WOW New LightGUN Info !!! Woot!!! :)

[str1der]

Farmboy,
               I don't have the guns but from reading your  posts it sounds like you have them plugged into a USB hub. Not all USB hubs provide enough power for devices like this. Try to plug them into USB ports on your machine if possible.

[Dr Gori]

ErikRuud,

The link you provided, when clicked, gives an error saying the file must come from the host site.

Perhaps you could put a link on your site, and direct people there.  Then they can check out your nice CP too!

I knew things would get straightened out when more people got their guns.  I am really enjoying using mine, but am glad that 2 player is getting hammered out.

[Farmboy90]

It works through my smoked plexi.   No issues there.   

Are you guys having to configure all the gun games to change the Digital Sensitivity?  Mine seems to track too slow, so I usually end up raising it quite a bit.

[Kobex]

It looks like the site has been updated (linked in the first post) to have both versions of LCDGun2Mouse.exe.  They also have a note below the links:

Note : A few customers reported that Gun2Mouse V2.1 comes with the CD could not work

           in their computer. This may be the problem of driver crashing. If you can't use the

          Gun2Mouse V2.1, please use the Gun2Mouse V1.0 in the above link.

　

          Our engineers are now working on the new version of Gun2Mouse program so as to

          prevent the driver crashing problem. Please check this page for new updates.

http://www.hkems.com/product/xbox/LCDTopGun.htm

I want to thank you all you BYOACers for being the guinea pigs and getting this all worked out.  I've never had a chance to play MAME or even a console since the SNES with a light gun, and it looks like that will be changing soon.  I'm glad to hear it works fine through smoked plexi, as that's about the last thing I need to get to make my cab look fairly complete.

Now I just have to decide if I need to buy one or two...

[darthbane2k]

Woot!

My gun is now shipping!

Gonna have to wait a few days though,as im in the UK!

I did a test setup of mame on my second PC yesterday with the gun games - set it to enable mouse and all seem to run okay. This should mean as long as the gun is regonised and acts like a mouse, things should be alright.

Now can someone start another thread, maybe in the hardware forum, posting all of the working drivers and installation instructions/ mame settings for these guns, so that people can find what they need within ONE source?


Also, can someone clarify whether the actual gun is wired/connected to the LCD stands in some way, and whether this thing works with FCE Ultra for Duck hunt/wild gunman??!!

What about zsnes and yoshis safari??!!

Anyone tried operation wolf yet?

[darthbane2k]

Here is a link to the older version of LCDGun2Mouse.

http://erikruud.freeservers.com/arcade/LCDGun2Mouse.zip  You still need the driver.exe as well.

At this point it still looks like the WinGun or Guncon2 driver give us the most functionality.

I tried to get the PC version of VirtuaSquad2 working using the Wingun and Troublshooter, but I could not get it to work with both guns at the same time. Only one or the other would work.  The controller configuration in VS2 would only let me set one player to be mouse controlled.

this link is dead.
can we get a working one up please?

[ErikRuud]

Try this:

http://erikruud.freeservers.com/arcade/lcdtopgun.html

or this:

http://www.hkems.com/product/xbox/LCDTopGun.htm

[darthbane2k]

Try this:

http://erikruud.freeservers.com/arcade/lcdtopgun.html

or this:

http://www.hkems.com/product/xbox/LCDTopGun.htm

thanks. You have to click on the link and not right click/save as.

Are there any other drivers I will need for mame and PC games such as HOTD, or is gun2mouse all I need?

[markc74]

Does anyone know if these LCD stands can be taken apart and just the LCD's remounted inside a cab?

Sorely tempted to get these... 

[ErikRuud]

As I understand it right now.

The best choice for drivers is to use the Acorn's Wingun or Smog's Guncon2 drivers. 

As far as I can tell, the EMS LCDdriver and  LCDGun2Mouse will only support one player at this time.

There are some PC games that you need the Trouble Shooter

[darthbane2k]

Does anyone know if these LCD stands can be taken apart and just the LCD's remounted inside a cab?

Sorely tempted to get these... 

just mount them neatly outside your cab.

[darthbane2k]

As I understand it right now.

The best choice for drivers is to use the Acorn's Wingun or Smog's Guncon2 drivers. 

As far as I can tell, the EMS LCDdriver and  LCDGun2Mouse will only support one player at this time.

There are some PC games that you need the Trouble Shooter

im only gonna install the one gun, so i take it the lcddriver is the one of choice..?

[Minwah]

Heres a (low quality) vid of T2 in action..

Looks great

Could you do one of Operation Wolf?  No matter really, I succumbed and ordered one yesterday too...

[JoyMonkey]

One more quick question, then it's ordering time *waves paycheck in air*

Do you have to calibrate the gun everytime you turn your cab on? Or does it remember where the LED stands are?

[ErikRuud]

You do not need to keep recalibrating as long as:

1. The stands have not been moved.
2. You stand more or less the same distance from the screen.
3.  The resolution of the games has not changed.

[darthbane2k]

Heres a (low quality) vid of T2 in action..

Looks great

Could you do one of Operation Wolf?  No matter really, I succumbed and ordered one yesterday too...

Minwah you are in the UK right? What shipping did you opt for?

[ErikRuud]

I have been exchanging some emails with Henry from EMS.

I have updated him on what is working and what is not.  I mentioned the Gun2Analog idea to him.

I have also asked him to keep me posted on updated drivers and offered to beta test for them.

We'll see how it goes.

[darthbane2k]

You do not need to keep recalibrating as long as:

1. The stands have not been moved.
2. You stand more or less the same distance from the screen.
3.  The resolution of the games has not changed.

so whats the easiest way of forcing just the gun games alone to display in the same resolution (I assume res will change for other games and emus)

Can I do this via mame32 if it saves time?

[brian23]

Just a little curious... could these be mounted outside the cab? I mean, you are going to calibrate them anyways to get the correct "square" by shooting in all four corners? I've never used one of these so I may be way off...

[ErikRuud]

I'm not sure.

I have configured MAME to force all games to 1024x768.  I originally did this because I did not like the way my monitor reacted to certion resolution changes.  It was alomost like it quickly shut off and then back on again.

I know you can set up seperate .ini files for individual games to overide the settings in your mame.ini file, but I don't know if there is an .ini that could be set up for all gun games.

[Minwah]

Minwah you are in the UK right? What shipping did you opt for?

Yep, I went for UPS...I'm moving soon so I want it to arrive asap.

so whats the easiest way of forcing just the gun games alone to display in the same resolution (I assume res will change for other games and emus)

Use game-specific ini's to specify resolution.  In MAME32 you can do this with a menu somehow I believe.

[Minwah]

Just a little curious... could these be mounted outside the cab? I mean, you are going to calibrate them anyways to get the correct "square" by shooting in all four corners? I've never used one of these so I may be way off...

Yes I believe that will work from what others have said.

[ErikRuud]

Just a little curious... could these be mounted outside the cab? I mean, you are going to calibrate them anyways to get the correct "square" by shooting in all four corners? I've never used one of these so I may be way off...

Yes you could month them to the ouside of your cab.  I currently have mine mounted to the inside edges of my cab which puts the a few inches away from the screen.

Two things to keep in mind.  
1. The farther apart the stands are the farther away you have to stand.  
2.  The cords on the stands are not made to be detachable, so you will need to get a little creative if you don't want the cords hanging around the outside of your cab.

[darthbane2k]

Just a little curious... could these be mounted outside the cab? I mean, you are going to calibrate them anyways to get the correct "square" by shooting in all four corners? I've never used one of these so I may be way off...

yep they can and thats what im doing. Im not going to rip off the glass from my cab to put these stands underneith - theres no space anyway, as they are 3cm thick.

[brian23]

Sounds great. It makes sense that you have to stand farther back. Pay day is almost here!

Just a little curious... could these be mounted outside the cab? I mean, you are going to calibrate them anyways to get the correct "square" by shooting in all four corners? I've never used one of these so I may be way off...

Yes you could month them to the ouside of your cab.  I currently have mine mounted to the inside edges of my cab which puts the a few inches away from the screen.

Two things to keep in mind.  
1. The farther apart the stands are the farther away you have to stand.  
2.  The cords on the stands are not made to be detachable, so you will need to get a little creative if you don't want the cords hanging around the outside of your cab.

[darthbane2k]

Minwah you are in the UK right? What shipping did you opt for?

Yep, I went for UPS...I'm moving soon so I want it to arrive asap.

so whats the easiest way of forcing just the gun games alone to display in the same resolution (I assume res will change for other games and emus)

Use game-specific ini's to specify resolution.  In MAME32 you can do this with a menu somehow I believe.

How much did UPS shipping set you back? Did you order 1 gun or 2?

[darthbane2k]

so, lets get this straight and make it absolutely clear..

We caliberate the guns via a windows app right? therefore the mame gun games HAVE to be the same resolution as the windows desktop??

How will this affect mamewah if it was a different res? (I probably knw the answer to this)?

What about other emus such as epsxe and fceultra (nes) - will the resolution have to be forced here too?

I take it PC games will also have to be the same res?

So, what res do you reccomend?

[darthbane2k]

another question

are you guys planning to replace the gun cord to something more durable??


any holster options  (non happs) out there, considering their size?

[Silver]

I have been exchanging some emails with Henry from EMS.

I have updated him on what is working and what is not.  I mentioned the Gun2Analog idea to him.

I have also asked him to keep me posted on updated drivers and offered to beta test for them.

We'll see how it goes.

Good work. Thinking about it, this is probably a good avenue to follow up....

[ErikRuud]

so, lets get this straight and make it absolutely clear..

We caliberate the guns via a windows app right? therefore the mame gun games HAVE to be the same resolution as the windows desktop??

How will this affect mamewah if it was a different res? (I probably knw the answer to this)?

What about other emus such as epsxe and fceultra (nes) - will the resolution have to be forced here too?

I take it PC games will also have to be the same res?

So, what res do you reccomend?

Keep in mind that until late last night, I was using the Wingun driver so I am not sure if all these answers will stay the same if we use the EMS drivers.

The guns themselves have a calibration that needs to be done.  This calibration appears to be stored in the gun itself.  It is reasonably painless.  Just hold the A & B buttons to get into calibration, the fire a pattern of six shots (top left led, screen center, then all four corners of the screen).  I have actually unsintalled and reinstalled the drivers and not had to recalibrate the gun. I did however have to redo the software calibration.

When using Wingun (and I assume Guncon2) you still need to goe through the software calibration as well.

Think of it as calibrating the gun to the stands and monitor, and the calibrating the driver to the gun.

Using the EMS drivers does not require two different calibrations.  I have not tried different resolutions yet using the EMS driver.

[Silver]

I have been playing with trying to get mame (or a variant) to track both guns at the same time. No success so far.

I've been trying with Analog+ 83.2 (last version with which the analog changes worked I believe. I've had no luck getting it to work at all. Bizarely the triggers on either gun fail to register as anything (and no motion data at all seems to be passed). Not sure is this is my setup or due to something else.

I was thinking that this is essentially like getting dual trackballs to work (which is something else I have been looking at doing anyway) I have a feeling this maybe to do with the fact the guns are NOT seen by the system as mice at all (I'm using the Guncon2 HID compliant driver). It's the Wingun app that is parsing the gun data, and throwing the data at the system mouse. This is why 2 guns work in normal mame for non tracking games (you are both actually sharing the same mouse I believe) but not for tracking.

If thats right, then analog+mame is no help, I think, as there are not 2 mice to see. According to what ErikRuud posted, the EMS Gun2Mouse app does not support 2 guns anyway.

 Now Smog's Guncon driver may be different - There is code in AdvanceMame that specifically looks for either Actlabs or Smogs lightguns. However, I have totally failed to install Smogs driver on my system - I can't calibrate it at all, which ends up locking my mouse off screen even when the gun is nowhere near the screen. So I can't control my desktop except the keyboard. I am sure this is something I am doing, as someone posted they had successfully used Smogs driver with this gun.

[ErikRuud]

I am running under Win2000, so it appears that I cannot use Smog's driver at all.

As far as I can tell the EMS LCDDriver will allow to guns to be hooked to the system, they both appear as USB Controllers in the Device Manager, but the Gun2Mouse only appears to work on the first one.

Some of these issues with two guns might not be a problem under Win98, because you can have seperate mice.

Has anyone looked at the "Mini game" from the EMS site?

[Lilwolf]

Well, I just ordered 2.  I'll look at it in XP as soon as it gets here. 

But once you get analog+ mame working, make sure you can get it working with two mice first.  Then start playing with the guns.

but since they have already started talking about fixes in drivers... they are actively listening to problems.  If the gun2mouse driver only works on the first controller... this is probably something they limited since most people wouldn't ever care.   But they might compile a driver without the check for us to play with at our own risk.

[ssc arcade]

This thread got to 7 pages fast, I like what I have read so far and will be placing my order.  Nice timing my cab is about 75% done, now is the perfect time to put these in with no impact on my design.

Where is the best place to order?  Is there still anyone who is looking to get a bulk order together?

Thanks for all the homework from our testers in this string.

[ahofle]

Wow, now I'm starting to get excited.  Thanks to Silver, Erik, Farmboy, and Dr Gori, and everyone else for being the pioneers with these guns.  I'll probably be putting in my order today now that Silver got Area51 and HOTD2 working with 2 guns. 

[Silver]

Well, I just ordered 2.  I'll look at it in XP as soon as it gets here. 

But once you get analog+ mame working, make sure you can get it working with two mice first.  Then start playing with the guns.

but since they have already started talking about fixes in drivers... they are actively listening to problems.  If the gun2mouse driver only works on the first controller... this is probably something they limited since most people wouldn't ever care.   But they might compile a driver without the check for us to play with at our own risk.

Ah good point. I'll dig up another mouse to test with. Will analog+ offer the options of more than 1 mouse if it does not detect them? ie I get to allocate p1 to sysmouse and p2 to mouse1 in the menus - does this mean its detected 2 mice?

My current feeling is that they are not even seen as mice in my setup, but then they are listed as HID devices? It would be great to see a config guide for analog mame.

[Silverwind]

Do these guys work with console emulators?  Can you play duck hunt with this?? 

[brian23]

Farmboy,
               I don't have the guns but from reading your  posts it sounds like you have them plugged into a USB hub. Not all USB hubs provide enough power for devices like this. Try to plug them into USB ports on your machine if possible.

Maybe we could try using a hub that has external power supply?

[Farmboy90]

You can  mount these outside, but I would strongly recommend mounting the LED stands as close to the screen as possible - in order to make the distance between them as small as possible.

The reason is that it is impossible to shoot accurately (at things like desktop icons) when you are standing so far back.

I can't shoot anything in windows (not that I care, but this affect would apply to gaming as well), because the pointer constantly "shakes".  The further you are away the more "stable" you have to be since any slight vibration in your hand will translate to more wild movement of the cursor (since you are further away).

The one drawback of this technology seems to be just that - that you have to stand so far away and becasue of that will have problems with pinpointing things.

However in gameplay (where it matters most obviously) this effect doesn't seem to come into play much.  The objects there are much larger (as opposed to icons) and are moving. 

I need to try the resolution trick Erik mentions though.  Maybe that will help slightly as I bounce from game to game.

I will try to work more on the 2 player deal tonight too.  I ran out of USB ports, but just came from Fry's and picked up a powered 4 port hub, so I should be good to go tonight.

[Farmboy90]

Farmboy,
               I don't have the guns but from reading your  posts it sounds like you have them plugged into a USB hub. Not all USB hubs provide enough power for devices like this. Try to plug them into USB ports on your machine if possible.

Maybe we could try using a hub that has external power supply?

Just bought one this morning bro.  I will let you know if that changes anything.