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Author Topic: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report  (Read 5065 times)

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jasonbar

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EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« on: June 17, 2009, 02:03:25 am »
Howdy-

So, I spent much of today messing with my new pair of EMS TopGun II guns.

The 1st headache was that, when I uninstalled my Act-Labs guns, it bumped my spinners from mouse IDs 5 & 6 down to 3 & 4, so I have to go into MAME & remap aallll my spinner games.  Drag.


1: test on laptop.
a) Downloaded latest driver from EMS--it matched what came on my mini DVD, dated June 2008.

b) I set 1 light bar horizontal along the media buttons at the laptop hinge, about 1" below the screen.  I tilted it slightly upwards by placing USB thumb drives under its front edge.  I propped the top horizontal light bar across the printer & scanner shelves, about 3-4" above & behind the top of the screen.  Bars are about 11" apart vertically & the top bar is about 6" farther back than the bottom bar.

c) Plugged in light bars to USB port & got an LED  lit up

d) Plugged in 1 gun.  Everything went according to the instructions, as far as driver installation went.  I needed to point it to the driver but once (the paper instructions said I'd have to do it thrice).

e) Per the instructional video, I held A & B for 5ish seconds to enter calibration mode, the laser target fired up, & I shot at the top left bank of LEDs, then the top left screen corner, top right screen corner, bottom right screen corner, then bottom left screen corner.  Then the mouse tracked the laser pointer very very well.  COOL!  I was standing about 4ft away from the screen.  [Edit: I had to turn off the floor lamp, with dimmer knob, behind me as it was making the cursor go ape--surely something to do with the pulsing of the dimmer circuit.  Indirect sunlight from the window also behind me in shooting position, didn't seem to be a problem.]

f) Hooked up the 2nd gun.  Got an error with the driver dialog box, but it still installed OK (I later found out that, when installing on my MAME cab, it just copies over the same drivers anyway, so it doesn't seem to matter...).

g) Both guns work fine.  I fired up Crossbow & it worked OK.  Then I fire up Egg Venture to test both guns.  Apart from some minor calibration offsets, they seemed to work as advertised.  Hooray!

h) I discovered what *may* be a useful trick (perhaps totally obvious...?).  If your calibration turns out to be off a little bit AND STAYS OFF IN THE SAME OFFSET, then you can simply tweak the laser pointer adjustment wheels to match your shots.  I use annoying ALL CAPS in the previous sentence because, on my MAME cab, the accuracy offset seems to vary as I shoot on different parts of my screen...some non-linear behavior based on my location & the bars' location, I guess?


2: install on MAME cab
a) My cab started life as a Simpsons.  It's got a 27" Betson multisync monitor, running at 800x600 shoehorned in it.  I've got a smoked glass (which stymied my Act Labs guns) & clear glass sandwiching some flat bezel artwork that frames the monitor nicely when you're standing at the controls.  When you're back several feet, the bottom 1/2" or so of the monitor is eclipsed by the bezel art, because the monitor's got a pretty large tilt to it (OK, so I'm not the tallest tool in the shed...).  Pics: http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/ff97/infernolab/Arcade%20Game/?start=all

b) Because I want to install the light bars behind the glass (I've got lots of room), I taped them to the front of the glass in positions right in front of where I expect they'll go.  I continued the rest of the installation process as described above.  It all went smoothly.

c) After calibration, I noticed that I had trouble getting linear behavior when standing about 4ft away from the center of the monitor.  The offest between the laser pointer & the shots wasn't always the same, based on where I was shooting.  Solution: turn off the laser pointer!  Sounds simple, & it's a shame to turn off such a cool feature, but as soon as I turned it off, I was shooting *way* better.


3: General comments
a) For some reason, I got better shot alignment (between the laser pointer & on-screen game shots) on my MAME cab when I held the gun about 1-2' higher during calibration than during usage.  Weird.

b) This drove me nuts for a while--I had trouble trying to regain cursor control with my trackball.  There's a checkbox on the TopGun program to release mouse control when the gun's not pointing at the screen.  After selecting this, you need to upload the settings to the gun.  You need to do this FOR BOTH GUNS.  I thought that I could do my settings for both guns & then upload once.  Not true.  You must upload settings for EACH GUN.  Boy, that was a pain to figure out!

c) The laser pointer automatically shuts off when you're not pointing at the screen, so you can't blind anybody else in the room.  Smart!

d) With the recoil turned on, it's impossible to click on an icon on the Windows desktop to launch it (I have my Windows set for single click--I try to minimize my double clicks).  When you pull the trigger to left click it, the cursor also kicks with the gun kickback.

e) Now my new guns are mouse 6 & mouse 7.  I wonder what my PC thinks mouse 5 is...?  (I have 2 trackballs &  spinners, which are mouse 1-4...).




4: Next up
a) Pull off the smoked & clear glass & art, tape the light bars in front of the monitor, replace the glass, & try again.  I'll report when I get around to this.


-Jason


PS--the recoil is very cool but does indeed get tiring.  Too bad that the plug required to disable it is right next to the USB plug, buried in my cab.  I'll see if I can isolate that wire/circuit/whatnot & run it through a small switch in the gun handle, next to the "X/P" switch.  It would be nice to allow the user to disable it when desired.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2009, 02:18:59 am by jasonbar »

swamprat96

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #1 on: June 17, 2009, 02:15:54 am »
I had no luck with the bars behind glass- smoked or clear. They sort of worked behind clear but not consistently enough

mimic

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #2 on: June 17, 2009, 09:52:47 am »
Jason thx for your report. Guns hijacking mouse was driving me nuts! I'll check out your solution. Let me ask you this though. As I asked in another thread, when both of my guns are plugged in with recoil enabled, one of the guns just completly disapears very soon after I'll start pulling triggers. I thought it was due to too many usb devices being plugged in, someone else had the same problem, but you also have a lot of devices and yet don't mention nothing of recoil and disappearing guns, should I believe you don't have such problem?
Also after calibration pointer and laser are pretty close to each other in and around center, but as the cursor reaches the edges, they getting seriously misaligned, how about you? Were you able to calibrate it to a point where it's not as bad? It does not matter too much, because I noticed most of the games keeps the action in the center, but occasionaly something will pop up in the corners.

garwil

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #3 on: June 17, 2009, 10:27:17 pm »
I've never used a Topgun before but I think I read somewhere that someone was having the same problem as you with the recoil when they used two guns. I think the solution was either switch off the recoil or use powered USB hubs. I'd guess the recoil action on the first gun takes power away from the second. Again, I'm guessing, I've never used these before!

jasonbar

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2009, 02:01:25 am »
Absolutely no problems with recoil on both guns.  Here's what I've got, USB-wise.

Plugged into my PC: EMS TopGun II #1, EMS TopGun II #2, powered 7-port USB hub, EMS TopGun II light bar

Plugged into my 7-port Belkin powered hub: Logitech Driving Force Pro wheel, Slikstik spinner, Apache Blackhawk Push/Pull spinner, Logitech Attack 3 analog stick, trackball LED light (a "laptop reading light"), X-Arcade Trackball.


As for calibration wonkiness, it's hard to say if it's good in the middle but bad around the perimeter.  Tough to say.  But I can say that it does drift a bit from one extreme location to the other.  The farther away you are, the better this *should* be.

-Jason

jasonbar

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2009, 08:27:48 pm »
A little more work on this today:

Mimic, yah, I'd say that the the calibration *seems * be better in the middle & drift towards the edges, but it's difficult to quantify.



Well, I pulled apart my cab & taped the 2 light bars in the nook between the tube & the plastic bezel (Happ 27" bezel: 49-0106-00).  Then I put the glass & monitor art back.

So, the stuff between the light bars & the guns is:
1: Tempered clear glass, 1/8" thick (from Peninsula Glass)
2: Bezel artwork from MAME Marquees, opaque
3: Tempered #31 gray tinted glass, 1/8" thick (from Peninsula Glass)

It looks like this: http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff97/infernolab/Arcade%20Game/10bezel.jpg , except I had simply laid these 3 items pretty much vertical, with their bottom in the correct place & their top against the marquee's bottom bracket, as they're very awkward to put in & take out with my control panel opened up (to unclamp them at their base).


At first, I got nothing at all.  No response from the guns.  Then I realized that the bottom light bar was a bit on the low side & the opaque marquee bezel artwork was blocking it.


So, I moved both bars in until they were about 1/4 of the way in from the top & bottom of the monitor & stood on a chair to make sure that I had nice line-of-sight to the bars.


The gun now worked, but it was herky jerky & would often cut out & couldn't keep the accuracy that it could with nothing between the gun & bars.



Just to be thorough, in case I was dealing with some reflection issue of shooting through glass almost straight-on, I went through the pain (my back!!!) of replace the glasses properly against the monitor so that I'd be shooting through at an angle.


No dice.  No good.  I barely got through the calibration setup--it wouldn't recognize the corners as valid target points & still kept cutting out & tracking awfully.





Soooooooo, I guess I'm mounting my bars outside of my glass!   :-\


-Jason

mimic

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2009, 11:53:37 pm »
Jason whenever you got time and feel like it, do me a favor and test the following games: critter crusher, steel gunner 2 & Zombie raid. I'm experiencing issues with calibration with all of these games, let me know if you get any problems with them.

Popcorrin

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2009, 11:20:20 pm »
Jason whenever you got time and feel like it, do me a favor and test the following games: critter crusher, steel gunner 2 & Zombie raid. I'm experiencing issues with calibration with all of these games, let me know if you get any problems with them.

Did you calibrate each of those games via the ingame calibration under the service menus? 

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #8 on: June 22, 2009, 12:17:02 am »
Jason whenever you got time and feel like it, do me a favor and test the following games: critter crusher, steel gunner 2 & Zombie raid. I'm experiencing issues with calibration with all of these games, let me know if you get any problems with them.

Did you calibrate each of those games via the ingame calibration under the service menus? 


If I remember correctly now, I don't think I was able to find ingame calibration in their service menus or there was something that would not allow me for proper calibration. I'll check tommorow again to be sure. Btw steel gunner 1 also had same problem as with steel gunner 2, game recticle would just stay in center of the  screen.

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Re: EMS TopGun II: Setup Report
« Reply #9 on: June 22, 2009, 02:12:54 am »
 I have the originals and had them both going fine and then on the next power up they were on the fritz.

 Tried one at a time and would somewhat go ok but now I cannot get either to work right again.

 Ordering the larger led stand as I think it may be the problem with calibrating correctly but also it have had crazy driver issue's with these and only got them to actuall work on 1 pc but there all running the same os on 3 different one's.