For those of you that don't know GunSlinger Stratos is a light gun Shooter by Square Enix that runs on the Taito Type X3 hardware.
The game is a multi-player 3rd person shooter with 1 player per cab and that player has 2 guns. each gun includes an analog thumbstick for moving and some buttons and of course you can point and shoot at the screen. The guns also clip together (magnetically) in 2 configurations to form different weapons. They also look bad-ass...
Ever since I heard about this game I wanted to play it, and then once I played it I wanted one at home.
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WHAT I KNOW SO FAR:
The gun tracking seems to use the OMZ IR setup similar to Sega's that's been in use since the lost world. One difference though is that there are TWO gun sense boards labeled "master" and "slave". I've managed to pickup a pair of guns (those are mine in the picture above) as well as a pair of these Gun sense boards. a cursory look they seem nearly identical to the later revision Sega boards with the exception that each board only has 1 gun connector populated.
My speculation is that they do this for the speed of tracking the gun position, perhaps the older boards could only calculate the position of 1 gun at a time and alternated which gun was being tracked. The older Sega games don't put a reticle on the screen unless you're in test mode and generally it seems very jumpy/laggy while in test mode. During gameplay this isn't noticeable since there is no on-screen reticle; however, GSS has reticles on screen for both guns, and in my experience they track very smoothly and quite quickly. This could be the reason for using 2 boards. Sharing an LED array and they could theoretically track both guns simultaneously, but they would also need to be synced. This would be interesting to know more about; if this is a stand-alone system similar to the older OMZ IR equipment i would mean that it's also backward compatible with all the older games that use that hardware and could be a faster/more accurate system to use.
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First thing I'd like to do is get a photo or a scan of the wiring diagram for GSS so I know how these boards are expected to be wired. @Derick2k I know you have some of this hardware yourself, does yours have a harness or even pigtails on the gun boards? photos of the wires on the "LED" connector of the gun boards could help figure out the wiring here.
I've been doing more work on my gun setup, and once I get that fully up and running I hope to start playing around with the GSS hardware a bit more.
I'm still in need of a Taito Type X3 boardset with GSS installed, I've heard that it requires the NESICA readers to boot (which I also have) and assuming it does use the same LED modules as the older OMZ equipment the TTX3 boardset and software would be the last piece I need.
If anyone has any information about this hardware please post it up. I'll be adding to this thread with any new information I acquire.
The game is a multi-player 3rd person shooter with 1 player per cab and that player has 2 guns. each gun includes an analog thumbstick for moving and some buttons and of course you can point and shoot at the screen. The guns also clip together (magnetically) in 2 configurations to form different weapons. They also look bad-ass...
Ever since I heard about this game I wanted to play it, and then once I played it I wanted one at home.
-------------
WHAT I KNOW SO FAR:
The gun tracking seems to use the OMZ IR setup similar to Sega's that's been in use since the lost world. One difference though is that there are TWO gun sense boards labeled "master" and "slave". I've managed to pickup a pair of guns (those are mine in the picture above) as well as a pair of these Gun sense boards. a cursory look they seem nearly identical to the later revision Sega boards with the exception that each board only has 1 gun connector populated.
My speculation is that they do this for the speed of tracking the gun position, perhaps the older boards could only calculate the position of 1 gun at a time and alternated which gun was being tracked. The older Sega games don't put a reticle on the screen unless you're in test mode and generally it seems very jumpy/laggy while in test mode. During gameplay this isn't noticeable since there is no on-screen reticle; however, GSS has reticles on screen for both guns, and in my experience they track very smoothly and quite quickly. This could be the reason for using 2 boards. Sharing an LED array and they could theoretically track both guns simultaneously, but they would also need to be synced. This would be interesting to know more about; if this is a stand-alone system similar to the older OMZ IR equipment i would mean that it's also backward compatible with all the older games that use that hardware and could be a faster/more accurate system to use.
----------
First thing I'd like to do is get a photo or a scan of the wiring diagram for GSS so I know how these boards are expected to be wired. @Derick2k I know you have some of this hardware yourself, does yours have a harness or even pigtails on the gun boards? photos of the wires on the "LED" connector of the gun boards could help figure out the wiring here.
I've been doing more work on my gun setup, and once I get that fully up and running I hope to start playing around with the GSS hardware a bit more.
I'm still in need of a Taito Type X3 boardset with GSS installed, I've heard that it requires the NESICA readers to boot (which I also have) and assuming it does use the same LED modules as the older OMZ equipment the TTX3 boardset and software would be the last piece I need.
If anyone has any information about this hardware please post it up. I'll be adding to this thread with any new information I acquire.
