LightGun Test 20/05/05

WRAGGSTER · Post by **WRAGGSTER** » Sat May 21, 2005 5:32 am

Warmtoe has another treat for you and this time its a LightGun Test for the Dreamcast, heres the description i was messaged:

The second is a little lightgun test - I have been working on getting my lightgun code working again in KOS and improving the accuracy - for a game which is (kind of) being worked on by me (Trigger Happy) -
More ore less, this is a test app which I would like people to try and tell me how accurate it is with their guns - It is also testing a particle engine I have been working on, but thats an aside really

So please leave any info on testing if you could

Download from Here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk/lightguntest.shtml

Thanks again to warmtoe for the news

law56ker · Post by **law56ker** » Mon May 23, 2005 1:31 pm

I need to find a light gun..

carbon14 · Post by **carbon14** » Tue May 24, 2005 9:23 am

I have an HKT-7800

but I would find this easier with a single romdisk bin file,

Or, can I scramble the bin and build a regular cd for it.

if so what path do I need to use for the files when I build the ISO?

LyingWake · Post by **LyingWake** » Tue May 24, 2005 2:12 pm

You can use the SBI to create a self-standing disc with the LightGun test. DreamInducer won't be included. Use SBI2Boot in the SelfbootInducer program.

carbon14 · Post by **carbon14** » Thu May 26, 2005 3:22 am

Ok, so SBI inducer was not as tricky as I thought. Actually, with the tutorial automatically popping up, it's a easy as falling off a bicycle.

I tried the test on my VGA monitor here. The results were a bit hit and miss. I'll try to give it a test on my TV tonight. I'll try PAL and NTSC. The brightness on my monitor might be a bit low really.

The accuracy seems very dependant on the distance from the gun to the screen.

When the target is close to the edge of the screen, it's difficult to tell what you're doing, because if you are too far off the screen, you see nothing on the screen at tall. You have to start from being too far in, to get your aim in.

I did seem to find that if I tried to hold the gun still, the first shot would be way out, and then subsequent shots would seem to drift closer to where I thought I was aiming.

These are really preliminary findings, I just tried it for 5 minutes. If I get time later I'll give it another go on this VGA, and then I'll try to find time tonight to try it on a TV.

carbon14 · Post by **carbon14** » Sat May 28, 2005 2:13 pm

Right,

I tested this on a European Dreamcast, connected via RCA to a UK TV.

I don't know how many different official guns there might have been, but mine is an official HKT-7800

Running the test on NTSC, it's pretty near perfect. The whole screen is accurate and consistent. If I take my time, I can hit the targets first time by using the crosshairs.

Running on PAL is a slightly different story. Mostly it's as good as the NTSC, but there is a 1 inch strip. just up from the bottom of the screen where it's virtually impossible to register a hit. If you just blast away continuously down there, the clusters of hits have a very definite and very straight edge above and below this strip. I have no idea what causes it, I tried a different TV and it's the same. Once in a while you can get a random hit in there, I think that's probably a mis-registered hit that should have been somewhere else anyway.

On both PAL and NTSC, if you miss the screen altogether, you'll sometimes get a misregistered hit near the middle. This might be due to the gun picking up a reflection of the screen from something else.

I hope this information is useful

Warmtoe · Post by **Warmtoe** » Tue May 31, 2005 3:57 am

Very useful thanks.

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 2:23 pm

Do you think you could get Trigger Happy also to work with a Mouse or the Analog Stick so people that don't have a gun (atm) could still play the game ?

Warmtoe · Post by **Warmtoe** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 3:21 pm

Yes - it would work with the analog stick (sorry been away)

Syd · Post by **Syd** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 4:25 pm

I just got two lightguns (Pelican Stingers) and wanted to test them with this program, but I have no idea how to burn this thing. I downloaded SBI, unzipped the test program into the sbi folder, but couldn't select anything in SBI. Can anyone give me a hand with this?

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 5:02 pm

Rename the ZIP as .sbi and put it in the SBI dir. Run SBIducer.exe

Here's a very helpful tutorial:
http://www.dcevolution.net/DCHelp/index.php?id=sbind
http://www.dcevolution.net/DCHelp/index.php?id=sbindv4

Syd · Post by **Syd** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 10:26 am

Alright I just finished testing my lightguns with the demo of trigger happy. First I'd like to say this looks like a great concept and you should definitely keep going with it! Now on to the test results...

My lightguns work decently with your test. I could hit the targets most of the time after a few shots. The reason it takes a few shots, however, is because the accuracy is not perfect. For some reason the pelican stinger lightgun (or at least the ones I own) are always off on accuracy. When I shoot at a spot on the screen, the game registers a hit a couple inches upward and a couple inches to the left. This is the same thing that happens on HOTD2 and Confidential Mission as well. This type of gun just doesn't calibrate correctly. So if you could put a hack in your code for this gun specifically to compensate for the inaccuracy then it would be great!

If you need me to do any more tests then don't hesitate to ask!

EDIT: Actually the accuracy on Confidential Mission is almost perfect, unlike HOTD2. It's only off by maybe half an inch upwards, nothing compared to HOTD2. It's the PAL version of Confidential Mission and the NTSC version of HOTD2. I doubt that makes a difference, but perhaps I'll track down a PAL version of HOTD2 to try out.