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

[Smog]

GREAT SILVER!
I don't think mamedev will have anything contrary on accepting your changes to drivers for the official mame if you submit it. Did you already do it ?

I wrote to EMS and offered to bugfix and enanche support for LCD guns in my driver as soon as I get a couple of LCD guns. They congratulated for the software, and were enthusiastic  about multiplayer support but they could not send anything for testing ...
So, is link-sang the more convenient place to buy the guns for someone living in Europe ?

[darthbane2k]

Good News.

Altering the initial offset for the GunInputPorts in the drivers for Lethal enforcers (lethal.c) and Lethal Enforcers 2 (konamigx.c) has solved the tracking problems for both games, and both now appear to play accurately.

The specific code changes have been posted here before, and I've summarised them on my site.

You can download a pre-compiled mame with the changes from Minwah here:

http://mamewah.mameworld.net/mametest.zip (PASTE INTO BROWSER, DON'T CLICK!)

or from me here:

http://www.silverfoxy.f2s.com/mame103le2hack.zip

Both downloads are around 9meg, although Minwahs mametest.exe once unzipped is 35meg big (its uncompressed), but mine is the normal 9meg. They are both the same exe, compiled by Minwah.

I can only assume the initial offsets were done to move the cursor off the screen at startup so it did not get in the way (not an issue when using a mouse).

shame I am using MAME .89 - or is it just the drivers you have changed?

[Silver]

No, the change is in mame itself (in the game drivers).

The change is incredibly simple so you could apply it to whatever version you like if you are happy compiling your own?

Alternatively, you can always just use a different version for those 2 games only....

[darthbane2k]

No, the change is in mame itself (in the game drivers).

The change is incredibly simple so you could apply it to whatever version you like if you are happy compiling your own?

Alternatively, you can always just use a different version for those 2 games only....

Im not good with compiling stuff and dont fancy using a different version, as I have my mame games under one EMU screen in mamewah, and as I have the old version of mamewah, I cant config launch settings per game.

If anyone would like to help compile a mame32 0.89 version of this fix then great!

[ErikRuud]

Well...  I got my Topgun tonight...

Sigh...

Couldn't get it to detect on my main PC, but I blame the PC for that, I've had some oddness with drivers lately, been trying to backup and reload but haven't really gotten to it lately...

So, move it to my arcade PC...  I get the pointer when aiming at the screen for the most part, but it kinda flickers in and out in certain spots, and there is like a "dead area" in the lower right corner, about 20% of the screen.  The mouse tracks ok, a little laggy and loses track once in a while.  Tried Duck Hunt in MAME real quick, pointer was all over the place.  Tried PC HOTD1, and the tracking wasn't consistent either, and had the same problem with the lower right corner obviously, but couldn't get the mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen at all.  This is using Wingun, BTW.

So my first 15 minute impression isn't exactly sparkling, but again I only had about 15 or so minutes to mess with it, so hopefully this weekend I can sit down with it and tinker...  But considering I blew a wheel cylinder on the way to UPS that might take up a bit of my time getting it fixed...   

Some thoughts...

For the dead spot and flickering, you may be too close or you are having problems with reflections that are confusing the gun.

The jumping around in DuckHunt sounds like it is reading the mouse in relative mode.  Try running it manually with the command  mame duckhunt -v

The -v option will cause MAME to display a lot more information when the game starts.  As soon as the game is running, hit escape and exit mame.  Now look at text in your DOS window.  I forget the exact wording, but you should see a line that say the mouse is relative or absolute.  It must say absolute.  If it says relative, make sure your lightgun option is set to 1.

For HOTD, make sure you are using the Troubleshooter.

[darthbane2k]

Alternatively, you can always just use a different version for those 2 games only....

actually, I might have to do this as a last resort, in the sense of listing those two games on my ZINC EMU screen, as mamewah launchs batch files for those, thus allowing me to use a different version of mame.

Can you confirm whether lethal enforcers 1 & 2 are the only games fixed by your, erm.. fix?! - Were there any issues with other mame games? Time crisis perhaps?..

[Silver]

at the moment that fix ONLY sorts out the 2 lethal enforcers games.....

However, I'm taking a look at few of the others. I know zombie raid,opwolf3, jurassic park (and beastbusters) don't work well....

Timecrisis - well I can hardly run this game anyway (too slow), but there is a problem with it. The gun tracks perfectly with the crosshair, but on firing the bullet hits up and too the left. This is not a lightgun problem - as exactly the same thing happens with the mouse.

[patrickl]

So, is link-sang the more convenient place to buy the guns for someone living in Europe ?

I got mine from PlayAsia since they were slightly cheaper (I think the difference was a dollar or maybe two, lol) They were delivered in 3 days.

Had to pay 25 euro extra for tax and imports though. Making it a total of 110 euro (132 dollar) for 2 guns. Kinda steep, but these guns are really cool.

[darthbane2k]

anyone got a mamewah skin for GUN GAMES that they would like to share?

[darthbane2k]

So, is link-sang the more convenient place to buy the guns for someone living in Europe ?

I got mine from PlayAsia since they were slightly cheaper (I think the difference was a dollar or maybe two, lol) They were delivered in 3 days.

Had to pay 25 euro extra for tax and imports though. Making it a total of 110 euro (132 dollar) for 2 guns. Kinda steep, but these guns are really cool.

I opted for global priority from lik sang (Hong Kong) to the UK. Its been 7 days exactly and no gun. Normally normal mail from HK to UK takes only 4 days tops.
Im hoping it will show up tomorrow. Although I shuldnt be in a rush as im concentrated on getting the gun games actually instaleld onto the cab first, and those segapc games have been a particular pain in the arse

[brandon]

Good News.

Altering the initial offset for the GunInputPorts in the drivers for Lethal enforcers (lethal.c) and Lethal Enforcers 2 (konamigx.c) has solved the tracking problems for both games, and both now appear to play accurately.

The specific code changes have been posted here before, and I've summarised them on my site.

awesome   I was told that that offset only effected analog games when using a joystick..  good to know it fixes the gun/mouse issues too!  I think there was another driver that had this issue too but cant remember which..  Maybe some of the Namco games like Lucky and Wild or Steel Gunner 1 & 2..  my hard drive couldn't have crashed at a worse time!

[Level42]

GREAT SILVER!
I don't think mamedev will have anything contrary on accepting your changes to drivers for the official mame if you submit it. Did you already do it ?

I wrote to EMS and offered to bugfix and enanche support for LCD guns in my driver as soon as I get a couple of LCD guns. They congratulated for the software, and were enthusiastic  about multiplayer support but they could not send anything for testing ...
So, is link-sang the more convenient place to buy the guns for someone living in Europe ?

That's odd....I got a complete quote on sending two guns to Holland ? I mean buying them. Think they'd be stupid to not send you a couple for free !

[Smog]

That's odd....I got a complete quote on sending two guns to Holland ? I mean buying them. Think they'd be stupid to not send you a couple for free !

Yeah right ... My first thought was comparing them to Andy's from Ultimarc he is another level of bussiness man indeed ...

[Silver]

@brandon:

Your previous post has saved me loads of time: The same offset issue appears to be present in:

(lethal enforcers 1/2 - already fixed)
Golly ghost
Steel Gunner
Steel Gunner 2

and almost definately:

Lucky&Wild

Lucky&wild - anyone played this in the arcade? P1 and P2 appear to have differnt controls, theres a steering wheel in there, guns, pedals... must have been a crazy game?!? I need to be able to play this without a gun first....

Some VERY helpful advice for the above games (again from brandons post):

How to calibrate the guns:
  - hold 9, press f2
  - shoot at the targets it shows using the crosshair
  - after you've shot the target press 9 again to move onto the next one
  - once you get back to the start again press f2 to exit.

I have now fixed the mame source for the above games and confirmed they are all working fine, with the exception of Lucky & Wild. (The fix will be the same, I just need to work out how to play a wheel, 2 guns, 2 pedals all from my keyboard and mouse!)

I've made a new compiled mame with fixes for the all the above. To save space, it ONLY supports lightgun games (makes it easier for testing too). Get it from:

http://www.silverfoxy.f2s.com/mamegun.zip

[Brewser]

author=darthbane2k link=topic=48982.msg480351#msg480351 Where did you buy this game? i'd kill for a copy, same story with the sega pc titles, cant find it anywhere... 

Who Shot Johnny Rock
Mad Dog Mcree
Mad Dog Mcree 2
Space Pirates
Crime Patrol
Crime Patrol Drug Wars
The Last Bounty Hunter

Are all available from Digital Leisure..... But they're over priced from there!! $29.99USD each plus shipping.

The cheapest supplier is Hoots Loot.... www.hoots-loot.com $2.99USD each

Just make sure that you buy the CD-Rom versions, becuase they're Lightgun Compatible.... The DVD versions that get listed as playable on the X-Box Pplaystation and DVD Players are not!

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)   

Don't forget:

Shootout at Old Tuscan
FastDraw Showdown

Thanks for mentioning the other two titles.... I did leave them off the list, I didn't forget them, I left them off because Hoots-Loot haven't got them in at the moment and he was actually only looking to track down Mad Dog Mcree.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

I bought all the games on the list that Hoots has since I have never tried any before. Beware---Hoots shipping charges are very high, but I felt I could justify it by their low CD prices.
I don't have the new gun yet, I will wait until everything has been hammered out. I will still use my old trusty act labs gun for now. I would like to play 2 player games though.

[brandon]

great work Silver!   AFAIK Lucky and Wild had analog guns similar to Terminator 2.  The only difference being that P1 also had a steering wheel so the game wasn't just "on rails".  and there were I few other games that needed that 0x80 offset but I can't remember which...  Golly Ghosts? or whatever its called... I think it had the same screwy offset.  So I guess that offset was for absolute coordinates and if you used a regular mouse for relative coordinates you wouldn't notice, correct?  I tested them all with an analog joystick which is how I noticed the screwy cursor..  anyways.. keep fighting the good fight! 

[jcrouse]

anyone got a mamewah skin for GUN GAMES that they would like to share?

http://www.timoproductions.com/arcade/layouts.html

John

PS...Someone could replace the old Act Labs gun with a nice pics of the new gun.

[patrickl]

How can I get the gun recognized in Smogs Guncon2 drivers? I tried this on two different PC's (one Win XP Pro and the other Win XP Home) and in neither the gun shows up. Do I need to install anything else before? In fact I did install the drivers from the CD (when the gun is recognized by windows). I also tried installing the EMS gun2mouse drivers V1.0 and 2.1 (1.0 seems to work, but in combination with the guncon2 drivers there is no effect)

I have to say it's pretty hard to ge these guns operational. They seem to work off and on. Got them to work and then they didn't work again.

The wingun drivers seem to work, but they don't calibrate properly (wingun only movces the cursor in a rectangle in the upper left of the screen not fuilling the whole screen but about 80% of the screen). The EMS gun2mouse drivers seem to work (in calibration and with the test application), but they don't make the mouse cursor track the gun. It's driving me nuts. I got the EMS gun2mouse drivers V1 to work (calibration worked fine, in Operation the cursor tracks fine), but then I couldn't shoot (couldn;t see how to map the fire button to mouse button 1, but perhaps I should use something else).

Every option seems to have a problem.

[Fozzy The Bear]

author=darthbane2k link=topic=48982.msg480351#msg480351 Where did you buy this game? i'd kill for a copy, same story with the sega pc titles, cant find it anywhere... 

Who Shot Johnny Rock
Mad Dog Mcree
Mad Dog Mcree 2
Space Pirates
Crime Patrol
Crime Patrol Drug Wars
The Last Bounty Hunter

Are all available from Digital Leisure..... But they're over priced from there!! $29.99USD each plus shipping.

The cheapest supplier is Hoots Loot.... www.hoots-loot.com $2.99USD each

Just make sure that you buy the CD-Rom versions, becuase they're Lightgun Compatible.... The DVD versions that get listed as playable on the X-Box Pplaystation and DVD Players are not!

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)   

Don't forget:

Shootout at Old Tuscan
FastDraw Showdown

Thanks for mentioning the other two titles.... I did leave them off the list, I didn't forget them, I left them off because Hoots-Loot haven't got them in at the moment and he was actually only looking to track down Mad Dog Mcree.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

I bought all the games on the list that Hoots has since I have never tried any before. Beware---Hoots shipping charges are very high, but I felt I could justify it by their low CD prices.
I don't have the new gun yet, I will wait until everything has been hammered out. I will still use my old trusty act labs gun for now. I would like to play 2 player games though.

Hoots shipping charges are not high at all!! Worldwide shipping is $8.95USD for the first item and $5.00USD for subsequent items shipped in the same order......  In total the 7 Digital Leisure games I bougt from them as above came to $59.88USD.... Which is only about

[element51]

 Well it seems act labs has a new gun  that can go with the old gun to make mame 2 player games work. Its a little more expensive.

I am looking to buy 2 guns.

Should I wait?

It seems the segintal or any screen gun sound nice. The lcd strips seem to make it work decent. Probs still though....

I am intrested in the firehawk but there not even gonna reveal the proto till a show in may.

I also notice the tons of guncons on ebay for dirt cheap.

I am kinda tied with the act labs new 2 player setup or these new guns. What should I do Cabinet is almost done? Monitor is gonna be a tv or a monitor.

I also noticed that act labs has a tv gun too. Kinda confuses me if I put in a tv in my cab wich do I getr the pc or the tv versions of the act labs guns.

NOTE: to the people buying the digital leisure games that there all only one player. The cd rom versions officially support act labs gun. The dvd video  can still be played on pc w/codecs and dvd softwares. no gun support on dvd.

[Fozzy The Bear]

The wingun drivers seem to work, but they don't calibrate properly (wingun only movces the cursor in a rectangle in the upper left of the screen not fuilling the whole screen but about 80% of the screen). The EMS gun2mouse drivers seem to work (in calibration and with the test application), but they don't make the mouse cursor track the gun. It's driving me nuts. I got the EMS gun2mouse drivers V1 to work (calibration worked fine, in Operation the cursor tracks fine), but then I couldn't shoot (couldn;t see how to map the fire button to mouse button 1, but perhaps I should use something else).

Make sure that you calibrated the GUN HARDWARE! before you try to calibrate the gun in the WINGUN Driver. If you don't it won't work.  Also make sure that you completely removed all the other drivers you tried before you install wingun.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[mamerocks87]

My cab has a 27" arcade monitor, with slight pincushion problems..Will this gun be able to calibrate properly and overcome the slight bent display? how accurate would it be?

-kyle

[ErikRuud]

Hoots shipping charges are not high at all!! Worldwide shipping is $8.95USD for the first item and $5.00USD for subsequent items shipped in the same order......  In total the 7 Digital Leisure games I bougt from them as above came to $59.88USD.... Which is only about

[ErikRuud]

Well it seems act labs has a new gun  that can go with the old gun to make mame 2 player games work. Its a little more expensive.

I am looking to buy 2 guns.

Should I wait?

It seems the segintal or any screen gun sound nice. The lcd strips seem to make it work decent. Probs still though....

I am intrested in the firehawk but there not even gonna reveal the proto till a show in may.

I also notice the tons of guncons on ebay for dirt cheap.

I am kinda tied with the act labs new 2 player setup or these new guns. What should I do Cabinet is almost done? Monitor is gonna be a tv or a monitor.

I also noticed that act labs has a tv gun too. Kinda confuses me if I put in a tv in my cab wich do I getr the pc or the tv versions of the act labs guns.

NOTE: to the people buying the digital leisure games that there all only one player. The cd rom versions officially support act labs gun. The dvd video  can still be played on pc w/codecs and dvd softwares. no gun support on dvd.

I would buy the LCD guns.

The Firehawk will most likely have the same sort of calibration issues as the RGT1 if you move around too much because it is based on the same technology with only two points of reference.

The Act-Lab light guns are not that accurate.

Go to the Act-Labs site and look at the videos for the Sengintal gun.  The tracking looks bad, and the aiming by tilting the gun left and right is ridiculous.

[Silver]

Update: Solved Lucky&Wild tracking issues, and updated the exe.

For the record, this mame build only supports lightgun games, and solves tracking issues with the following games:

Lethal Enforcers
Lethal Enforcers 2
Golly ghost
Lucky&Wild
Steel Gunner
Steel Gunner 2

I'm hoping this can be a tempory solution until the fixes are incorporated into another build, either the main one or some derivative.

Mamegun.zip

NB There are outstanding tracking issues with Time Crisis, ZombieRaid, Opwolf3 and Jurassic Park. If you intend to play around with those I suggest you DONT use this build as I have messed with settings in those games, use regular mame instead.

[ErikRuud]

Cool!

I've updated my site with links to the new builds.

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

[RandyT]

Go to the Act-Labs site and look at the videos for the Sengintal gun.  The tracking looks bad, and the aiming by tilting the gun left and right is ridiculous.

I'm in big time agreement on that one.  I'm wondering what idiot thought that would be good way to play a gun game.  Obviously, it must have been someone who never fired so much as a dart gun in real life (Hmm...I just realised they don't make those anynore...poor kids nowadays)

Anyway, that thing is deserving of a rant that i can't seem to muster at the moment.....

(still waiting for my gun to arrive....probably shouldn't have tried to save the $11, but I thought I could wait.)

RandyT

[jcrouse]

(still waiting for my gun to arrive....probably shouldn't have tried to save the $11, but I thought I could wait.)

RandyT

There really is no price to great for immediate gratification.

 
John

[element51]

 Also intrested in how the new lcd guns work with the american laser games cdroms?

at this point Im ready to hack apart an expensive wireless digital mouse that can move the cursor with the flick of the wrist. it has an analog joystick thats also a click button and I cant remember name of it but Im gonna hack that thing and put it another gun that I emptied out lol.

Anyonw with great feedback on these new lcd guns?

[brandon]

Go to the Act-Labs site and look at the videos for the Sengintal gun.  The tracking looks bad, and the aiming by tilting the gun left and right is ridiculous.

I'm in big time agreement on that one.  I'm wondering what idiot thought that would be good way to play a gun game.  Obviously, it must have been someone who never fired so much as a dart gun in real life (Hmm...I just realised they don't make those anynore...poor kids nowadays)

Anyway, that thing is deserving of a rant that i can't seem to muster at the moment.....

(still waiting for my gun to arrive....probably shouldn't have tried to save the $11, but I thought I could wait.)

RandyT

WOW!  haha.. I just checked out those videos.. Dear God!  That's just about the stupidest thing I've ever seen.  How about somebody just glue plastic gun on a flight stick and be done with it..    Act-labs need to fire the engineer that came up with that..  Probably the same genious that invented the Pistol Mouse FPS..




well, actually the Pistol Mouse is actually a great idea compared to that ActLabs garbage...

[Gh0sty]

I just played Point Blank 1 & 2 with my Girlfriend for about 2 hours !
I used Smog's Wingun driver, everything worked ok, it was very entertaining
to play it with 2 Guns. But the game still have tracking issues! (Silver can you check it?)

But Wingun crashes from time to time on my system when playing with two guns.
Aprox after 10-15min playtime, sometime even earlier, hmm anyone have the
same problem?

R
Gh0sty

[MKChamp]

Ok...been reading the thread in the background...and my 2 guns arrived today. I've compiled my own mame with the changes, etc. About to physically hook them up to my cab. My question is this...
I am running XP with regular MAME(with the exception of the custom compile) and I have 2 guns. CRT monitor.
What is the best driver to play the majority of games with 2 guns?
Acorns or Smogs?

I know both have some bugs, but what is the best overall at the present moment??

[patrickl]

OK, I finally got one gun to work. Didn't change anything really. Guess you just need to be lucky for things to work. I've had hugely different results when calibrating in Wingun. It finally worked for me with the EMS drivers (gun drivers and not the gun2mouse ones) installed and Wingun. Actually it only worked after I pulled the USB cable, put it back in and then the driver installation from WinXp came up (which picked the EMSLCD drivers). Then Wingun detected the gun again and I could calibrate it (and luckily this time it actually calibrated perfectly) Maybe I'll feel brave/lucky and try Smog's drivers again.

The other gun is completely dead though. It fired the recoil twice when I intially installed it and pulled the trigger, but after that it never responded again (no laser no recoil nothing). The stands are slightly disfunctional as well. The red power led doesn't work, but with the working gun it does work. Guess I'm going to have to return that one *sigh*. Hoped I could blast some bugs, aliens or zombies together with my kid tomorrow.

I have the gun stands attached to the TV in the living room. At first there was no complaint since the stands dont really stand out that much, but after I used the standard way of fixing the stands (duct tape right?), the guns were a lot less welcome

[ChodTheWacko]

Okay, this is intersting.

If I plug the gun into the USB ports on my pc, my machine barely boots at all.
It also complains about the CPU fan (?).  I eventually get to my boot manager and my USB mouse is acting totally wild.  Note this is before I even boot into windows.

Very strange.

I put it on my laptop and it's behaving a bit better.  Guncon doesn't seem to calibrate right at all, but the wingun drivers seemed to boot well. 

I got a bunch of games from hoot's loot (nice of them to charge so much for shipping and then jam them all into one priority mail envelope and pay $5 for postage).  (then again, it's cheap anyway, so no more whining).  I'm having a hard time playing them right because so far house of the dead was a 640x480 game, and my laptop seems to be refusing to go into a 640x480 mode for me to calbrate in.   Ugh.

[ChodTheWacko]

Well, I got one gun to work fine with my laptop with little difficulty.

Something that threw me off  was after hardware calibration I thought the laser pointer would turn off if I wasn't pointing at the screen.  It continues to stay on until I get pretty far away from the screen.

However after calibration with wingun, the cursor moves around as it should, so no big deal.

If you have to calibrate the gun at the resolution you play the game at (for example, my laptop is 1024x768, and I forced mame to play at that res which worked fine).   How do you get a game like mad dog mccree to work?  Do you actually desrez your screen down to 320x200, and then calibrate your gun?

 - Frank

[Farmboy90]

I don't think resolution changes affect the gun at all.  I bounce around from game to game with no issues.

[Fozzy The Bear]

If you have to calibrate the gun at the resolution you play the game at (for example, my laptop is 1024x768, and I forced mame to play at that res which worked fine).   How do you get a game like mad dog mccree to work?  Do you actually desrez your screen down to 320x200, and then calibrate your gun?

Hello Frank,
                      Resolution changes don't affect the hardware calibration of the gun, because it's not based on the screen pixels, it's based on the gun seeing the position of the LEDs on the two stands.

Software calibration however, may sometimes need to be done again. I haven't hit any problems with it though.

The answer here is give it a try and see what happens. If you find it's out of calibration, then just run the software calibration again.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[brandon]

I know this is sort of beside the point right now but.. what if you could somehow take the raw data from the gun and convert it to X-Y axis joystick coordinates?  Then you could have as many guns as you like and they would not conflict..  and screen resolution shouldn't matter in that case..   maybe somebody has already tried this.. just a thought..

[ChodTheWacko]

The answer here is give it a try and see what happens. If you find it's out of calibration, then just run the software calibration again.

No dice, I tried house of the dead, and mad dog mcreee, and the virtua squad demo, and all three were unplayable.  The cursor was just all over the place.   Maybe Ishould change drivers.

I also tried lethal enforcers with the modified mame, and the shooting part works great, I could shoot people accurately.  However the offscreen reloading doesn't work, it counts as a missed shot.

I did some searches and I guess I'm missing something.  I tried the -reload option, which didn't do anything.  I also noticed that the right mouse button, which reloads on some games,doesn't reload for LE either, so maybe that's the root problem. 

[aljupy]

Hi:
I received mine yesterday. Tracking is very bad in comparasion with SILVER