NES Zapper/SNES SuperScope + LCD/Plasma/LED TV? - No this isn't a how to or guide.

I'm actually wondering if anyone managed to successfully come up with a mod for either the Roms, the guns, or something to sit between the tv and the system to calculate the latency properly for this.

I'm pretty disappointed I picked up a Super Scope 6 today and bought Yoshi's Safari because it was the one game I never ever got to really enjoy as a kid, my mom one year for my b-day I think it was picked up Yoshi's Safari for me not realizing it required this gun, so I used to turn it on and wonder what it would be like if I ever got to play it.

So when I saw the super scope 6 in a store today I decided why the hell not picked it up and got yoshi's safari of e-bay and figured I'd finally get to fill a hole in my heart by playing one of the classics I never got to enjoy, it was a happy day.

Then the fiance wanted to play duck hunt on the NES and it turned out the Zappers weren't registering HMM, some google results later and it turns out it can't work on my wall mounted 60" plasma in my living room because of latency issues, so I start looking deeper turns out the Super Scope 6 won't work either no longer a happy day and a new hole in my heart to be filled.

So I'm really interested if anyone ever managed to come up with a solution to this, I've seen tons of posts about it all over the place and I'm almost considering picking up the project myself if I can get my hands on the right debugging utilities ( Flash cart, way to actually debug... breakpoint, catch exceptions and such... This would need to be done on a real console not in an emulator ).

I was thinking considering it's a latency issue it may be possible to build a configuration system as a loader before the game starts in a rom...

I.E. Shoot here, here and here, Adjust latency and use assembly to move the new latency value into the game's rom before loading.
Although it would probably be hard to find the actual value in memory of where the latency is stored... ( Maybe it's tied to when a duck is hit so figure with proper debugging, back tracing and such it may just be possible ).

Anyway those are my ideas on the subject ( The adjustment of latency pretty much reminds me of the way new modern games have to work, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Kinect dance games, etc. ).

All of those games have to adjust for video latency or they just don't work right (Reminds me of the NES duck hunt 1 in 100 shots actually hit the duck).

This seems like a fun project if it hasn't been done yet,
Anyone interested feel free to contribute your ideas, comments, suggestions input etc.

If I did decide to take the project up I would of course provide the ROM to everyone...
but hopefully it's already been done so I don't have to sit here for hours upon hours debugging, reversing and writing in pure assembly -_-.

 

I'm surprised no one really expressed interest in this quickly...

I've done various research on the matter and it seems one guy completely replaced the circuitry inside the gun in order to use it with a PC and do proper color detection on Plasma's, LCD's etc how he accounted for the differences was he made the gun calibrate ahead of time (Similar to what I want to do now with the original light gun).

I guess the issue isn't just latency but also comes down to the fact that Black on LCD(s)/Plasma(s)/LED(s) isn't the same as what it was on CRT monitors or TV's,
while I'm hoping this isn't a factor I think I've found my starting point before trying to rip apart the code behind Duck Hunt as well as various other games.

The idea for my starting point was inspired by the USB gun developed by the other person ( I don't recall his name ),
but I guess the best starting point rather then figuring out why the gun doesn't work is to write debug info to the screen about what it sees the best way I can think of doing this is to write a basically homebrew game/app for the NES which actually reads the data from the gun to see what it sees at any point and time rather then only when the trigger is pulled telling me whether or not a duck has been hit.

This way I can put several colors on the screen rather then just white/black and figure out exactly what's going on behind the scenes, once done with that I can properly adjust my homebrew application/game to see if I can't get the gun appropriately working with such.

At the point I did get the gun working on that homebrew application/game I'd then know exactly what would need to be adjusted in the Duck Hunt code to make it properly work again.

Right now this is all theory and talk but if people other then myself express an interest in this I may be down to dedicate some real time to working on it.

 

The light gun looks for a square that is moving around with the duck sprite. You would have to also separate the location of the sprites. Latency is time spent. You can't reliably go back in time on your couch. Therefore the practicality of this idea isn't looking good. Unless you know how to almost completely rewrite the mechanics of the game. Long story short your plasma tv sucks. Don't feel bad my LCD does too.

 

Plasma(s) suck in general, my LED is in my room lol...

But If you've actually done the research on it, it is practical the latency is the issue(as well as black not really being black with LCD/Plasma(s)) it's a matter of giving the user the ability to re-configure their own latency (That's kind of the hardest part about the concept).

Changing any mechanics in the game as well could be possible, I.E.
On a configuration screen (to account for the black being a different shade) have the user shoot a shown black/white square then pull the data from the gun for what it sees...

Upon doing such overwrite the values in the game engine which display black/white boxes with the appropriate newly captured values from the gun.

As far as you saying you can't go back in time on your couch that makes no sense, The latency issue has to do with the time between the gun being fired and what's being displayed on the screen adjusting the delay on the TV to make things display with the fire rate appropriately would actually correct the issue.

The problem is there's either not enough delay, or there's to much the first step would be to figure out which of the two it is.

But as I said this method of adjusting latency between video and IRL processing is done even in modern games (Dance games for the kinect, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, All of em ) due to the fact they started to realize different TV(s) would have different latencies between a users stroke and what's actually being displayed on the screen.

From my understanding this is the problem with the various shooter games requiring the Zapper for the NES.

 

There are two ways for games to detect hits: by blanking the whole screen for a frame then cycling through white target boxes, or in more sophisticated system blanking the screen, flashing white, and timing the moment where light is detected to determine the raster position.

Both of those methods require basically instantaneous feedback because the sensor's status could be sampled ANY time after the target is painted by the raster. Delaying the sensor's signal to precisely re-sync with the raster would only work with games that sensed the same target over MULTIPLE frames after the trigger pull. Only then might the display's latency be compensated for and to my knowledge 0 lightgun games are like that because the artifacts would be clearly visible and cause additional eye strain. Games which track the raster will forever be an issue because modern TVs don't have rasters, some may even update the entire frame simultaneously.

An emulator + pointer/Wiimote positioning system is pretty much the only way going forward.

 

Wait...why wouldn't a super scope work? The super scope isn't a light gun.

 

Itr's a light bazooka but still same basic principle as light guns

 

The Super Scope has a "barrel" just like NES Zapper which is the same sort of collector of light. It is bigger which helps with its function. The box that sits on your TV is just an IR receiver. The front of the Super Scope has an IR transmitter. While I do not know exactly how it works, the Super Scope doesn't rely on the simplistic approach of the Zapper. The Zapper is just about "do I see light or not". The Super Scope has calibration and has an approximate X/Y of where it is aimed at. But it still requires the Raster operation of the CRT to do all this.

With the Super Scope, you could rig up a new device with hacked ROMs to play on a display like a Plasma TV. I suppose with enough hacking you could alter NES games as well. But you would need hardware to handle figuring out where the gun is pointed at as well as someway to get that information to the modified software.

I recall Playstation 1 or 2 games had something called the LCD Top Gun or something like that. It used a system similar to the Wii for aiming.

 

Its actually very simple, guitar hero and the like use this, but they have one very predictable direction for the sprites(if they still call them that) to go(down). There isn't any look ahead, you just adjust for the values in ms and everything works(most of the time).
Granted I am assuming that the ducks move in a random direction to keep down on CPU/ROM usage(I have not, and will not research this ). If there was no randomness the argument would be void anyways due to the script (and therefore the mechanics) needing to be changed. The problem that you run into is that the ducks move around in multiple directions(3 more than the hero/band games), the cpu will either have to have the look ahead to know where the sprite is at any given time(XY and time), not something that the NES is great at. Or the code will have to be changed for the expected values. Since analog sets have almost no latency from the digital circuits output, there probably isn't any look-ahead or prediction code to account for it. You would be re-inventing the wheel. Now outside of the NES hardware it might be possible, either through FPGA, faster platform or an emulator that doesn't care. All things considered, if it was easy, someone else would have done it.

It does with original hardware on some if not all LCD/LED/Plasma. You cant just tack on a pre-loader for ms values(similar to gutair hero)and expect it to work. The only other thing I can think of, is if the gun fires instantly with a click, having the gun fire later; but that would give a subpar experience for the user.

The more dimensions you play with the more difficult it is to adjust for latency. Time spent is time spent, you can only implore "tricks" to make it less perceptible to the user.

Oh and the reliably back in time thing was a bit of a joke, parts of yourself, and everything around you, are all in "different times". Additionally every time you move or accelerate you bend time even more(very very small differences). Meh physics.

 

Just out of curiosity...

I'm assuming new systems in arcade centres now use LCDs but still use some form of light gun? So is there something there that can be used/made to work on the older systems?

 

I think it's the timing that is adjusted at the factory so the gun would be "accurate"

There is some delay in HDMI anywhere from a few mS to a few seconds. Most modern LCD are all digital and often has analog RGB/S-Video/Composite/Component/RF to digital which would add some delay as well. Not to mention CRT has scan line, basically 1 pixed is lit at a time at very high rate (1MHz I think) while LCD has whole display refreshed at once. That makes it harder for old light gun to pick up the specific scan line.

One of the older LCD TV I used to have had awful analog input response. When I tried PS2 via component I was seeing almost a whole second from action till the screen showed something. It would be fine for DVD player and cable but not for gaming so I gave it to my parent. My current LCD TV has much less noticeable delay but still just enough that most light gun won't work. NES Zapper seems to work but I think it's because of huge target square as opposed to scanline timing.

 

One method is to have sensors to aim that are IR (think Wii) and then properly calibrate the guns so that the actual image you see on screen isn't involved in the gun deciding where it was fired at.

Anything that isn't a CRT, doesn't have a Raster, so you can't have a plain light gun. LCDs, DLP, Plasma are all out. For those technologies you need a different way of calculating the aim of the gun and definitely requires calibration. Again, you can use Infra-red sensors which we don't see but the lens of the lightgun can see. With the right arrangement and calibration you can use something like a LCD. But for older systems like SNES or Genesis this will not work. The delay is one possible issue but even if it weren't you'd need a new lightgun with such sensors and it would need to be calibrated and probably need circuitry connected to the Video Sync to be involved in simulating the older style lightgun. If your display is fast enough to nearly match a CRT's zero delay and you came up with some device I bet it could work.

Basically you'd need your lightgun to be figuring where at the screen you fired and then some circuitry or computer to very quickly determine what is going on with the video signal from the console and then what to do at that point. In the case of the NES I suppose you'd be looking at the Luma value of the video at the position the gun fired at. It really depends on how each lightgun for each system works. Either way it's cheaper and easier to just get a CRT.

 

Definitely easier to get a CRT but what happens when they are all gone

Thanks for the reply though, I just thought that there must be some way of adapting the new tech to the old to make it work (I know nothing about this stuff though! haha)

 

The Guncon for ps3 works this way. It has 2 pods of IR LEDs that go on the top corners of your tv, and it calibrates the gun off of those. Works really well, too bad I think Time Crisis 4 was the only game that used it.

 

We are a long way from not having any CRTs. Plus the technology to make CRTs is certainly still around. I'm not sure if anyone current manufactures them though. But by the time you have trouble getting CRTs you'll likely be having trouble running the hardware that needs a CRT too.

 

I doubt anyone still manufacture CRT for use in consumer TV. Maybe small ones (under 15") for special purpose monitors and maybe for oscilloscope but nothing else. CRT is loaded with toxic chemical (mainly lead), is hazardous due to vacuum inside, and can present shock hazard as well if it's been powered on. Plus with very thin LCD & Plasma TV selling very well today I doubt anyone would willingly buy a very fat CRT TV

 

Liquid crystals are toxic too and every electrical equipment with voltages higher than 60-70 volts is dangerous too... if you're dumb enough. Those dangers are way overrated, every home got a lot of more dangerous stuff, from simple scissors to microwave oven.

CRTs are expensive to produce, LCD panels are very cheap. That's the main reason. Others are the size and weight. But still plasma and LCD can't beat the CRT in response times, view angles etc. Contrary to popular belief LCDs aren't much more energy efficient too. High-end CRT = 140-230 watts. High-end LCD - 120-210 watts

 

The reason that flat panel TVs are so popular is because of their reduced weight and size allowing them to come from overseas while still being competitive prices. I would agree that CRTs are mainly for special purpose type uses now. For the average person, any flat panel piece of garbage will do. But for those of us with decent eye sight, a CRT is a must for older devices.

 

God N64 games look so bad on the 50inch flat screen in our living room. I was planing on getting an HD CRT big screen just for gaming old school. Not sure if it will make the games look like crap too.

 

HD CRT's have the same fault in that they are Digital. You need a high quality Analog CRT. Part of why older systems look shitty is because the transformation from an analog signal to a digital one is intended for Television sources like VHS, DVD, and TV set-top boxes like cable and satellite. For the best picture and no worries about control lag you want a real analog CRT.