[HN Gopher] Yes, you can play Duck Hunt without a television (bu...
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       Yes, you can play Duck Hunt without a television (but I can't)
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2024-06-07 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nicole.express)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nicole.express)
        
       | myrloc wrote:
       | Anyone have ideas on why there aren't more of these point and
       | shoot at home games? I loved the ones I played as a kid. It
       | always felt like something relegated to arcades
        
         | jareklupinski wrote:
         | the most recent one i had at home was the Resident Evil rails
         | shooter for the Wii
         | 
         | it was really fun with a friend
        
         | paulbgd wrote:
         | There might not be many new games, but for the old games
         | getting a used crt is free and the consoles are cheap too! I've
         | been playing through the ps2 light gun games and it really does
         | feel like you've got an arcade at home.
        
           | fardo wrote:
           | The CRT requirement has pleasantly eroded recently.
           | 
           | A kickstarter a few years back for the Sinden light gun [1]
           | realized that by using webcams, some quick image processing
           | and perspective transforms, you could make a light gun work
           | anywhere and could get real-time performance on non-CRTs by
           | essentially adding a small border region of the screen,
           | making it work on essentially any monitor. He filmed and
           | wrote extensive technical breakdowns about the build process
           | and mechanics at play, which were great.
           | 
           | The maker also seems to have had a solid understanding of
           | what made those old light gun games cool, because he made
           | sure to build versions with solenoid-based recoil as well as
           | the big chunky metal foot pedal you'd use for games like time
           | crisis.
           | 
           | [1] https://youtu.be/grcGpr_8W9Y?si=z800V7f62dDS1KGs
        
             | MegaDeKay wrote:
             | Sinden is no longer the way to go. Most lightgun
             | enthusiasts have now gone the Gun4IR route [0]. It uses the
             | IR sensor from a WiiMote plus a microcontroller in the gun
             | (either a gutted commercial controller like the PS Guncon,
             | a modified Nerf or similar, or something straight up 3d
             | printed) and four IR LEDs placed around a monitor / TV at
             | the midpoints of each each. This system is extremely
             | accurate and there is no flashing border around the screen
             | like with Sinden. Unfortunately, the whole shooting match
             | (see what I did there?) is closed source code and (as of
             | now) Window's only for the calibration-based PC software.
             | 
             | The current open source competitor to Gun4IR is the Samco
             | light gun [1]. It uses four LEDs as well, but with two on
             | the top edge and two on the bottom edge of the screen. A
             | couple Wii LED bars will do the job here as well. I don't
             | think it is quite as accurate as the Gun4IR as I don't
             | think it accounts for perspective correction if you move
             | from the position it was originally calibrated at. But...
             | 
             | Sam & a few others are readying a new design called
             | OpenFire [2] that will be at least on par accuracy-wise as
             | Gun4IR and will be fully open source and cross platform. It
             | should be available relatively soon. Pair this with the
             | PiCon [3] and you have a lightgun with a pretty crazy
             | feature set. All the guns mentioned support some kind of
             | solenoid & rumble support, but the PiCon kicks it up a
             | notch with exclusive OpenFire features like an OLED
             | display, NeoPixel LED, accelerometer, and analog joystick.
             | 
             | [0] https://www.gun4ir.com/
             | 
             | [1]
             | http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=160517.0
             | 
             | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE9a-fsnMwU
             | 
             | [3] https://diylightgun.com/lightgun-details/?lgid=506
             | 
             | edit: make more specific reference to OpenFire
        
         | itishappy wrote:
         | It was a major genre on the Wii. The Wii Zapper was an optional
         | attachment that gave the WiiMote a pistol grip. Titles off the
         | top of my head include CoD III, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption,
         | Resident Evil: The Umbrella Cronicles, Resident Evil: The
         | Darkside Chronicles, and House of Dead II & III Return.
         | 
         | I think the main reason that it never took off much was that it
         | kinda sucked. It worked great when it worked, but the tracking
         | was often glitchy and it was super frustrating when you're
         | counting bullets to have the occasionally shot go offscreen. I
         | have a feeling we had a higher tolerance for this with Duck
         | Hunt due to the novelty and arcade games due to the format. (I
         | feel like arcade games tend to avoid showing you a reticle for
         | this very reason, but I don't have data to back this up.)
         | 
         | That being said, I still ended up beating Metroid and both
         | Resident Evils, so they were still super fun!
         | 
         | Also, I was in Dave and Busters recently and they had Time
         | Crisis 5. Beat that too!
        
           | jrm4 wrote:
           | FWIW, I had until now completely forgotten that I was playing
           | these games at home, on a PC with a "shooter" experience.
           | 
           | They were mouse controlled, but I had a gyration air mouse --
           | (with the clever thing of instead of requiring infrared, it
           | just had a 3rd button that had to be depressed for actual
           | movement)
        
           | cubefox wrote:
           | I'm surprised you call it glitchy. I heard elsewhere that
           | Resident Evil 4 on Wii was easier than the GameCube original
           | because the aiming was more precise than with a stick.
        
         | blt wrote:
         | "relegated" seems like the wrong word - the best ones IMO were
         | the later arcade versions like Gunblade NY (pivot mounted
         | machine gun style) or the Time Crisis series (big foot pedal to
         | take cover) with special hardware that would be too expensive
         | for home sales.
        
           | kodt wrote:
           | There were home console versions of most of the Time Crisis
           | games on PlayStation consoles. I think the 3rd and 4th games
           | were on PS3 along with light guns. There were probably about
           | 10-15 games on each console (PS1/PS2/PS3) which supported
           | light guns. Although I don't think the home console versions
           | had foot pedals, instead using a button or gun movement to
           | achieve the same thing.
        
             | unwind wrote:
             | Some dedicated players with soldering irons may have hooked
             | up a simple pedal switch across the gun's "cover" switch.
             | Omg how I loved Time Crisis and arcades in general. Sigh.
        
             | nottorp wrote:
             | I played a Time Crisis on the ps3 using a gun handle
             | attachment for the ps move [1].
             | 
             | Tbh I don't remember if it had a cover option or not.
             | 
             | [1] https://www.amazon.ca/PlayStation-Move-Shooting-
             | Attachment-S...
        
         | wvenable wrote:
         | This is a common game type for VR headsets now.
        
         | unleaded wrote:
         | LCD televisions became popular which don't work with old light
         | guns. We might have the sinden gun now but it kind of came too
         | late, i don't think you can play much on it except for
         | old/emulated games. although there was the Wii so i think
         | people getting bored of light gun games could be a factor, they
         | are all quite similar after all.
        
       | fragmede wrote:
       | a bunch more pictures of the bulb would help.
        
       | IAmLiterallyAB wrote:
       | If you could reverse engineer the expected signal you could
       | probably make your own gun
        
       | bowsamic wrote:
       | > In this case Nintendo was doing what Seg-already-did
       | 
       | Delicious reference
        
       | jzemeocala wrote:
       | I would personally check that capacitor first before even
       | touching the bulb.
       | 
       | That thing is well past the average shelf life for an
       | electrolytic.
        
         | ffhhj wrote:
         | And he means check it without touching it with bare skin or
         | unprotected eyes and mouth.
        
           | stouset wrote:
           | Who is checking capacitors by touching them to their eyes!?
        
             | jowsie wrote:
             | It's not about testing it with your eyes, but about where
             | the shrapnel might end up if things go very wrong.
        
         | nicole_express wrote:
         | Probably is worth a check; I usually default to assuming that a
         | good brand capacitor without any evident signs of corrosion,
         | leakage or swelling is probably fine, but this is _very_ old
         | and also a higher voltage circuit than what I 'm used to.
        
         | icehawk wrote:
         | Since that looks like your normal camera flash circuit with
         | xenon tube (the cap values are on point for one) I'd agree its
         | likely the cap, unless there is anything visibly wrong with the
         | flash tube.
        
       | msds wrote:
       | That's exactly a disposable camera flash circuit.
        
       | system2 wrote:
       | Capacitor is #1 suspect. If not, probably flash tube is dead
       | after dropped or had another type of impact. Just replace the
       | flash tube with something similar to this:
       | 
       | https://www.ebay.com/itm/165491505983
        
       | curtisf wrote:
       | > Plus, being from the 1970s, no attempt was made to make this
       | look like a toy.
       | 
       | This probably isn't just a '70s thing, but a Japan thing.
       | 
       | Even today, toy guns in Japan don't have the tell-tale orange
       | tips or plastic-y appearance; they try to look as real as they
       | (cheaply) can.
       | 
       | While walking up some stairs in a public park, I once stepped
       | over a toy gun left on the edge of the steps. Being an American,
       | the sight of a pistol just left lying in the open a step in front
       | of me gave me quite a momentary shock, before I remembered what
       | country I was in.
       | 
       | My understanding is that this is because real guns are so
       | uncommon in Japan, people generally wouldn't make the assumption
       | that they're not toys.
       | 
       | Supposedly it has the added safety benefit of dissuading would-
       | be-robbers from using firearms in robberies, because even
       | confronted with a real firearm, the victims would assume it's a
       | toy rather than the real thing, and so it wouldn't be as
       | effective of a threat.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-07 23:00 UTC)