American Laser Games (Mad Dog McCree and others)

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by jwallace

Did it manually, I have a video that is literally just the frame numbers in text, so I can see what the game is trying to seek to, and I worked out what was going wrong. It still isn't great quality, but it does the job.

Wow, nice work

I have a slight issue with the crosshair though; even though it's calibrated perfectly.

It was the same in the old video too though.

Basically if you move to the far right hand side and shoot, the shot is about 3mm out. I'll post a screenshot shortly.

[DamienD]

Screenshots showing the above...

All good up to this point:

Anywhere right afterwards though:

[jwallace]

Yes, I noticed that too, I don't know if it's the actual Nova code, since the targeting seems pretty loose. I didn't touch the resolution of the video, so I'm presuming it's meant to be like this.
If you look the markers aren't quite over the equivalent on the map, so I don't know if they're meant to be, in which case the actual borders of the video are wrong, and I wouldn't know what they should be. I worked based on the opening text which looked OK.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Hi Damien - thanks for the reply - managed to get Platoon working (a bit) using the beta WinUAE. Seems to crash after shooting the 2nd VC (man their death acting is baaaad) just freezes as you are about to enter the door.

Not sure if just mine - but long pauses after the drill instructor appears and after you shoot the VC and the points appear (not sure if it is supposed to be like that?)

Did notice on the screenshots above with the easy / medium / hard options - I get that, but my screen is black, no green / map background

Gallaghers Gallery - presuming a codec error and wont work / start - just intro video - even under 4.5.0 beta WinUAE - so same as before

Here is the strange thing, if I use the Mad Dog or Mad Dog 2 Extended Rom - it works more, near perfect - no WorkBench hand, get service menu (the GG one, not Mad Dog) title screen - looks perfect bar can't fire the gun! Pretty big down side, but so strange

Just when something bugs you!

No worries - only 2 games that don't work for me so not a deal breaker!

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Fiery Phoenix

Hi Damien - thanks for the reply - managed to get Platoon working (a bit) using the beta WinUAE. Seems to crash after shooting the 2nd VC (man their death acting is baaaad) just freezes as you are about to enter the door.

Not sure if just mine - but long pauses after the drill instructor appears and after you shoot the VC and the points appear (not sure if it is supposed to be like that?)

Did notice on the screenshots above with the easy / medium / hard options - I get that, but my screen is black, no green / map background

Sounds to me like you haven't applied "Update Pack #50 - Part 1"; which has the updated video from jwallace

Originally Posted by Fiery Phoenix

Gallaghers Gallery - presuming a codec error and wont work / start - just intro video - even under 4.5.0 beta WinUAE - so same as before

Here is the strange thing, if I use the Mad Dog or Mad Dog 2 Extended Rom - it works more, near perfect - no WorkBench hand, get service menu (the GG one, not Mad Dog) title screen - looks perfect bar can't fire the gun! Pretty big down side, but so strange

Just when something bugs you!

No worries - only 2 games that don't work for me so not a deal breaker!

I really wonder what codecs you have that are causing this?

I only have VLC installed on my laptop; that's all you need for any videos.

If you have stuff like "FFShow" / "Windows Media Player with codecs", or any other codec packs, then I would remove.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Cheers for taking time to reply - always appreciated - will re-look!

[Patrickx1989]

I am getting EXACTLY the same screen, please help

Originally Posted by DamienD

Is this the screen you get:

I get that with "Platoon [American Laser Games]" but that's when using WinUAE v4.4.0, as it's not supported as yet...

Of course if I use the latest unofficial beta then all good

I really don't know why these games don't work for you, you're using my setups hey? Maybe try doing a "Rescan ROMs" from under "Paths" or reapplying the .REG file.

I know it was a codec issue before but...

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Patrickx1989

I am getting EXACTLY the same screen, please help

No, that's different to Fiery Phoenix's "codec" issues

With this game Toni only added support recently as the ROMs were decrypted.

If you want to play it then you need to use a v4.5.0 beta version.

[apeezyfosheezy]

Hi there I have a couple questions on american laser games on the latest version of WinUAE. I recently discovered WinUAE and have been messing around with all of the ALG games to play with a sinden lightgun and it works amazingly!

However I am having problems with 2 in particular.

In the last bounty hunter I cannot get get the gun to fire at all no matter if I am using left or right player/gun. Every other game is able to fire the gun just fine

who shot johnny rock will not boot at all. It just hangs at the boot up and the video doesn’t start playing. I don’t know if it’s because the rom size is 128k as opposed to 256k for every other game but any help on these would be great as I am a total novice with WINUAE.

I can confirm however, that all the other american laser games do work and are fully playable. This emulator is really great I wish I had discovered it sooner! Thanks for any help or suggestions anyone may have!

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by apeezyfosheezy

In the last bounty hunter I cannot get get the gun to fire at all no matter if I am using left or right player/gun. Every other game is able to fire the gun just fine

I have no idea. It does read ports but I am not interested in debugging the game more unless ROM is 100% known working.

Or perhaps it has different hardware. Or something.

who shot johnny rock will not boot at all. It just hangs at the boot up and the video doesn’t start playing

It looks like something is wrong with the ROMs. It does weird things, like copying code to address zero, overwriting exception vectors.

[apeezyfosheezy]

Thanks Toni for taking a look. Other than the last bounty hunter not shooting, everything else about it seems to work fine just like all the others. both players seem to work, and the holster works (was able to test in game because sometimes a bullet does seem to miraculously deplete somehow and I am able to reload. Also the trigger buttons for both players work in the service menu where you can check which buttons are being pressed but for some reason not in game. I’m going to keep trying to figure this out. It just doesn’t make sense how the game sees it in the service menu but not in game and I feel like it’s probably something i’m still missing. Also, The laserdisc video plays perfectly in game and passes the hardware tests. It seems to work fine other than the shooting issue.

I was able to get who shot johnny rock to do SOMETHING when using a version 1.5 rom. It will go through the boot cycle and then a bunch of ui elements flash on the screen over and over repeatedly but the movie doesn’t start to play. No idea if there is a rom that works. I’ve tested every possible rom set I could find. I haven’t a clue what to do or how to proceed from there. it’s the only ALG rom that won’t play. Is switching between revision A and revision B something to be toggled? from what i’ve researched the 128k who shot johnny rock roms are likely revision A single player rom and all the other 256k ALG roms are revision B 2 player versions. I don’t know if that means anything for winuae but I figured I’d ask. Also, there exist 1.6a and 1.6b roms on the dragon’s lair project website that winuae doesn’t seem to recognize. Maybe those could work but I don’t know how to get winuae to see them.

I’m happy to do any testing or try anything further that may help. I’m a big fan of these games so any ideas you may have i’m happy to try. Thanks again for taking a look and for replying to my post!

[apeezyfosheezy]

It looks like something is wrong with the ROMs. It does weird things, like copying code to address zero, overwriting exception vectors

I want to try johnny rock rom version 1.6b (which is a revision B board rom at 256k) but am unable to since it must be seen by the rom scanner in order to load and this rom doesn't seem to be on that list. Is there any way I can make that happen? All of johnny rock's supported roms are revision A roms, but every other supported ALG rom is revision B, so i'm thinking this may be where the problem lies. I am uploading a copy of it for reference. Thanks!

[vulture]

Doesn't matter if a ROM is not recognised by the ROM scan.

You can load your config, select the "ROM" tab, click "..." next to "ROM file" and then manually navigate to / double-click on the desired ROM.

BTW, you say you have numerous ALG games working. EAB only has these so far:

... Gallagher's Gallery
... Mad Dog McCree
... Mad Dog II - The Lost Gold [Italian]
... Platoon [prototype]

Can you possibly upload all the images you have please?

[Toni Wilen]

I want to try johnny rock rom version 1.6b

It uses same scrambling as Space Pirates but it also crashes, looks like more or less same reason. Possibly it expects something that isn't emulated.

Doesn't matter if a ROM is not recognised by the ROM scan.

You can load your config, select the "ROM" tab, click "..." next to "ROM file" and then manually navigate to / double-click on the desired ROM.

This does not work with multi-rom images (odd/even etc).

BTW, you say you have numerous ALG games working. EAB only has these so far:

... Gallagher's Gallery
... Mad Dog McCree
... Mad Dog II - The Lost Gold [Italian]
... Platoon [prototype]

Can you possibly upload all the images you have please?

They are all included with MAME.

[apeezyfosheezy]

It uses same scrambling as Space Pirates but it also crashes, looks like more or less same reason. Possibly it expects something that isn't emulated.

Thanks Toni for clarifying. Looks like there’s nothing that can be done on my end to get johnny rock working. I was hoping this wasn’t the case. Thanks for looking into it. Hopefully it can work at some point down the line.

BTW, you say you have numerous ALG games working. EAB only has these so far:

... Gallagher's Gallery
... Mad Dog McCree
... Mad Dog II - The Lost Gold [Italian]
... Platoon [prototype]

Can you possibly upload all the images you have please?

To answer your question vulture I do have all the laserdisc captures which are fully licensed copies. I purchased them here:

https://www.rulecity.com/dexterorderweb/

It is necessary to purchase a dexter unit to get the captures.

If the issues with johnny rock’s roms and the last bounty hunter’s gun firing issues can be addressed all of the ALG games will work.

They also work great with a sinden gun as I’ve gotten through all of mad dog mccree and most of mad dog 2 with one.

[vulture]

Ah I c! Thx for the info. Any idea which games work and which don't with Winuae? I'm interested in buying the images, but I'd rather get just the working ones

Also, any idea if these legit?
https://www.romcollector.com/america...oad-p-164.html

Thx!

[apeezyfosheezy]

Hi Vulture, here is a list of what works and what doesn’t in WinUAE. I tested and configured every game I have a capture for. Also to note, these arcade versions can have major differences from how they play in the singe emulator. For example, space pirates is very different. Completely different player UI, and no reloading of the gun at all. I was really surprised at just how different these original arcade versions can be from what I’ve been used to using in Singe! Singe is also a great way to play these games!

Also, the link you posted there’s no need to buy those versions. They are the singe versions and can be downloaded from the singe2 website. As i said, the singe versions can play much differently than the arcade emulation in winuae. singe and their videos which are ordered differently and work differently, can be found here:

https://kangaroopunch.com/?page=Soft...2006-singe.xjs

The laserdisc captures being used for WinUAE can be ordered differently, have video frames not in the singe versions and are 100% arcade original.

Here’s what works and what doesn’t in WinUAE:

working:

Mad dog Mccree
Mad Dog Mccree 2 (english capture)
Gallagher’s Gallery
Space Pirates
Crime Patrol
Crime Patrol 2: Drug Wars

working but with issues:

Fast Draw Showdown - The game itself functions properly. This issue is you need to flip monitor to portrait view to view video properly. but when you do so the mouse is also sideways. Need to figure out how to do that so you can shoot properly without physically having to flip the monitor.

the last bounty hunter - game plays correctly but the gun trigger button doesn’t work in game no matter how I map the buttons even though the test menu says trigger is being fired. The trigger is the only thing that doesn’t seem work in game. No idea what is causing that problem.

Not Working:
who shot johnny rock - none of the rom versions will boot.

[vulture]

Thx m8!

I will now purchase all these from your URL ;-)

I notice that on https://www.rulecity.com/dexterorderweb/ "Gallagher's Gallery" is unavailable for purchase. Are you using the one from EAB?

Also, quite new to ffmpeg. Can you please let me know the exact syntax to convert these to .AVI using the best quality?

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by apeezyfosheezy

Hi Vulture,

Yes I am using the EAB version of Gallagher's Gallery since it was not available for purchase. I am using the mjpeg avi capture found on page 22 of this thread in jwallace's post from December 4 2020. It works great!

Here is the ffmpeg script I used to crop all the mkv files and transcode to avi:

ffmpeg -i spacepirates.mkv -filter:v “crop=in_w:in_h-44:0:524" -c:v mpeg4 -b:v 4000k -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 320k spacepiratescropped.avi

I used space pirates as an example, so just change the name of the input file (the first one) and what you want as the output file (the second one) for each laserdisc capture you wish to transcode. This will give you a resolution of 720x480 from a raw resolution of 720x524 (the raw capture contained 44 lines of extra resolution data that's not used to play the game), provided you receive the same raw captures as I did. All of these will then line up perfectly and have no issues shooting enemies!

If anyone knows a way to use mkv files instead of avi in winuae, I'd love to know if there's a codec to download that will allow for it and what formats the mkv file can contain for audio/video. The converted avi files, while still very good quality, don't quite match the mkv files I started with in terms of quality, but they were the best I was able to do while still allowing winuae to be able to play them. Going too high on the AVI quality would also cause winuae to not be able to play them. I have the k-lite plugin, which lets winuae kinda sorta play mkv files, but I can't really get them to reliably work at all.

mkv is just a container , and could include dvd, blu ray, 4k blu ray video etc , audio , chapter info and subtitles. They are basically straight rips of the source. no transformation ( from my understanding ) and no compression. Its why they are great.

Although when I ripped lotr 4k extended edition to my plex server the other day the resultant file was 120gb lol

[phasermaniac]

Will anyone upload these avis to the zone or elsewhere? I am unemployed now and can't spend money on this. Thanks