Lightgun games on RetroPie - Time Crisis / Point Blank / Duck Hunt

MrLightgun

Hi All

I'm working on a project for a new Lightgun technology and I've recently dedicated some time to pushing the Raspberry Pi to the max and seeing how far I can take Lightgun games on the platform.

It's very much a work in progress, especially with managing emulator lag. The Sinden Lightgun has actually been developed as a high performance PC Lightgun but Raspberry Pi / RetroPie support was very much something I wanted to add in despite the technical challenges.

Playstation Lightgun games on the Raspberry Pi:

Nes and Mame Lightgun games on the Raspberry Pi:

I've done a blog post on my site where I have tried to sum up the general state of play of Lightgun games on the Raspberry Pi:
http://www.sindenlightgun.com/blog/raspberry-pi-lightgun-support-in-software/

There is a mailing list on my site if anyone wants to keep in loop:
www.sindenlightgun.com

Please feel free to ask any questions on Raspberry Pi / RetroPie Lightgun support as I have obviously dedicated quite a large amount of time experimenting.

Mr Lightgun
p.s. I just couldn't seem to get Area 51 to work in Mame. Can anyone confirm exactly what version of Mame and exactly which rom version they managed to get to work please?

ppuspfc

@MrLightgun It's not one of my interests on emulation, but congrats on your work!

quicksilver

I'm very much interested in watching your progress on this. I have felt that the current options for lightgun games was somewhat lacking. I noticed there is a fair amount of lag between when you pull the trigger and the shot registers. Is this a limitation of the pi or is this something you think could be improved?

IanDaemon

@MrLightgun To sate my thirst for lightguns last weekend I hooked up my Nintendo Wii console. I know that's the lazy man's way out and it would never play PS1 games, but the Pi seems so underpowered (even for games with 3D graphics). I've never had much luck. You're making some real progress!

MrLightgun

@quicksilver It's very much a challenge with the Raspberry Pi. I did my Mame and Nes video and then subsequently managed some massive performance improvements but then getting Playstation working, pushed the boundaries again, so I need another round of performance improvements. As a general approximation, the Sinden Lightgun on the Pi has a sub 1.5ish frame response time, sub 24ms.
This very useful RetroPie article in the wiki:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Input-Lag
Indicates that the Raspberry Pi emulators have about 8 frames lag. So this is where I need to focus the improvement. However I made the mistake of using high res mode on PCSX-rearmed which probably added a few more frames which I think pushes it past the limit to where people have noticed.
I do want to do 1 more video soon that covers everything and also with some performance improvements. To be honest, this is the fun of the Pi, seeing how far you can push it. I also found some patches to remove guncon screen flash which I would like to test also. I don't know if they skip the flash frame altogether or just show a frame without any flash.

MrLightgun

@IanDaemon said in Lightgun games on RetroPie - Time Crisis / Point Blank / Duck Hunt:

@MrLightgun To sate my thirst for lightguns last weekend I hooked up my Nintendo Wii console. I know that's the lazy man's way out and it would never play PS1 games, but the Pi seems so underpowered (even for games with 3D graphics). I've never had much luck. You're making some real progress!

On the plus side the Wii does have some very good Lightgun games. You can play them with the Sinden Lightgun using Dolphin but you need to use a PC.

IanDaemon

@MrLightgun The Wii also had some horrible ones! XD I have almost all of the lightgun games released on the Wii. I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed some of the Cabela's games. (Dangerous Hunts 2011 is a really good purchase.) At the end there I was getting picky when buying games because I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Evert

This is awesome mate. Do you know already what price range you will be offering the lightgun when you start your kickstarter campaign?

pjft

Awesome. Signed up too the mailing list. Definitely keen on learning more. I still have my old PS1, a CRT and Time Crisis around. Would love to be able to keep playing them in this modern age.

hermit

Great
will you try to make it compatible for other systems like Megadrive, c64, Snes ..?

markwkidd

Very nice!

If you are interested in making direct contacts with the RetroArch team (if you have not already) please tag me here or in the libretro discord server.

There is a libretro/RetroArch lightgun API which you or someone else might be able to write an implementation for in order to better integrate with that ecosystem.

MajorDangerNine

@hermit Here's one of his previous blog posts with info on Mega Drive and SNES. In short, it is planned yet needs some fixing.

http://www.sindenlightgun.com/blog/raspberry-pi-lightgun-support-in-software/

I didn't even know C64 had light gun games, though I suppose my C64 knowledge is in passing at best.

hermit

if it can be useful, here is a list of games that require a lightgun :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gun_games

MrLightgun

@hermit Hi hermit, yes it will support the standard APIs so I'm hoping we can get all emulators working. Snes and MegaDrive (Genesis)/Master System are near certainties as there is already partial implementations. They already work on windows too.

MrLightgun

@markwkidd Thank you, I will use the Lightgun API. That way any emulator I progress Lightgun support for will be available for everyone including PCSX-rearmed.

MrLightgun

@hermit I must have loaded that list about 1000 times since I started this project :-)

MrLightgun

@Evert said in Lightgun games on RetroPie - Time Crisis / Point Blank / Duck Hunt:

This is awesome mate. Do you know already what price range you will be offering the lightgun when you start your kickstarter campaign?

Hi Evert, this is still to be confirmed. I'm trying to make it as affordable as possible.

simpleethat

@MrLightgun this is awesome! I look forward to adding one of these to my setup in the future.

Just out of curiosity, how long have you been working on this project?

Fruitybit

@MrLightgun Please post here when the Kickstarter kicks off!)

IanDaemon

@Fruitybit I'm really interested in this. I loved the Wii console for the resurgence of the lightgun genre that console provided. Yes, the PS3 had the Move, but developers didn't support it.