Console lightgun reliability.

[Rasher2k]

PROLOGUE:
Apparently there are limitations of Actlabs 'two-player' gun system, one of the worst involving not being able to fire the two guns simultaneously (which happens quite frequently I've heard) which is what we really really want to do.  
Basically:

The first gun fired begins a screen flash, locates its screen pos and registers a mouse button and pos change.

Now (I reckon) either:

• The second gun fired begins it's screen flash, but because a flash is in progress already it cannot detect a position, so just reports a button press WITHOUT a pos change. Or,
• The second gun fired begins it's screen flash, locates its screen pos and registers a mouse button and pos change. But this is done before the software gets a chance to look at the first guns pos change.]

I dont know if any of that it true, but any way it happens results in both guns firing at the same point.


MAIN:
How good and reliable are console light guns? Bloody good as far as I know! The first console gun I ever used was for the Sega Megadrive (Genesis) and it was great! I've used the PSX Guncons and Dreamcast guns etc etc, but the point is they all seemed to be accurate and had no shot blocking in two player mode. Why? How? What?

With every console gun I've seen, you've had to plug the second gun into the first - so they can talk to each other, figure out who's shooting or flashing at what time, and polls the results. It that it? The way you hook up two Actlabs guns (as far as I've seen) mean they dont communicate. (They can be sold individually with no 'special model' second gun though.) Why cant PC light gun makers follow the old school console recipe for the same success?

I guess I'm still waiting for someone to hack the Guncon!

[Bursar]

First optical gun I used was on the Sega Master system. I haid a pair of guns, and used to play double player Gangster Town on my own.

A gun in each hand was so cool

Anyway, each of those guns had a 9 (IIRC) pin connector on it like a serial mouse, and each one plugged into the Master System. As far I remember (but we are talking about 15 years ago) there were no problems with shot blocking on those.

I woud love to have proper dual player shooting games, but I don't know if I can currently force myself back to Win98 or DOS for the privilege.

Maybe we should start petitioning MS to support two (or more) simultaneous mouse inputs in their operating systems

[Dave_K.]

With every console gun I've seen, you've had to plug the second gun into the first - so they can talk to each other, figure out who's shooting or flashing at what time, and polls the results. It that it? The way you hook up two Actlabs guns (as far as I've seen) mean they dont communicate. (They can be sold individually with no 'special model' second gun though.) Why cant PC light gun makers follow the old school console recipe for the same success?

DC guns don't plug into one another.  PSX/PS2 console guns only share the svideo input to each gun.  Its strictly software which allows the use of two guns to operate correctly, and apparently act labs has some problems in this area (possibly due to mouse emulation).

I guess I'm still waiting for someone to hack the Guncon!

Its already been hacked.  Someone wrote a guncon2 (usb) driver for Linux.  I haven't seen anyone take the code and put into mame though, but I'm sure its just a matter of time.

[u_rebelscum]

Apparently there are limitations of Actlabs 'two-player' gun system, one of the worst involving not being able to fire the two guns simultaneously (which happens quite frequently I've heard) which is what we really really want to do.  
Basically:

The first gun fired begins a screen flash, locates its screen pos and registers a mouse button and pos change.

Now (I reckon) either:

• The second gun fired begins it's screen flash, but because a flash is in progress already it cannot detect a position, so just reports a button press WITHOUT a pos change. Or,
• The second gun fired begins it's screen flash, locates its screen pos and registers a mouse button and pos change. But this is done before the software gets a chance to look at the first guns pos change.]

I dont know if any of that it true, but any way it happens results in both guns firing at the same point.

The second, sort of.  (I think both use the same flash.)  If a game uses unbuffered mouse reads, when the first and second gun happen too close together and the OS combines the mouse data, the one that happened first is lost.  The method mame uses to read the info is an unbuffered win32 api function. (Most optimized games also read mouse positions unbuffered.)

However, check mame:Analog+ 0.66.1 (see sig).  Two actlab (USB mouse) lightguns is in alpha support on win98 and winME systems, ATM.  This is because winME/98 allow apps to see mouse data before they are combined (through directX 8.0 and up).  Win2000 does not, while winXP reportedly is able to through a new winXP only addition to win32 api.

BTW, I think -lightgun2b is currently in better shape, but that's on my system.  If anyone already owns two USB lightguns, do you mind being a tester?