MAME, MadCatz Blaster, and Guncon2 driver

[RTSDaddy2]

Ok - I FINALLY have had some results.  I have Jurassic Park playing with MAME and a MadCatz Blaster / Guncon2 driver at such a point that one can safely make it through the raptor cave.

Now, my problem is this.  I got MAME to register "Lightgun 1x" on the Lightgun X analog setting and "Lightgun 1y" on the Lightgun Y analog setting.  What this did was to steady the gunsight and allow gun tracking, but the gun sight moving left to right is still "shaky" like.

What else could I / can I try to get that gun sight to steady down and not be all hurky-jerky??  Is it a MAME adjustment or a GunCon2 adjustment.  I've had a devil of a time calibrating the gun via the Guncon program.

Also, do screen resolutions matter? It seemed that 1024 by 768 worked best, but not quite sure about that.

We are using a scan converter to get the signal from computer to TV.  I plugged the gun's yellow cord into that, and it is registering on the TV...didn't know if I needed to built the curcuit or not.

Remember I know nothing about what I'm doing...detailed explanations are appreciated!! 

[Silver]

I'd start with worrying about windows. The drivers mainly just make the Guns appear as a HID-input/mouse. So you should be able to use your gun to track around your windows desktop. Start here - if its dodgy here, it will be dodgy everywhere.

Note you will have to expect some "jitter" - this is where even if you mount the gun on a tripod to hold it steady/lie it down stationary, you will see the cursor on screen move around slightly. This is normally just a few pixels and not significant when playing (after calibrating).

NOTE: the gun CAN NOT track on dark areas of your desktop/screen. If you have a picture background or something, this CAN LOOK like its jumping all over the place, when really its only tracking on the light bits. Beef up the brightness of your screen or remove the pic. (Note upping brightness of the screen is something worth trying anyway).

Once auto calibrating, I believe both available drivers allow some manual tweaking. General consensus is that while autocalibration is pretty good, you can probably improve on it slightly.

If your pointer is moving around a lot (more than "jitter") then it could be a lot of things. I've not used a scan converter, but I can't imagine its helping at all - in fact its almost definately not. The best way to tell for sure is to simply test without it. (Seeing as you are using a scan converter, I imagine this would require you to use tv-out from your pc). See if its much better.

Once its happy in windows, then I believe some gun games have there own configuration. Turn on the setup dip switch in games, or delete the "nvram" file for that game - when next running it should then run through the calibration screens (This depends on the game).

Hope that helps.

[RTSDaddy2]

Silver, That's kind of what I figured.  I suspect we're going to have to invest in a new card that does have a TV out.  For some reason, and I know not why, I bought the PC that runs our arcade thinking it already had a pc to tv card in it, but it simply doesn't.  As I told my wife, however, by going it the guncon route, we'll be able to save enough money that buying a new card won't seem like such an investment on top of the money paid for the guns.

I'll also try removing the picture from the background (we do have one) and see what happens. 

I really, really, really appreciate the detailed explanation.  I know it's a pain, but it helps someone like me who hasn't one iota of how these guns work...just that they're fun to play with!

I'll keep you posted!

RTSDaddy2