Difference between revisions of "Light Guns"

Latest revision as of 08:16, 2 April 2023

Through this page you will learn how to enable Light Gun input for games, and how to play them.

Enabling Light Gun Input for a System in Game Scanner

Simply click the little ☰ button to the right in Game Scanner to bring the Core Options window and enable the "Light Gun" option. For most cores, that's it, you're done.

When adding your games, you should move your light gun games into a new separate folder for that system, e.g. "Games\PS1 (Light Guns)", since enabling this option will affect all games under that folder to receive input as light gun games, and they won't work with normal controls if they're common gamepad games. Enabling light gun input for common controller games will disable their input.

Device Code

You'll notice there's a "Device code" drop-down below your "Light Gun" option, with a number. That number defines the ID for which virtual controller the core will see, such as a gamepad, a mouse, or light guns. Each core can have their own different ID numbers to define which is which.

Game Scanner has an internal database with the *available* values for each core. When you click to enable "Light Gun" input, it will automatically select the default light gun device code for you.

Some cores have multiple different light guns models to choose from. E.g. some PS1 games, like Time Crisis, will work only with the "Guncon" model, while others, like Area 51, will work only with the "Justifier" model. Each gun has its own device code. You can choose it from the "Device code" drop-down in Game Scanner, or manually type a new unknown ID in the field if needed.

Hint: If you ever need to change from the default code, chances are it's a Justifier game (usually code 516). Here's a list of games that use this gun.

TL;DR: If you see your light guns but can't shoot, try another device code from the drop-down, or just check our compatibility list with the codes for each game.

Light Gun Models

In the same menu in Game Scanner, you can choose which light gun model you want to use for the games in this folder.

This is purely visual and does not affect the device code the games actually use internally.
This means you can use any model you want with any console.

Currently there are two models and seven variations to choose from:

• NES Zapper (Orange and Gray)
• GunCon (USA, Europe, Japan, Blue and Red)

When you click to enable light gun input mode in Game Scanner, it will automatically pick a fitting default model for you based on the selected system, which you can then change to anything you like.

You can also spawn light guns as decorative objects from the inventory menu.
Note that the models from the inventory are only for decoration and are not able to control games.
To control games with your chosen model, just focus input into the game as usual and they'll show up in your hands.

Light Gun Supported Cores

Not all cores have light gun support. This is a list of which core you must use for each system with light gun support.

If a system or core is NOT listed here, it most likely does NOT have light gun support.

Arcade Games

• MAME can't really play most 3D games properly. Usually you'll have to play the home console port of your arcade game instead, for better compatibility.
  E.g. try playing House of the Dead 2 on Dreamcast (Flycast) instead of arcade (MAME).
• For 2D games, FinalBurn Neo will usually have better compatibility and light gun support, so always try it first, before trying to use MAME.

PS2 Games

• The PS2 core doesn't have light gun support at all, so there's no way to play PS2 games with light guns (e.g. Time Crisis II, Time Crisis 3, Vampire Night) in EmuVR.

Light Gun Compatibility List

Click here to open our Light Gun Compatibility List.

There you can learn if your game needs any specific settings, which device code it should use, and if there are any compatibility issues.

How to Play

Starting

When you focus input into a game with light gun input enabled, your hands will turn into light guns. Just press the trigger to shoot! When detaching from the game, you'll see your hands again.

No Hands

If you're playing with keyboard / mouse or controllers, your "nose" will be your gun and you'll see a crosshair when gazing into a screen running a light gun enabled game. You'll automatically switch between "nose" and hand modes by pressing any respective controller button, even while already attached to a game.

Changing Hands

While using the default One-Handed mode, you can always change which hand is holding your gun at will by just pressing the trigger on the other hand while still controlling the game.

You can also enable Dual Wielding mode in the settings menu to use two guns simultaneously.

Juggling Multiple Screens

If you have multiple TVs running light gun games, you can seamlessly shoot and switch between all of them, if you're currently controlling any light gun game. You can shoot a single screen with both hands, or any screen with any hand. Non light gun screens will be ignored when shooting their TVs.

Reload

There are games where you "reload" by shooting off screen, and that's exactly how do it in EmuVR as well: shoot off screen.

Just be careful to not shoot another screen which is also running another light gun game while trying to reload, or else you'll switch to it instead of registering an off-screen shot to your currently controlled game.

With your keyboard / mouse / controller "nose" gun, you can reload in the same way too, but there's also a shortcut button for easier off-screen shooting (also easier on your neck).

Extra Buttons

Some games need auxiliary buttons on your light gun, such as pressing Select to add a coin in arcade games, or Start to begin some games, the D-Pad to use menus in some Dreamcast games, or a button to take cover and reload in Time Crisis. Each hand holds all auxiliary buttons for that light gun, which means you can use them independently on each screen. The buttons will affect the latest screen you shot, for each hand. Check the button layout below.

Gunslinger / Spin Gun

If you want to show off or just feel cool, press the Grip button with a flick of the wrist to spin your guns! If you just press it with no flick, the gun will just fall hanging from your finger with physics, and then you can spin it from there. You can even shoot while spinning, can you hit your targets like that?

You can configure or disable this in the Settings Menu.

Auto-Fire / Turbo Toggle

While this is enabled, hold the gun trigger to auto-fire like a machine gun!

To turn it on and off, while controlling a light gun game, hold the auto-fire command for 1 second as described in the Controls table below according to your controller.

It will remember its state even after switching games or TVs, but it gets reset after you exit EmuVR.

Light Gun Settings

There are a lot of settings to tweak your gunplay.

If you don't want to use the grip buttons to spin your gun, you can repurpose them to trigger a reload or to press Aux buttons instead.

You can make it so that by just pointing your gun Up or Down it will reload or press an aux button for you, which you can use for example to simulate stepping on the Time Crisis pedal to take cover.

There are also settings to toggle haptic feedback (controller vibration) when you shoot, to control gun recoil, and to wield two guns at the same time.

Controls

* Where it says Analog [Left], Analog [Right], Analog [Up], it means "Move the thumbstick / analog stick on your controller to the Left, Right, Up."