HELP: Did my ActLab TV Lightgun stop working or am I goofy?

[unclet]

I bought the ActLabs TV lightgun over a year ago and it worked ok.  It worked well on Area51, Duck Hunt, and some others. 

Anyway, I took out the gun and tried to play Area51 today (and others ... which use to work) and I can never get the crosshairs to line up with where I am aiming.

Even after I calibrate the gun (by moving the switch to calibrate and then moving the gun about 1" over the screen left/right and then up/down), does not work anymore.   After doing this and then moving the calibrate switch back to play mode, everytime I aim and shoot the sreen, the crosshairs are always in the top/left quadrant of the display screen.  The crosshairs never move that much.   Everytime I shoot the gun, the crosshairs kind of blink and move just a little bit, but pretty much stay in the same location.

Any ideas to try or is my gun just broken?

Kind of a bummer not being able to play any lightgun games anymore....

[Rocky]

Unclet,

I had the very same problem just last week with my USB PC gun. I would shoot and it would simply move a couple inches closer to where I was aiming.

I discovered that I started the game with Mamewah's extra commandline option.

So, I was starting Mame with both -lightgun and -mouse

[unclet]

Unfortunately I am not using MameWah, so this solution will not work for me .....

I am using Mame32 and currently have the "Enable LightGun Input" and "Enable MouseInput" options set (which were the exact options which were set when the lightgun was working previously)

When I shoot the lightgun, the crosshairs only move about 1/2 inch from where they were currently.  Is does not matter where I am aiming, since the crosshairs do not follow the "sight" of my lightgun .... basically, it is not like the crosshairs are simply off-center from the "sight" of the gun ..... but rather the crosshairs never move with the lightgun at all....

[unclet]

NEW INFORMATION:

As I had more time to play around with this, I did notice that the crosshairs only ever move on the diagonal from the top/left of the screen to the bottom/right of the screen.   

Basically, if you draw a line from the top/left corner down to the bottom/right corner of the display, then the crosshairs will only ever move on this line ......

Any ideas what could be causing this?

PS:  The cables and connectors to the gun are not mangled at all and they are all connected nicely.   I hardly use this gun, so it is pretty much in a like-new state....

[brian23]

I believe Tiger-Heli would be the person to PM for help in this matter. I know he has set this up for differing versions of MAME.

[RayB]

Turn off mouse input and see what happens.

[unclet]

Having the "Enable Mouse Input" NOT set did not help.   I tried resetting it in the "EggVenture" specifically as well as in the General Deafult Game Properties on the Main MAME32 screen.

PS:  I can not find my Act-Labs gun information .... so does anyone know whether I can test this gun's calibration outside of a Mame environment?  If so, how ?

[unclet]

Ok, I closed all of the applications so I can only see my Windows desktop.  I calibrated the lightgun again and then moved the gun back into play mode.   I then aimed at the icons on the screen and the cursor moved right where I was aiming, no matter where I aimed.

As a result, this seems to be a Mame problem, not a gun problem.

I have no idea what is going on, since I know the gun worked fine in Area51 and DuckHunt previously (a while back), but it no longer works.

Any ideas?

[ahofle]

Do you have joystick enabled in mame?  Maybe try turning it off if so?

[unclet]

Mame32 does not even allow me to select the "Enable Joystick Input" option, so it is NOT set.....

[LPZ]

Upgrade your version of mame lately?  Maybe the newer version doen't like the gun.  Maybe rolling back to your previous version might work.

[unclet]

I have had the same version for about 2 years now .... the gun just seemed to stop working.   I have not really installed anything new either, nothing which I remember doing ..... 

[Tiger-Heli]

I believe Tiger-Heli would be the person to PM for help in this matter. I know he has set this up for differing versions of MAME.

I have set up different versions of MAME for different games before, but I have no expertise with lightguns . . .

Just a thought - if you still have the drivers (if it uses drivers) - try uninstalling (Add/Remove Hardware, not simply unplugging) the gun and re-installing and see if that helps, but I doubt it since it works in Windows . . .