Wishing for a new Intellivision Hardware Piece - a Light Gun!

[First Spear]

Nurmix has (1) plenty of time and (2) already did controller adapters so he knows how the stuff works, so it would be great for him to volunteer to make Light Gun hardware!

 

A cart like NES Duck Hunt, and a light gun to go with it. Something that plugs into a Flashback cable, and it's on!

 

 

OK, back to work.

 

 

 

Got me thinking - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/172734-why-did-mattel-bow-out/?p=3145289

 

[Flojomojo]

It would be amusing to see a light gun game that featured characters and situations from many different Intellivision games.

 

Unfortunately, it would not work on a modern television. :-(

[GroovyBee]

If you used a microcontroller to provide a high precision retriggerable timer and then hooked it into both controller ports on the ECS (and to the light gun sensor circuit) it would be possible to have such an interface. The downside would be the need for an external power supply e.g. wall wart or batteries.

[+fdr4prez]

I do recall some previous discussions about this, but I don't recall which thread(s).

 

There was some mention that the light guns would work best (or only) with CRTs, and not at all on modern TVs, as Flojomojo has mentioned above.

[+KylJoy]

The problem has been argued as one of timing, not anything else, and has been shown to be so as opposed to some sort of secret encoded signal or LCD brightness issues, etc. So... if the game code itself had a "timing" or "tuning" mechanism to sync the gun to the delay introduced by the modern television (or other equipment, like an xRGB-mini) I am convinced that the light-gun game would work good enough. There would be some delay weirdness but I'm not sure how unacceptable it would be. So, if there were a configuration parameter in the "settings" or "options" menu of the game code to tune the delay to the period necessary to sync the software "looking for" the light area on the screen to the delay introduced by the television (or xRGB-mini, for example) it should work OK.

 

FYI, I've been able to get the NES Zapper to function, albeit very badly, on my flat-screen TV. I set the TV for "Game" mode (no introduced processing, which is a big cause of induced delay) and used the 2-duck version of Duck Hunt. I think what was happening was that if I shot at the second duck the gun would pick up the white flash of the first duck (because of the delay of the image being presented on the TV, causing the first flash to be presented late and to be seen when the code was looking for the second flash) and the game would register a hit for the second duck. The ducks had to be lined up just right, etc., for it to work. But I have replicated this a few times. So, it seems to me that if we could have a variable delay introduced into code it would work like this:

 

1. pull gun trigger

2. software waits before checking screen for white flash (this is the variable delay)

3. if gun "sees" the white flash, register a hit

 

Sounds easy to me but what do I know? Someone just go do all of that.

[GroovyBee]

For modern displays, interfacing to a Wii-mote is considerably easier.

[+KylJoy]

For modern displays, interfacing to a Wii-mote is considerably easier.

 

That sounds cool. How would this eliminate the delay issue? Or, would it just not matter anymore for some reason?

[JohnPCAE]

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

 

It seems to depend on the type of light gun technology being used.

[freewheel]

The obvious answer would be to use the Sega Master System light guns, simply because they're the most common that would plug into an Intellivision already. The only thing I'm not sure of is how the heck you'd decode the signals sent from the gun itself. Someone would have to dig up the gun communications protocol.

 

NES-era light guns *may* work on some LCDs, kinda-sorta. It all depends on refresh rates and exactly how things are drawn. Usually this doesn't work but I've heard enough reports of it that obviously some screens manage it, at least partly. Anything later than that and you're out of luck - they require actual scanlines to be drawn, so that the gun can determine exactly what you're pointing at.

[+fdr4prez]

I have one CRT that my wife is hounding on me to get rid of. I keep telling her that I may need it one day, and so if this comes to fruition, then I can finally use it for something.

 

I have an older Toshiba LCD that seems to be in perpetual sleep mode according to the blink rate of the LED on the main board, or otherwise won't turn on, so maybe I can discard that one.

[mr_me]

All standard definition CRTs regardless of size are incredibly consistent with their timing. There is no timing consistency amongst digital TVs. If you're very very lucky the old games might work on certain digital TVs. I'm also thinking old pong era gun games target/skeet might not use timing and might work on any TV. Now a days I think they use some infrared emitters and receivers for gun games (wiimote like groovybee suggested). Maybe with some clever programming like kyljoy suggested an old light gun could be made to work with a new game and any TV.

 

Hooking up an atari or sega light gun to an intellivision and making a new game for use with a crt should be doable. I think NES controllers are a problem because they send data serial rather than parallel. The Intellivision could use some different controller types; guns, spinners, trackballs.

[GroovyBee]

The obvious answer would be to use the Sega Master System light guns, simply because they're the most common that would plug into an Intellivision already.

The plugs might be compatible but the signals aren't. The SMS light gun needs +5v and the GNDs don't match.

[GroovyBee]

 

That sounds cool. How would this eliminate the delay issue? Or, would it just not matter anymore for some reason?

 

I'm not sure why you'd think there would be a delay. The average human response to visual stimuli is 250ms, which means 15 video frames at 60Hz would have elapsed between the shootable object appearing, you recognising it and then pulling the trigger. Even if the interface sampled the Wii-Mote 10 times per second it'd still be enjoyable to all but the twitch gamers.

[mr_me]

Maybe meant the timing issue. With an infrared system like a wiimote its not using the display at all. So display timing is not an issue.

[+KylJoy]

Concerning delay, the issue is not related to human response. The issue is that the TV is showing the white flashes AFTER the gun and system have had an opportunity to "see" them. They've already been judged as a miss by the time the flashes appear to the gun. It isn't really looking for them anymore. The reason I can get Duck Hunt to do it's thing as described above is that the first flash finally gets to the screen when the gun and console are looking for the second flash and a hit is registered. The delay of the picture actually being shown on the TV related to when it was actually sent is the issue with the old style light guns.

 

If using a wiimote, I guess the response time should be the same as altering the code to wait for the flash on the screen for the old style guns. So, just like making the old guns work, using a wiimote would not really address the delay issue, but it would get us a way to use light guns (ish) on a modern TV.

[JohnPCAE]

Now if the Sega Master System 3D glasses could be used with an Inty...

[intvnut]

Now if the Sega Master System 3D glasses could be used with an Inty...

 

If you have a display that doesn't do awful things to images that shift back and forth every field, they could be made to work. Many/most modern LCDs, unfortunately, really screw that up. I know of at least one game that offers a "30 Hz multiplex mode" because 60Hz multiplexing was getting eaten by some screens. Some of my own experiments simply fail on some TVs. For example, if I display image A on even frames and image B on odd frames, it sometimes only shows one of the two images.

 

Regarding the light gun: An NES style "flash black-white-black" gun would work, even if there was a display system lag, if you also provide for a calibration mode. "Aim gun at screen and fire", then the system flashes a few times to measure the delay. I recall Rock Band has something like that already for determining the A/V lag of a display system, and it's definitely necessary in order to make that game playable. When playing music, a master musician can notice lags as small as 5ms. On my friend's TV, Rock Band measured some crazy 70ms lag, IIRC.

[+DZ-Jay]

I know it's probably heresy, but I rather have more games take advantage of the Intellivision controller. Sure, there's a lot of IntyBASIC stuff coming up, but most of it just treat the disc as a 4-way or 8-way controller, or you shoot with the keypad.

 

I want to see some real creative work on making that hand-controller sing, rather than aiming for some new hardware that will probably won't get much adoption.

 

I also never cared much for light-gun games back in the day, other than for that "Skeet Shooter" game that came with my Telestar. Weren't they all that game?

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

I know it's probably heresy, but I rather have more games take advantage of the Intellivision controller. Sure, there's a lot of IntyBASIC stuff coming up, but most of it just treat the disc as a 4-way or 8-way controller, or you shoot with the keypad.

 

I want to see some real creative work on making that hand-controller sing, rather than aiming for some new hardware that will probably won't get much adoption.

 

I also never cared much for light-gun games back in the day, other than for that "Skeet Shooter" game that came with my Telestar. Weren't they all that game?

 

-dZ.

Can you do a small proof of concept demo using the disc as a rotary control (ie. Spinner). Just a dash moving left/right. There have been a few ball and paddle games made but none use the disc this way. The disc was orignally designed to replace both the joystick and paddle controllers; but I dont know if its 16 point resolution is good enough for a spinner control.

[+DZ-Jay]

Can you do a small proof of concept demo using the disc as a rotary control (ie. Spinner). Just a dash moving left/right. There have been a few ball and paddle games made but none use the disc this way. The disc was orignally designed to replace both the joystick and paddle controllers; but I dont know if its 16 point resolution is good enough for a spinner control.

 

It's in my To-Do, unless someone else wants to do this. I have some clear ideas on how this could be implemented, I just haven't gotten around to do it. I firmly believe that the disc can be treated as a "spinner" control, as you describe.

 

I'm in the middle of another project right now, but I think I'll try to make a demo once I complete it.

 

-dZ.

[First Spear]

On 10/8/2016 at 9:18 AM, mr_me said:

Maybe meant the timing issue. With an infrared system like a wiimote its not using the display at all. So display timing is not an issue.

Like this?

 

https://www.ebay.com/p/1500050408?iid=125342659168

 

How would that work from a hardware perspective? I can imagine requiring an ECS for additional controller ports but the gun has to talk "to" something. Or would a Sega Saturn wired light gun connect better? 

 

 

[First Spear]

Gentle mental bump. Best Electronics has Atari Light Guns for sale. They appear to be pin compatible with the ECS, I wonder if timing and power concerns could be addressed by requiring an ECS.