns (& most other PC guns) send, when shot offscreen, button 2 & location of last onscreen shot.  Since the gun sends the same thing with an onscreen button 2 press, mame cannot tell if it's an offscreen trigger shot (reload) or an onscreen button 2 shot (what you want).

So to be able to use button 2 as a normal button, change -offscreen_reload back to 0 in mame.ini.  You'll lose the reload, though.

[doctorhifi]

Great, thanks for that quick answer.

So in a game like Area 51, where my off-screen reload is currently working, if I turn it off I won't completely lose the ability to reload if I assign button 2 to do this, correct?  I'll just lose the off-screen reload.

[u_rebelscum]

Great, thanks for that quick answer.

So in a game like Area 51, where my off-screen reload is currently working, if I turn it off I won't completely lose the ability to reload if I assign button 2 to do this, correct?  I'll just lose the off-screen reload.

Nope, you'll lose reload on area 51 if you disable reload.  The original game reloaded only by shooting offscreen (game saw trigger + corner location); it didn't have a reload button.  So there's no place to map your button2 to.  For games with reload enabled, that second button will also reload and cannot be used for anything else.  For games with reload disabled, you can use the second button for any button the original game had.

What I'd do is set offscreen_reload to 0 in mame.ini, and make game specific ini files that only contain "offscreen_reload 1" (not including quotes) for the few games that need offscreen reload.  So for area51, I'd name that one line file area51.ini and put it in the ini folder.

With reload enabled, any none lightgun button 2 input can be used to shot grenades.  (But I wouldn't use the trigger. )

[doctorhifi]

that worked perfectly.  Thanks for the tips!