Author Topic: How come they never made a light gun??!  (Read 978 times)

exile

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #30 on: January 28, 2010, 04:40:59 PM »
I may get stoned for this one , but does anyone remember playing Freedom Force I always thought that was a great zapper game. :clap: Gumshoe is one of the greats Sinistron!

esteban

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #31 on: January 28, 2010, 05:18:11 PM »
Wasn't Freedom Force from SunSoft?

I never got a chance to play it, but I always wanted to. It was listed in one of those early Nintendo game catalog books (I got it as a freebie with a basic NES, IIRC) ... Freedom Force was a "newly released" or "soon to be released" title, IIRC.

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Tom

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #32 on: January 29, 2010, 02:55:03 PM »
Somewhat related: In my NES hacking to PCE fever, I was gonna hack some lightgun games for NES/Famicom to PCE. Rigging up the NES gun for the PCE controller port is a cinch too. Never got around to it (didn't think there would be much appeal for this either).

 On a side note; for the PCE to have a "real" lightgun system and not what the famicom/nes did, you need to have a counter inside the gun (two 8bit ones actually, one for the scanline number and one for the horizontal pixel equiv) and you reset this counter on vblank interrupt. When you gun sees the edge of the horizontal beem like in arcade, genesis, snes setups - the counter value is stored to a register. On vblank interrupt, you read that value from the port (and reset the gun so it's resynced to the TV). Pretty simple stuff (and very cheap to do), but PCE *did* lack this small feature on the internal side. So that small part has to be external. Definitely not a big deal though. And like others, I'm really surprised this wasn't made.

 The method I just described allows you to point to the screen (without pulling a trigger) and have a cursor/target/pointer updated in realtime. The famicom/nes method is not like this. When you pull the trigger, it turns everything black and leaves only the target white. If you have more than one target, it has to flash the screen a few times like this and cycle through. So it's really only good for 1-2 objects. The more objects you have, the longer the flashing is. Kinda limiting for some projects.

alexsduo

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #33 on: January 31, 2010, 06:29:18 AM »
Alright, so let's make it happen... Do you need a gun, and some parts, and what do you think it will cost to make 10? :)
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exile

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #34 on: February 01, 2010, 03:55:14 PM »
Esteban if you still have your NES its worth copping. Its not a classic, but for its time, it was a lot of fun.
Get it on the cheap.

Tatsujin

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #35 on: February 01, 2010, 05:47:05 PM »
Somewhat related: In my NES hacking to PCE fever, I was gonna hack some lightgun games for NES/Famicom to PCE. Rigging up the NES gun for the PCE controller port is a cinch too. Never got around to it (didn't think there would be much appeal for this either).

 On a side note; for the PCE to have a "real" lightgun system and not what the famicom/nes did, you need to have a counter inside the gun (two 8bit ones actually, one for the scanline number and one for the horizontal pixel equiv) and you reset this counter on vblank interrupt. When you gun sees the edge of the horizontal beem like in arcade, genesis, snes setups - the counter value is stored to a register. On vblank interrupt, you read that value from the port (and reset the gun so it's resynced to the TV). Pretty simple stuff (and very cheap to do), but PCE *did* lack this small feature on the internal side. So that small part has to be external. Definitely not a big deal though. And like others, I'm really surprised this wasn't made.

 The method I just described allows you to point to the screen (without pulling a trigger) and have a cursor/target/pointer updated in realtime. The famicom/nes method is not like this. When you pull the trigger, it turns everything black and leaves only the target white. If you have more than one target, it has to flash the screen a few times like this and cycle through. So it's really only good for 1-2 objects. The more objects you have, the longer the flashing is. Kinda limiting for some projects.

very interessting tom, I didn't knew much about the later method (real time cursor), and how it worked. you can see this very well using the guncon and f.e. point blank/gun bullet. this system kinda bypasses/takeing the screen info (vblank etc.) by a separate external tab. probably to be faster and more precise. and it really is damn precise. remember the leaf-shoot game in gun bullet on hard mode? only few pixels in size and you can hit it by purpose.
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esteban

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #36 on: February 07, 2010, 01:06:44 AM »
Esteban if you still have your NES its worth copping. Its not a classic, but for its time, it was a lot of fun.
Get it on the cheap.

I still play my NES :) , and I have at least one light gun, if memory serves.

This topic, and FREEDOM FORCE, has inspired me to play some light gun games.


TANGENT:
The first light gun game I ever played was in a cousin's basement. A small plastic box displayed 1-3 pinpoint, moving red light(s) on a wall: a wired plastic rifle was used to fire at these targets. All the hardware was brown/black, IIRC.

It was a blast to play, and I always wondered how it worked. Probably similar to the NES method that Tom explicated above.

BUT: I'm not 100% positive, but I think there were two rifles that allowed 2-player simultaneous competitions. I don't recall the game modes, and I don't think the score was ever displayed...



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guyjin

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #37 on: February 08, 2010, 11:47:29 AM »
Rescue Mission for the SMS is one of the better lightgun games I've ever played.
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Arkhan

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Re: How come they never made a light gun??!
« Reply #38 on: February 08, 2010, 04:05:30 PM »
Rescue Mission for the SMS is one of the better lightgun games I've ever played.

I always liked that game too.

It reminds me of a more interactive version of Commando.
[Fri 19:34]<nectarsis> been wanting to try that one for awhile now Ope
[Fri 19:33]<Opethian> l;ol huge dong

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