Sinden Lightgun MiSTer Support Published

[MrLightgun]

Hi Everyone

It's been a very popular ongoing request and I'm finally publishing the prototype MiSTer Sinden Lightgun support. I'm really happy with the integration, it works really well and is really good fun, the range of cores on the MiSTer give a fantastic lightgun catalogue.

This is a demonstration video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apJ_ClXhCMA

The Sinden Lightgun is a lightgun controller compatible with modern LCD displays. Unlike other modern lightguns, the Sinden Lightgun works by tracking an onscreen border and processing the data from an onboard video camera. This allows it to work without needing to attach any external IR emitters or other devices to your display, much more like an old style lightgun. However, processing the camera data into a gun tracking position requires specialized software and usually a good amount of processing power.

Sinden Lightgun performs its video crunching on the target computer device. This initially looked like it would not be possible to run on the MiSTer as the onboard ARM cpu (800Mhz) is quite underpowered and the Linux operating system is barebones. However I have spent a lot of time developing a low resource driver that can comfortably run on the MiSTer and also removed many required components so it can run on the streamlined Linux OS.

The driver has 3 modes, low resource, default and max resource. The low resource uses as little as 4% of the core as it only crunches the video when you pull the trigger. I would recommend starting with default as that uses less resource than normal but doesn't have any noticable affect on MiSTer performance and the lightgun performance is a bit better than low resource. Max resource gives the best performance you can get and doesn't seem to have a noticeable difference on MiSTer performance except for CD based games. So on something like Duck Hunt it works fine.

I haven't needed to use overclocking but that is an option to improve performance.

At the moment (and probably forever) you do need a custom kernel, so I would recommend for testing using a fresh SD card and following the guide. The MiSTer kernel doesn't change that often so hopefully I can always generate a modified kernel with support everytime the MiSTer kernel has a major release.

Please follow the instructions here:
https://github.com/MrLightgun/MiSTerSindenDriver

I have created a youtube video of the setup process here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SfxPMCr5xk

This project to add Sinden Lightgun support owes a huge debt of gratitude to Nolan Nicholson who assisted with the development and setup and Wiggy from the Sinden Lightgun Discord who help push to make it happen and assisted with the scripts and testing.

Any feedback good or bad from testers is appreciated including documentation feedback. Any developers that are willing to expand MiSTer lightgun support and need some sample hardware please get in touch. Such as Lightgun support on the Saturn core which would be a huge win (Virtua Cop and House Of The Dead)!

At the moment the supported cores are NES, SNES, Genesis and PSX.

Please remember this is a first proper launch of the Sinden Lightgun MiSTer prototype driver and whilst I am pretty happy with it there is always room for improvement.

Big thanks to everyone that helped created the MiSTer project and also to any users here who have supported my Sinden Lightgun project. Your support is always appreciated and valued and never taken for granted.

Mr Lightgun
Andy Sinden

[dcubed]

Phenomenal work! Congrats on finally making it happen!

Will defo be buying some of your guns at some point

Hopefully we'll get Saturn support too once the core itself starts supporting the Virtua Gun.

Also, props for using a MiSTer Multisystem in that video, they're great pieces of kit.

[german_user]

Cool, that this is done now. Now i need to buy the gun

[towd]

just quickly tested this with time crisis and time crisis project titan on the psx and it seems to be working well!

no recoil, but i'm guessing that's due to the driver being in its infancy - are you able to advise @MrLightgun ?

Great work Andy - I've been waiting for this to be implemented for ages!

[MrLightgun]

Thank you for the kind words and support.

Recoil should work by holding down "up" on the Dpad for 5 seconds, should toggle between Off/Single Shot/Automatic.

I've just added custom MegaDrive and MegaCD cores with the border but not heavily tested yet.

We have also fixed an issue with the custom kernel that was messing up wifi/bluetooth devices.

[mike911]

Thanks for the efforts! Had a look at the videos but didn't see the mister lightgun calibration screen anywhere (F10). Can you skip that or is it still needed for main and each core?

[ghorricks]

Thanks Andy - This community can be filled with hate at times. What I am saying is "keep doing what you want", and if the people like it then let them decide. I ordered a Sinden gun a few days ago (wish I would have asked for recoil), but I will support this effort as the Wiimote was just not good enough.

[ghorricks]

Ooohhh... quick one Andy - have you spoke with Analogue at all about any support on their side? I'd love to be able to use light gun games on my docked pocket (my Mister is in a cab with a 19" screen)

[MrLightgun]

Ooohhh... quick one Andy - have you spoke with Analogue at all about any support on their side? I'd love to be able to use light gun games on my docked pocket (my Mister is in a cab with a 19" screen)

Hi, I don't think (but not 100% sure) that the Analogue Pocket has an onboard ARM cpu. This is pretty unique for the MiSTer (luckily for this driver). So we need that for this solution to work but might be something can look at in the future with additional hardware

[aberu]

That's correct, the Pocket doesn't have an ARM processor, it has a much less powerful MCU that handles general IO duties.

[ghorricks]

So
Sinden -> Pi -> USB mouse -> Pocket

Would chain of thought, I guess... If a Pi or other cheap ARM CPU could process the video and just emulate a mouse (HID) to the Pocket - BAM.

EDIT : I say "just" (haha) we all know there are hundreds if not thousands of hours put into development. Not to mention the cores would need the white box around the edges, but I guess thats the "simple" bit.

[PistolsAtDawn]

Excellent news!! I can't wait to play Time Crisis again!

Thank you for keeping on this request! I didn't think it was going to be possible on the MiSTer, but I am so happy to have been wrong!

[bankshot]

Thank you Andy and Nolan and Wiggy for your incredible efforts!!! It looks like I have a new controller to purchase for my MiSTer, just please stay committed to the MiSTer platform is all I ask...it really is the most amazing retro gaming system I've ever come across.

[ghorricks]

Excellent work, the script did all the work for me on MiSTer.
Duck Hunt crosshair seems a little off centre, so is there any way to calibrate from MiSTer?

[mike911]

Retrorgb did a stream today with Andy Sinden testing the guns on Mister, highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/live/1dMD4GNTi0 ... pHKbetXkdg

They ran into the issue you mention at 27:35, "pressing left on the dpad for 3-5 seconds" calibrates it.

They also had an issue with the tapto extension interfering with the guns so had to disable it.

I have been swapping cards with a build just for the Sinden lightgun, curated with only the lightgun games. Performance has been really solid and I will be buying a second one as soon as Saturn works with it. The portability aspect is amazing, no sensors, no calibration. I keep moving my mister from my desk to the living room and then to my kid bedroom in order to play with the gun and it takes only minutes to setup. Only thing that worries me is that I use OLED tvs so might risk burn in with the white border.

[ghorricks]

Thank you - Holding LEFT for 3 seconds did the job perfectly.

[Palmiga]

First of all, thanks for your work.

I own the sinden lightgun and I am happy to use it with the MISTer.

Just one question: It would be great to use it at the Amiga-Meeting in november here in germany as part of the game-competition. There are a few games you could play with any mouse connected to the MISTer via USB, like Space Gun, Operation Wolf or Terminator 2.

Is it possible to use the sinden lightgun instead of a mouse?

[Dr Johnny Bananas]

How do you disable the red crosshair?

[mike911]

You can disable it at the core input options.

[Yamster52]

Hi, does anyone have a card set up they could share? No ROMs etc obviously

I can't get this working. I have to try borrow the use of a windows machine to update the fw as Mac only and windows machines I have access to are locked down by employer.

I have setup a new SD card and installed the various drivers.then I see in the video guide that I need to access windows again to input io address for the gun?

The lack of windows is obviously a massive problem but even if I get past that I'm struggling to understand the setup process. I'm not a total luddite btw

I don't fing the guide the most easy to follow nor the video either. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Yamster52]

Ok so I got it setup. But apart from a brief laggy game if point blank I have not been able to use it since. It works fine for menu selection as a controller but no matter what driver I use I cannot calibrate the gun in any game. The red cross hair is jumping around all over the place even if I'm holding the gun steady. Anyone have any ideas?

[Yamster52]

Edit' have it working for a couple hours. Point blank pretty good. However I played one stage of time crisis titan and half way into stage 2 game started glitching when pressing the duck button. Instead of popping out to shoot repeated glitch between duck and pop up.