Emulating lightguns on PC technical support

[oustropique]

Hi, I'm trying to use a wiimote to play some lightgun games on PC either natively (House of the Dead Remake, for example) or through emulators such as Flycast.

I have a Mayflash Dolphinbar from yesteryear. Setting it to mode 2, which I think is straight mouse emulation with some gamepad configurations that are meant to intuitive, gives it a jittery pointer and un-reconfigurable binds that unfocus the game window on press.

Using a tool called Touchmote clears up the jitter and allows me to set bindings, but then what I'm essentially doing is mapping the wiimote to a virtual xbox 360 controller and then trying to abstract those mappings to map a virtual lightgun in Flycast. This is not intuitive and is driving me a bit insane.

Retroarch isn't intuitive for rebindings with its RetroPads and never has been. Mode 4 is supposed to be the 'set it and forget it' option, but I don't think that works outside of Dolphin.

So my options now are -

1 ) Run at this for more nights on end with no results.

2) Get one of those newfangled, expensive, Sinden Lightguns because that seems to be the least depressing option.

3) Get an Arcade Club subscription.

4) Mentally consign the 'root-toot-point-shoot' genre to history.

BetterJoy for Joy-Cons and Steam Input are all giving me migraines. Thinking about selling my earthly possessions and living in a cave.

Anyhow, do you play lightgun games on a PC via pointing something at the screen, and have you got it so that it just works? Please help me. Can't be bothered anymore.

[Sonny_Jim]

I spent ages fucking around with those wiimote things, it would work absolutely fine as a mouse, but under mame it would refuse to track properly.

Sacked it off in the end and got a GUN4IR off AliExpress with recoil, fucking love it.  Point blank is still ace

[oustropique]

a GUN4IR off AliExpress

Thanks for your response. :)

Interesting - this was on my radar when I made this post, but I wasn't sure whether this or the Sinden was more accurate. From what I can see, both are good - the Sinden needs more software tinkering (sorting out borders for every emulator) with no additional hardware while the Gun4IR has some physical set-up (how easy is it to fix those IR lights to a big-screen television?) but less software tinkering - you calibrate, you set your mappings, off you go.

I mean, you said you liked it. Do you find it easy to use?

I've never bought tech off AliExpress. The Gun4IRs on there seem to be 'clones', and there's a lot of stuff about being sent software by sellers - is this the 'official' calibration software, generally?

Basically, would you think I'm okay to buy the motor version of this?

This one looks snazzier and seems to work right out of the box with the official software, if reviewers are to be believed, but it's a bit rich for my blood. Did you go high or low-end? Is it a true 'you get what you pay for' scenario?

[Sonny_Jim]

GUN4IR is just an open source project and apart from the LEDs around the monitor it doesn't need any setup/calibration/software, it literally just works like a mouse very similar to the dolphin bar.  Getting it working with my Linux based cabinet (GroovyMAME FTW) was essentially just a case of setting up the various Retroarch cores and no external software was needed.

AE sellers will build you a gun based on what you want (recoil/rumble/wireless etc) and they are 'clones' in the sense that they are done without the involvement of the author of GUN4IR, which is totally fine because it's open source.  If you really want you can contact the GUN4IR author and he'll sell you a license for the software he makes, but it's not necessary.

There are 'official' GUN4IR dealers but honestly their prices are too expensive and you may as well go sinden.

What's important to note is that none of this makes setting the guns up any easier, but what does make setting things up easier is to just use batocera Linux

https://batocera.org/

It's a custom OS so you'll have to install it on a Pi or boot from a USB, but it has all the emulators preconfigured for gun games, you just supply the roms.  Maybe before buying any other hardware you could try batocera with the Dolphin bar?

[oustropique]

Ah right, okay. You've explained this really well, thanks.

Maybe before buying any other hardware you could try batocera with the Dolphin bar?

This completely slipped my mind, I've been tinkering with Batocera on my Steam Deck and it never occurred to me that a Wiimote would be preconfigured, so I'll give that a try and if I end up getting games going.

I feel slightly stupid for not being able to get the Wiimote to work as I want it to in Windows and the buttons don't work when it is just a mouse. I'm trying to get Confidential Mission going in Flycast and it wants me to set up a save slot etc and that's a pain, and when I do get into the game, usually by continuing without saving, the crosshair really doesn't track well, it's totally off, so we may have had similar experiences.

But I'll try Batocera on my gaming PC tonight and see what happens. Thanks!

I think my fear is that right now I just want to boot up a game for an hour, so investing in hardware that's relatively new to me before I know I want to play a good amount of them probably isn't the best idea, even though I bet a proper gun feels really great to hold and use.

[Sonny_Jim]

Honestly I'd say unless you really like Lightgun games, have completed Time Crisis multiple times stuff like that, then maybe give the expensive hardware a swerve.  When I got the gun working I spent a couple of nights going through games trying to find ones that I actually enjoyed playing and ended up with a pretty short list (Point Blank, Time Crisis and HoTD). The good thing about Wiimotes is that you can get them dirt cheap and I think I paid something like 10 quid for my Dolphin bar, so if you only ever use it to play Point Blank occasionally no biggy.

I'm trying to get Confidential Mission going in Flycast the crosshair really doesn't track well,

One of the issues with Lightgun support in the various emulators is that it's usually just some kind of mouse hack, the emulator authors tend to get it working as a curiosity and it never seems to be supported very well.  In my experience I spent hours fucking around with MAME and having the gun not track properly at all, but later found out if I used MAME through Retroarch and picked a specific input driver (udev) it worked.  Even then specific cores had their own issues.  Dreamcast didn't seem to let you use a controller and lightgun at the same time making starting a game hard.  The 3DO core wouldn't allow off-screen reloading which was a bit annoying.

The good thing is that if you can get 3DO core working is that there's loads of shit and cheesy gallery shooters for it like 'Maddog McCree' and my personal favourite 'Crime Patrol'*.  Was a bit devastated I couldn't get 'Thunder in Paradise' for the CDi working as that looks fucking terrible and I love crappy movies.  Oh and be prepared to be very disappointed with Duck Hunt.  I'm actually amazed Nintendo released it as it's little more than a tech demo imo.

I bet a proper gun feels really great to hold and use.

Yeah NGL having the full recoil and the armoured cable makes it feel just like it was back in the day, but it kills your arms after about 20-30 minutes, which was the amount of time you usually played it for in the arcades.  None of these games you'll play for longer than 20 minutes anyway.

* _{Lets kick some butt!}

[oustropique]

The good thing about Wiimotes is that you can get them dirt cheap and I think I paid something like 10 quid for my Dolphin bar, so if you only ever use it to play Point Blank occasionally no biggy.

Yeah, I have Wiimotes all over the shop, which is why they occurred to me.

Happy to say that Batocera with the Dolphinbar set to mode 4 and simply connecting wiimotes to the OS via bluetooth is working out pretty well (Batocera actually detects it as 'Wii gun' and it just works, and I wonder if I should have been doing that on Windows in the first place, which I may have to try if I want to get PC games running. Some teething issues - I can't blow up the rendering resolution in a Retroarch core without the crosshair becoming tiny on my television, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to set a button to reload in Batocera instead of relying on offscreen reload (that's what's killing my arm, it seems), and I'll take any advice you might have on those issues, but it's working, and actually super fun, which is the main thing.

Thanks for your help!