MAME and Light Gun(s)?

[myonions]

So I have the most recent MAME along with CHDs and would love to play some games with a Lightgun.

These guys say their guns are compatible but they are quite expensive and in the US (I am in the UK) so would likely $6,000,000 to ship to me (after tax):

http://www.arcadeguns.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1&sort=20a&perPage=0

Has anyone got this working for a reasonable price?

Wireless Lightguns would be a nice touch too!

Or, do people just set up a mouse to do this and if so, what settings do you change in the MAME (Tab) Menu?

[thurmansevolution]

I don't know much yet on setting up a lightgun through mame, though that is one of the next things on my list becasue I'm planning on adding two lightguns. What I do know about them is:

- Make sure you get the right gun for the type of monitor you have. If you have an LCD or LED, ya gotta use a gun with a sensor bar. If you have a CRT monitor, any lightgun will do without the sensor bar (this is all from what I've read about them so far lol)

- I'm not sure about how to map the input config of a lightgun game to work with a mouse in MAME - though I know how to map it to the joysticks and buttons. The movement of the cursor can be configured to work with the joysticks by looking under "Lightgun X Dec", Lightgun X Inc", "Lightgun Y Dec", and "Lightgun Y Inc" in the MAME input configuration (perferbaly using "input this game only".

- As for where to find them for a good price, considering your location, I would go through ultimarc. They are located in the UK and they have a lightgun from what I hear that works pretty good . Here is the link: http://www.ultimarc.com/JShopServer/section.php?xSec=7

I hope this helps any!

[thurmansevolution]

...oh, and I just found this about how to config the lightgun to work with mame....

http://www.ultimarc.com/AimTrak%20Setup%20Guide.pdf

[nullPointer]

I would definitely second thurmansevolution’s suggestion regarding Ultimarc. I believe AimTrak to be the crème de la crème of light guns at the moment. Further to the point those ArcadeGuns you’re looking at actually house AimTrak internals (although it’s completely above board. Apparently they’ve worked out an agreement with Ultimarc). Lastly I know that Andy who is the proprietor of Ultimarc provides a high degree of customer support for his products.

Here’s a pretty good primer on setting up light guns in MAME, compliments of our friends over at BYOAC.

Mame Lightgun Setup

[u-man]

http://www.ebay.de/itm/200805597153?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

you wont get any cheaper one, with price vs. quality in mind. its wireless, accurate, has really nice features and the best... its compatible with everything and works on arcade-tvs, CRTs, TFTs.

dont missunderstand me, but americans tend to SUPERSIZEME, this gun is more than good enough .

i have two of them no probs at all.

[thurmansevolution]

I gotta disagree with u-man about the wireless guns....Only because of two reasons - 1. They have to run off of some power source. I've never had a wireless arcade lightgun, but I only can figure that it runs off of batteries, which poses a small problem of -a- always having to change them and spend money on batteries and -b- if you are in the middle of a game when your batteries start running out of juice, the gun will probably start losing functioinality. 2. If you have kids (like I do) lol, you really gotta be careful and keep a good eye on the guns - kids can pick them up and start playing with them and you might find them in the driveway or something...its better to have a wired so that ya can have at least a small leash on the matter .

Lol, and as a american, I can agree with u-man about the SUPERSIZEME...we had a show here a few years back on the Discovery Channel called "BIG", where a group of engineers would have a deadline in building upscale models of regular things. My favorite episode was the one that they build a HUGE guitar (holds the world's record now) and as a freelance musician, seeing a guitar that big and the ceremony for it's revealing was "opened" by Peter Frampton....pure AWESOME!

[u-man]

1: first) he asked for wireless, i gave him the best solution for this.

2: second) buy rechargeable batteries

3: third) you got a more real life situation with the batteries in the gun, it got heavier. after 1 hour, you will need 2 hands for aim.

4: fourth) if your worried about juice, buy two guns. it wont happen so often that both guns are empty

5: fifth) its not wired to your cab, you can go into your living room and shoot some badass on you big HD screen

and the last, the gun looks far better than the wired ugly stuff, i even would not call this guns.

[nullPointer]

Are we talking about the EMS Top Gun 3 here? (Sorry I’m unable to connect to eBay at my current location) That’s the only wireless PC light gun I’m aware of that seems to have gained some significant popularity (other than a combination of a wiimote and GlovePie obviously). As far as that goes, it’s a bit of a sticky wicket (for me at least). The sources I trust seem to give it decidedly mediocre reviews whereas the sources in which I don’t place a great deal of credibility seem to be fairly complimentary.

I’ll grant you that the possibility of wireless and recoil seems like it could certainly be a winning combination though.

[u-man]

yup, its the EMS top gun 3

[myonions]

Thanks guys helpful as always.

Am swaying towards the aimtrak ones a little more as they remind me of a gun I had on the ps1 for time crisis but the other ones remind me of the house of the dead arcade guns which were awesome.

I'll let u know the outcome if I have a go!

[Draco1962]

I wonder if the guns/rifles for the Xbox 360 (i.e. Cabela's Big Game series) can be adapted for PC use?

[Adultery]

Why not? They use the same drivers don't they?

Not sure if they require a sensor bar though.

[epicfatigue]

hey all. finally somthing i can contribute too!

first off forget about the topgun. price is good but its a throw away item.

[epicfatigue]

sorry about that on a bus and it hit a car and i hit send.

i have an aimtrack oem and i mounted it inside a namco recoil gun. its awesome total cost me 190 include shipping for everything with 2 guns.

dont wanna spend that much? go get some ps1 namco replicas dismantle them mount aimtrack inside bobs ya uncle. wanna make it wireless? put a repeater inside and a 9v bat with a resistor and a dc plug to it for charging then fill it with led to get some weight. or put it in a wii gun etc etc. its really easy stuff people will help you with all you need to know. andy is amazing too.

[myonions]

OK so I got an EMS Top Gun III as it was only £35 ($55) including delivery so I thought what the hell.

It's quite cheaply made and the Chinglish (Ref: http://www.engrish.c...gory/chinglish/ ) manual needed translating uinto English but once I got it installed it actually works well.

Once you have the driver installed it requires virtually no configuration in MAME. You just need to create a MAME.ini file and tell it that you have a light gun(s) attached.

However...there is however a big issue with the driver if you are installing on Windows 7 64 Bit which most of us seem to use nowadays.

The drivers are not digitally signed which means Windows has to be put in a driver "test mode" (permanently!) in order to use the guns.

Details here:

http://hkems.proboar...read=291&page=1

I do not trust this - even though I did some research before installing.

Any of the other offerings have this kind of problem?

It's a shame as once the drivers are in and you calibrate the gun (once you know how it's easy!) you literally create the mame.ini file (mame.exe -cc), change the "lightgun" value to 1/2 and then you can use the gun in games.

Even shooting off screen works out of the box.

Some games (Operation Wolf) need you to set one of the side buttons to throw grenades but once you do it once it's done.

Otherwise these I think look like the best option:

http://www.arcadeguns.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=227

Although shipping adds $60..ouch!

[u-man]

sad to hear you had problems with the 64bit driver. i use mine on a 32bit XP no probs at all. i am sure this is not a huge problem, to find 64bit drivers, as there would be more people bitching on the EMS if not so.

comparing price and functionality the Top Gun is a Top Gun

off course Ultimarc is the best choice, but for that price, i can buy a lot EMS Topguns or two guns and a wheel and so on.

you say the EMS is cheaply made... i say its a well working wireless toy, unless you trade the gun with gorilla fingers and pushing it like King Kong, you will have it a long time.

its a matter of taste and budget, in both terms the EMS is the winner for me. if price is no problem go for the best of the best and choose the Ultimarc.

[myonions]

Yeah fair enough - I guess the manufacture quality isn't bad at all really but the driver problem means you have to lower security settings on your PC which should never be the case for a bit of hardware.

Would be nice if you could turn the recoil off when you wanted as I bet it uses up a lot of battery!

[nullPointer]

The trouble with getting your Drivers signed and verified by Windows is that it costs money, and it’s a revolving fee.

The required authenticode certificates for signing Vista drivers are expensive and out of reach^[5] for small developers, usually about $400–500/year (from VeriSign).

So the above quote relates to Vista, but I would imagine that there’s an equivalent cost for Windows 7. You’d think that EMS would be able to swing that cost, but who knows what their overhead looks like. Maybe their having a rough go of it financially?

OTOH I couldn’t believe it when MotionInJoy finally got their drivers signed, so maybe there’s still some hope for EMS.

By the by, I just ran across this, which may provide some benefit to you. Please note that I’ve never tried this software, and thus cannot give any sort of endorsement; it’s merely something that I found.

Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider

[myonions]

[quote name=nullPointer' timestamp='1346437547' post='92309'

Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider

That's what I use to override the driver problem and yes it works fine.

I didn't realise the licenses were so expensive. That explains a lot.

On another note - while messing around with the drivers the HID ID for the Gun changed which means theat MAME recognises it as "GUNCODE_5" rather than the default of "GUNCODE_1".

This means I have to set the buttons manually for each game rather than it working out of the box.

I'm guessing this can happen from time to time anyway when you add/remove HID Devices but do the Aim-trak ones potentially have this problem?

Say for example if you add another mouse? I'd expect they would as all they do is emulate a mouse anyway.

[bkenobi]

CFG Magician can help with remapping buttons like this. It's not ideal, but may be an option. Also, you can use the Wingman tool to remap the HID ID. That can be automated if it's consistent.

[Stu1983]

Wish I hadn't stumbled across this thread, I'm itching to buy an AimTrak now

I've been chatting to Andy to see if it's compatible with my existing TopGun 2 LED bar but it's not, he said his patent pending LED cluster is actually what makes his setup so accurate.

Interestingly though his last email just a few moments ago said

We will have a DIY recoil kit available in a week or so.

So now I am supper excited

[bkenobi]

I got my guns working again for the party I had last weekend. Course, no one played with them, but they were available. I had an axis set up wrong on one gun and the game I was primarily testing on...doesn't even work in MAME correctly yet.

In the long run, if you don't have guns now I'd suggest staying as far away as possible! They are fun, but probably the single most frustrating thing I've run across in emulation!

[Stu1983]

In the long run, if you don't have guns now I'd suggest staying as far away as possible! They are fun, but probably the single most frustrating thing I've run across in emulation!

I remember them being a complete pain but I still miss them. Biggest issue I had was resolutions. I have an ArcadeVGA and multisync monitor so each gun game was trying to run in a different resolution which screwed up the calibration. Had to create ini's for each gun game to force them to 640x480

I'm really interested in getting a light gun up and running in the older consoles, NES, MasterSystem, Genesis and SNES, haven't played Duck Hunt or Pest Control on the Genesis in years. I'm assuming I'm going to need a double emulator setup, one with light gun connected and one for controllers.

And they're still nowhere near as frustrating as pairing those damn Wii Remotes with windows

[bkenobi]

Never played with the guns with non-MAME emulators. It was hard enough in MAME that I didn't even try elsewhere. Well, I did try in Model2, but that was a failure.

[Brian Hoffman]

Ben (headkaze) has a thread on how to enable the old direct input in MAME. This should fix any light gun issues as they work as Mice, New builds of mame hook diffrent Keyboards and mice diffrently so it may be worth a try to do a custom compile using the old direct input.