LCD Topgun - How do I set this up in MAME?

[slapaham]

I have now modified the title of this... look at the last post...

[headkaze]

Can you mount the sensor bars horizontally? I never tried mine are vertical.

[slapaham]

You sure can... read up on the Wiki for the gun. Vertical is meant to be marginally better but I don't have that luxury unfortunately!

[Popcorrin]

Are you sure you calibrated properly?  Since you have your sensor bars mounted horizontally, calibration will be different.

[slapaham]

You're totally right! I hadn't calibrated it correctly... a lot of faffing but its working as the cursor in Windows now - reasonably accurately... any tips for getting it to work in MAME? Just tried it in Chiller and it mainly stayed stuck at the top centre of the screen! I'm chuffed I've got this far as last week I was ready to give it up - wish I'd have experimented a bit more with it in the first place!

[slapaham]

Has anyone got a step-to-step guide or know of one for setting up the LCD Topgun in MAME? I have hardware calibrated it and it is emulating the mouse in Windows but I don't know where to start with getting it to work in MAME. I'm running MAME V.0.56.

[mrserv0n]

Why are you running such an old mame version?

[slapaham]

Easy answer... I have a crappy old computer and thats the best it can handle!

Its odd, I just did mame gamename -verbose and it says MAME is only picking up one mouse - even though I have a mouse, touchscreen and the lightgun functioning in Windows...

[Popcorrin]

If you can find a way, you should try to upgrade.  Newer versions of mame have much better analog input support. 

[Loafmeister]

I thought Dual mouse support in mame came a lot later than that version?  Since the lightgun is seen as a mouse, isn't this the reason why it's not working?

[slapaham]

So I assume in my circumstance I would have to upgrade to a newer version that has dual mouse support? Any idea on what version was the first to incorporate this? Is there no other way I can do this without getting a newer version?

Thanks for the input guys...

[slapaham]

Well, I just found out versions 104 or 105 are good starting points... I'll try them, but I can't think they are going to run all that well on my system, so in the meantime, as I said before, if anyone knows another way of doing this without updating MAME I'd be really grateful!

[slapaham]

For those of you wanting to know - the version is specifically 0.104u5

[slapaham]

I posted this in the software forum as a new thread as I thought it belonged there now (I didn't think it would do any harm to put it here too as this is obviously related!)


I'm trying to get my LCD Topgun to work in MAME - it works fine in Windows XP and moves the mouse cursor reasonably accurately. However, I cannot, for the life of me figure out how to get it to work in MAME. I have now installed Mame 0.105 just for my gun games... the first game I'm trying to get to work is Chiller (rubbish game) just because I know its a gun game and if I can get it to work I can get others to work too.

This is what the MS DOS Command -verbose told me...


Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\December 2007 Restor\Desktop\mame104>mame roms/chiller
 -verbose
error: trailing garbage: "1" on line: 86 of file: mame.ini
   ignoring line
Parsing mame.ini : OK
Parsing exidy440.ini : N/A
Parsing chiller.ini : N/A
Using DirectInput 7
Using RAWMOUSE for Mouse input
Mouse 1 : PS/2 Compatible Mouse
Mouse 2 : USB Device
Mouse 3 : Elo Serial Touchmonitor Interface
Mouse 4 : HID-compliant mouse
Joystick 1: Thrustmaster 360 Modena« / 360 Modena« Pro (USB) (3 axes, 8 buttons,
 1 POVs)
  Axis 0 (X Axis)
  Axis 1 (Y Axis)
  Axis 2 (Z Axis)
Keyboards=1  Mice=4  Joysticks=1  Lightguns=4
Primary buffer: 44100 Hz, 16 bits, 2 channels
Enumerating video device display
Hardware stretching supported
Best mode = 640x480x16 @ default Hz
Primary surface created: 640x480x16 (R=0000f800 G=000007e0 B=0000001f)
Blit surface created: 338x242x16 (R=0000f800 G=000007e0 B=0000001f)
SSE supported
Joystick 0 axis 0 is now analog
Joystick 0 axis 2 is now analog
User cancelled



To outline the controls I have linked upto my computer they are as follows -

Serial Elo Touchscreen
PS/2 Mouse
PS/2 Keyboard
USB Thrustmaster 360 Modena Steering Wheel and pedals
USB LCD Topgun




Now this is the controls section of my MAME.ini -


### Input device options ###
mouse                   0
joystick                0
lightgun                1
dual_lightgun           0
offscreen_reload        1
steadykey               0
keyboard_leds           1
led_mode                ps/2
a2d_deadzone            0.300000
# ctrlr                 <NULL> (not set)
paddle_device           keyboard
adstick_device          keyboard
pedal_device            keyboard
dial_device             keyboard
trackball_device        keyboard
lightgun_device         mouse
digital                 none


What am I doing wrong? And how can I correct it? I don't really know what to do and I have looked at quite a few sources (including the Wiki) and I'm not getting anywhere...

Any help would be great!

[Popcorrin]

You want to go into the user interface(press TAB).  Select Input(general), then select Player 1 controls and scroll down to the lightgun section.   You will need to program the Lightgun X analog and the Lightgun Y analog inputs.  Do this by highlighting, press Enter, and then move the gun left or right for the X input and up or down for the Y input.

[slapaham]

Thanks for that Popcorrin - I'll give that a quick go now... and post back before I head out to work!
 

[slapaham]

Well, just had a look and it says Lightgun n/a in the tab menu - so I'm guessing that means MAME isn't picking up any lightgun - which would correspond with getting no signs of life when I try what you suggested. I don't think the lightgun or mouse are properly set up in MAME yet and thats whats causing the problem.

[Todd H]

Change mouse in the .ini to 1 instead of 0 and see what happens.

[Loafmeister]

I'm not experienced with this but again, isn't the LCD Topgun seen as a mouse?  ie: should that be how it appears to Mame?

[slapaham]

Yeah, I tried it with mouse set to enabled - nothing happened...     ...thanks for the input though!

[Popcorrin]

When you say nothing happened, do you mean the lightgun input assignment still says n/a.

Try using the command line switches -mouse and -lightgun to make sure they are getting enabled.   Then try to assign the lightgun inputs.  Try your lightgun first(when trying to assign the inputs, move the gun fairly quickly in the proper directions) and if that doesn't work at least see if you can assign the inputs to your mouse.   Does your mouse work on trackball games and such?

[slapaham]

Must admit, never tried my mouse in MAME. I know I'm probably being thick here but I've read about the command line switches -mouse and -lightgun elsewhere but it never says where or how to use them!!

Referring to what I was saying - yes, above the x,x,y,y axis button mappings, the field remains as 'n/a'.

Thanks for your help so far... if you can give some guidance as to what and where to use the command lines that would be brilliant...

[Popcorrin]

You'll want your command line to look like this
mame zeropnt -mouse -lightgun