Interest check - Superguns

Myself and a friend are looking to make ourselves superguns, and were thinking of making a few more to sell.

We aren't looking to make a lot of money, so they WILL be cheaper than almost all the rest!

If you are interested, please reply here with your thoughts. If there's anything you would like to see in one, let me know, we are going to draw up a few different ideas for types, so it's not too late to make a difference!

Do you want SCART or RCA?
Do you want light mods?
Do you want a barebones Supergun box, and you provide your own power supply?
Do you just want the bits in a bag with instructions?

This will be started after the festive season, so let me know interest/ideas/price suggestions soon!

 

I'll take a TachikomaGun please!

id like one with as much cool stuff as possible... no need to have it SCART, as every gamer has aaaaaaaaaaaat least 6 or 7 of those funny scart converters lying around.

)

 

err, default output would be RGB, which would mean you'd need it to be SCART, adam-james ;-)

 

Indeed, no way I'd go for composite :smt071
I think you guys need to consider the controller ports well, a lot of Superguns use AES controllers as they're just switches (ie no encoding takes place) but then those controllers aren't that easy to find.

EDIT: Oh and possible something to "de-amplify" the audio back to line level, or connect the audio to line level outputs if the board has them (ST-V has), so the audio can go through scart too without potentially damaging your TV.

 

That's all sorted.

We are going to natively use MegaDrive ports/pads, seeing as they are 3 fire button and need no encoding hardware. Also, at £3 on average are a cheaper than AES pads! We could do AES ports if people request them though, but obviously would need to charge a small subsidy.

The audio I am looking into, it should be relatively easy to throttle the audio signal, and I have an old SCART monitor that I can test it on, if it goes bang, it's no big problem.

 

Standard Mega Drive pads do have encoding hardware. They use a '157 (2-to-1 MUX.)

 

Oh tit... forgot about that... :smt043

Well I can alway's make them MD pad compatible only!

 

I'd do that, let people hack their own pads if they want something else.

 

Yup, you'll find unless you're making an RGB supergun with internal speaker and standard 15 pin D-sub controller ports on every unit, you'll be making up circuits and custom wiring.

Don't forget, JAMMA may be 3 button, but MVS is 4, and other standards use 6 buttons. Lots of people want to play Jamma+, MVS and sometimes other boards on their supergun. If you use a standard MD port, then you'll have to use a multiplexer still, as the early pads rely on toggling with start.

This is why 15 pin d sub ports (also known as the ultra common port used on ALL PC JOYSTICKS [non usb]) are the norm on superguns.

Like I said, PC joystick (hint hint).

Oh, and don't forget some games have weird controls... not that there's much call for that! Still, its where having extra pins comes in handy ;-)

I really should dust off the plans for my mini MVS supergun table thingy, was cool!

 

wat about people here in the us? is this super gun just going to be european people? "scart bla bla bla"

 

Well if you want inferior S-Video, im sure we could wire that up for you. And don't start with that progressive scan shit, unless you are willing to pay the extra for the required hardware.

 

SVideo requires more than wiring. Don't worry about progressive scan either, nobody should ask for that What kind of cases are you planning to use?

 

Yup S-Video needs an encoder circuit - a good one preferably!

 

why not progressive scan ? expensive?

 

Progressive scan is silly because JAMMA compliant games use 15.75Khz interlaced video. You could however get the progressive effect by upscanning, which would require a bunch of extra components and even then would be lossy and unnatural.

 

then the best we can get in the us is s-video ?

 

I will hold you to that! ;-)

 

May be intrested depending on price. I'd like one prebuilt with RGB SCART and a PSU to come with it. As plug and play as possible.

Pad wise... hmmm... any console pad would be best for me. I would also prefer sound to be outputted through the TV, but an external speaker would also be fine.

 

The best you can get in the US is RGB! But you'll need some hardware to view it on your TV. I dunno why everyone is so fastidious about video. 99% of the time, I play my games in.... composite *ghoul noises* When I get another nice monitor I'll go back, but it's not that big of an issue. If you were to choose between half your game collection and a RGB monitor, which would you choose?