Guide: Cheap Arcade Light Guns with Touchemote

[voradori]

5 hours ago, Tomkun said:

Touchmote lets you emulate gamepads, and as far as I know all guncon games can also be played with a controller, so why not use the controller mode instead of mouse mode for 2 player?

I've not tried it yet, but I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

 

It simply  just does not work that way in practice - if we treat Touchmote Pointer as gamepad stick, like in MAME 2-player Wiimote setups,
or like Lilypad Mouse-to-Stick config, we  get a crazy fast in-game stick cursor - I think that happens because Touchmote sends absolute coordinate or stick values,
and Lilypad awaits something like value delta. So it "works", but is completely unplayable

[retroplay]

On 10/3/2018 at 11:59 PM, Dynamite Jewduh said:

Not sure if this was added or not, but I want to contribute my setup. I run the majority of my games in retroarch and my light gun games MAMEUI64 0.197. I'm on windows 10 with a dolphin bar.

1. Under MAMEUI64 goto options > default system options > controllers > set joystick dead Zone to 0.00 (This allows the wii remotes to be smooth when aiming)

2. Under touchmote I made a layout called MAME. Set the pointer to Left Stick and the rest of the buttons to your prefered Xbox 360 buttons. Controllers is set to all. 

3. Make sure your dolphin bar is set to mode 4, and your wiimotes are connected to touchmote. Launch a light gun game in MAMEUI64. Hit tab and set your wiimotes y by moving the wiimote in a straight line up or down. and x by moving the wiimote in a straight line left or right. Then set additional buttons needed.

4. Enjoy... 

Thanks for sharing mate.  Can I ask what rom pack you are using please?

[Dynamite Jewduh]

I think it's 0.196.

[retroplay]

I just wanted to say a big thanks to this thread and Dynamite Jewduh for the help.  For the first time in weeks and with many hours wasted I have now managed to get Mame light guns setup with wiimotes, mameUI, the 201 merged romset downloaded from Arcade Punks and touchmote.

A lot of flaffing about but all sorted now.

 

This video also helped me in terms of actually configuring the guns within mame : 

Thank you 

 

[ThePolish]

I'm super happy this thread is still getting used AND people are making progress, especially cool to see pcsx2 worked out as well. The video tutorials getting out there are wonderful as well! Short of someone coming out with witless aimtraks or similar this has been a great community effort. 

[retroplay]

Agreed.  To be honest I could not get on with the PS2 emulator.  Im not going to personally try it any further until someone works out 2 player gun support!

But your thread and the others who commented certainly helped me get mame setup.  Also managed to get super model 2 and 3 setup with some of the gun games so at the moment, very happy

[retroplay]

9 minutes ago, retroplay said:

Agreed.  To be honest I could not get on with the PS2 emulator.  Im not going to personally try it any further until someone works out 2 player gun support!

But your thread and the others who commented certainly helped me get mame setup.  Also managed to get super model 2 and 3 setup with some of the gun games so at the moment, very happy

I have tried 2 aimtrack guns although they look good i thought the build quality was poor.  One of my guns arrived with only one screw!  the others were missing and so the gun almost fell apart.  without the solenoid i also thought they were light weight and cheap plastic.  Whereas the wiimote, albeit doesnt look much like a real gun, IMO feels heavier, more substantial and works better than the aimtracks.  And of course they are wireless which is a BIG bonus.  We are all used to having wireless devices nowadays, who wants bloody great big leads all over the place.

[ThePolish]

I second that. I got some awesome gun holders, sprayed them black and use them for my light gun games. Pretty perfect setup.  Now if only we could fix the joy1 joy2 joy3 resetting everytime the pc resets. Sadly windows assigns device id's to joy #s at random.

[Tomkun]

Which emulator(s) are you having trouble with IDs?

When I started using my wiimotes as lightguns, there were a few issues that I needed to overcome. In order of severity, they were:

1. The LEDs on the Dolphinbar could easily burn out if left on.

2. The IDs were not predicatable and therefore couldn't be reliably configured.

3. Different aspect ratios require different configurations in Touchmote.

To overcome these issues I used EventGhost. I wrote a script which would:

1. Use Devcon to turn off the Dolphinbar when not in use to save the LEDs.

2. Again, use Devcon to ensure that the controllers were all installed in the correct order and therefore have predictable IDs.

3. Detect the aspect ratio of a game and switch the Touchmote configuration to match.

Since creating the script, I have had zero issues. In fact, since MAME added stable controller IDs, I have removed the 2nd part of the script as it's no longer necessary. I've also improved it so that it will now also launch Demulshooter with the correct parameters if required. Over time, the script has become more and more complicated as I've added extra functions, but it serves me well. Now when I launch a game it will:

1. Detect which game has been launched. Whether or not it requires Demulshooter and what the Aspect ratio is.

2. Copy the correct aspect ratio configuration to Touchmote.

3. Switch on the Dolphinbar.

4. Launch Touchmote.

5. Pop up an OSD telling me to connect the Wiimotes.

6. When it detects the Wiimote(s), check if any other controllers are enabled and if so quickly disable/enable them so that the Wiimote(s) always take ID 1 and 2.

7. Launch Demulshooter with the correct parameters (if required).

8. Launch the game.

If anyone's interested in it, I'll gladly post it.

[retroplay]

I celebrated yesterday after having mameUI working with the Wiimotes.  Today Ive imported a handful of those light gun games in to LB and associated MAMEUI as the emulator. 

Slightly strange experience on some of the games, the gun pointer pauses slightly in the centre of the screen.  So for instance with Lethal Enforcers i can play the game fine in MAMEUI but if i launch the same game with LB as the cross hair reaches the middle of the screen, i experience a momentary pause before it continues to move.  Anyone have any ideas?

 

 

[Tomkun]

That sounds very much like the deadzone. You need to set it to 0 in order to have a smooth experience with lightguns.

[retroplay]

10 minutes ago, Tomkun said:

That sounds very much like the deadzone. You need to set it to 0 in order to have a smooth experience with lightguns.

Ah yes thank you, saw that somewhere mentioned someone else.  Will try and report back.  thank you

[ThePolish]

15 hours ago, Tomkun said:

Which emulator(s) are you having trouble with IDs?

2. The IDs were not predicatable and therefore couldn't be reliably configured.

3. Different aspect ratios require different configurations in Touchmote.

To overcome these issues I used EventGhost. I wrote a script which would:

1. Use Devcon to turn off the Dolphinbar when not in use to save the LEDs.

2. Again, use Devcon to ensure that the controllers were all installed in the correct order and therefore have predictable IDs.

100% this. I have 2 Xbox controllers, 2 wiimotes with dolphinbar, and a bunch of random gamepads I made (Bluetooth snes, genesis, nes) that get plugged in and out at random. 

 

So I'll have the Xbox controller on then turn on the wiimotes, and the wiimotes will be 3 and 4, then I'll change games and use the Genesis controller, then back to the wiimotes and the wiimotes will then be 4 and 5 (example not exact) . I need wiimote to be say 1 and 2 every time.

[retroplay]

In relation to my issue with the cross hair pausing in the centre of the screen slightly, its not the deadzone.  I actually had that already set to zero.  The problem is only present when games are launched through LB.  If i play the game through MAMEUI the cross hair works fine !

 

 

[Tomkun]

Well, it still sounds like the deadzone to me.  Perhaps Launchbox is overriding the deadzone settings somehow? I don't use MameUI myself, so I don't know how it handles per game settings.  Have you tried with regular MAME?

[retroplay]

For the purposes of ensuring that anyone else in future reading that gets stuck with using Launchbox, MameUI and wii motes.  I discovered that there is actually a problem with LB and mameUI.  My gun games work fine in MameUI, but when launching through LB the crosshairs are all messed up.  The solution was here : 

 

 

In order to the MameUI and LB to work together properly you need to copy 'mame.ini' in to the same folder as mameui.exe.  

 

I now have arcade light gun games working perfect with MameUI, Launchbox and Wii motes.  Now to see if player 2 guns can be setup ! !! 

 

[voradori]

9 hours ago, retroplay said:

I now have arcade light gun games working perfect with MameUI, Launchbox and Wii motes.  Now to see if player 2 guns can be setup ! !! 

1

 

2-player wiimote MAME setup is done easily.

You need to set Wiimote pointers as a gamepad RStick in Touchmote, and bind it in Game settings as Lightgun\AD Stick. 
I never set Wiimote as a mouse device in MAME, it's a bad practice, It behaves much better if both Wiimotes are set to Rstick, 
LStick is not working in my case - MAME doesn't want to bind one of its axis' sent from Touchmote as a Gun's one.

Personally, now I have 2-Wiimote no-crosshair MAME setup, with perfect line-of-sight aiming. 
It can be done by using tsuokkys Touchmote custom build which has calibration settings in it's ini file. 

 

 

Edited November 8, 2018 by voradori

[retroplay]

Thanks very much Voradori, I will take a look a it again today.  Yesterday I did try and setup player 2 wiimote using the right stick and i did have it working, but as soon as I rebooted windows MameUI seems to loose player 2 X and Y axis bindings ?!?!

 

[retroplay]

Bit of a shock today.  Having succesfully setup both player 1 and 2 guns using the lovely wiimotes this morning it seems that mamui has completely forgotten my gun settings! 

Not sure why.   Im just going through setting them up again.  Yesterday I noticed that player 1 joystick was being referenced in mame as Joystick 8.  Now its joystick 6.  

I am also using xinmo in this machine, which i use often, but i found there were now issues in retroarch which i use a lot.  So I swapped out the xinmo board for an ipac2 encoder. 

I assume the removal of xinmo has changed the joystick numbering.  But will the machine remember the settings in future for p1 and p2?

[ThePolish]

5 minutes ago, retroplay said:

Bit of a shock today.  Having succesfully setup both player 1 and 2 guns using the lovely wiimotes this morning it seems that mamui has completely forgotten my gun settings!

Not sure why.   Im just going through setting them up again.  Yesterday I noticed that player 1 joystick was being referenced in mame as Joystick 8.  Now its joystick 6. 

I assume the removal of xinmo has changed the joystick numbering.  But will the machine remember the settings in future for p1 and p2?

This is exactly why I think I Tomkun's on the right path with his script and would like to know more about it. I have the same problem in make between my dolphin bar, Xbox controllers and other gamepads. Also I need retroarch to just work with them too. And dolphin when I launch it to use the wiimotes as wiimotes.