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=allb) 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.