Pi4 - Sinden Lightguns

[prince_rakeem]

Hi All,

I have a Sinden lightgun that I was able to get configured in supermodel on Pi4 using Lost World as a test bed. I was able to get coin and start mapped, and also the trigger and pump action. I am able to calibrate the guns in the game's test menu, but the lack of a white border seems to be causing the lightgun to not register properly in-game. The Sindens are a combination camera/mouse/keyboard USB device and use a white border around the gameplay screen as a reference point to know when the camera has been pointed outside the game screen. For Windows, Reshade can be used to add borders. For other Pi-based emulators, using the libretro cores it can be done via an on-screen overlay. I was wondering if there is a way to add borders to supermodel in some way (maybe via a 3rd party app) on the Pi? I'm looking to add something like this:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRKeo1WKauFPJ1-hd8KOERYw1POsmIWpY1JNQ&usqp=CAU

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated by the Sinden community!

[Ian]

Could just change the clear colour to white, I mean that would work.
But how much white border do you need?

[Hoagie]

Looks like they may have come up with a solution.

[StormedBubbles]

Hi,

Yes, we were able to get Sinden functionality with one gun in all of the gun/yoke games.

A few issues do remain, though:

- We haven't been able to figure out how to maintain the native resolution but just magnify the image to fit a physical screen either vertically or horizontally (whichever happens first). Increasing the resolution tanks the performance.
- Multiple mice is limited to Windows still. A user suggested ManyMouse, but that hasn't been attempted yet.
- Getting the Sinden border on seems to have caused issues with coordinate scaling. The Sinden software allows for adjustments to this, but we haven't found a spot in the emulator code yet that would fix this issue. By default, the gun sees the roughly 1.2917 aspect ratio, but the emulator seems to think it's dealing with a 1.78 aspect ratio. This makes the in-game cursor travel much faster than it should and also wander away from absolute alignment.

Possibly the best way to solve all of these issues for non-Windows users would be to wrap the Libretro container around Supermodel and create a port "lr-supermodel" for RetroArch. The ports of various MAME versions solve these similar issues by using the Libretro input/video system. For example, the Windows-only MAME "multimouse" mode is compatible with Libretro's input system and allows multiple mouse devices to be recognized even on non-Windows devices. Similarly, the RetroArch frontend allows for scaling of a game seemingly without affecting performance. Other quality-of-life features, like adding bezels/borders, adjusting inputs from a GUI, and having command-line options accessible via menus, would also be possible.

It appears that "lr-supermodel" was created and canceled on the same day a few years ago. Hopefully, someone gets the itch to investigate that again.

[k_rollo]

You do not want to go near RetroArch. It's just a headache for the original emulator devs with their code getting stolen and being repacked as subpar cores. The original MAME devs hate RetroArch's guts.

[Hoagie]

Well, well looky here.

It seems they have 2 players on the Pi with Sindens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qplfGymaDPI

Nice to see..