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305 Comments
- smack1700, on 04/13/2009, -9/+782This still doesn't explain why I couldn't shoot the dog.
- doshindude, on 04/13/2009, -68/+304There was a mystery? It's not that hard to comprehend. It flashes the screen and exposes rectangular sprite frames behind the object in question, making the targets visible to the zapper's sensor. Simple.
And no, the dog wasn't programmed to be shot, as he has no white rectangle forming around him during the flash. - Shawn4168, on 04/13/2009, -28/+224So we want to congratulate this guy on just now discovering what most of us have known for years?
- zacbro, on 04/13/2009, -7/+174Why do you smart people have to ruin everyones fun?
- sny1120, on 04/13/2009, -13/+157that was NOT A GREAT MYSTERY
even i figured that out as a kid.
this is how most arcade shooters work
"Most traditional light guns have some sort of sensor module that sits on top of or below the television"
NO - Scrollfx, on 04/13/2009, -1/+127It still doesn't answer why my dad beat my mom with it.
- BeShirtHappy, on 04/13/2009, -14/+120Thank you... this has kept me up many a night. ;-)
- mrfritz, on 04/13/2009, -4/+103Is there anybody else that wants to say they figured this out when they were 10-12 years old?
- metfuel, on 04/13/2009, -13/+106Wow dude way to be a douche. :o
I am sure that everyone here is being serious and not using sarcasm to make witty ,
comical comments. - deff, on 04/13/2009, -1/+72That's no mystery. Obviously she had it coming.
- gotjpeg, on 04/13/2009, -2/+68I still believe it was sorcery.
- drew52686, on 04/13/2009, -1/+62Most importantly, however, is the question of why your Nintendo was in the kitchen.
- directedition, on 04/13/2009, -2/+57I thought this was pretty well understood. It's why the magnifying-lens in front of the gun works so well.
- Jektal, on 04/13/2009, -3/+54So if I horrible skew my TV's display colors, will the gun not work?
- eternal464, on 04/13/2009, -1/+51yes...yes it does.
- directedition, on 04/13/2009, -0/+48I think it works more on a the luma than the chroma, so as to work on black and white TVs, which many people still used in the mid-80s.
- BryanTravers, on 04/14/2009, -1/+48This is why I hate Digg. Full of immature morons. He was obviously beating her with the light gun because she was OUT of the kitchen, clearly near the TV where the men were enjoying killing cartoon birds and drinking. Seriously, use your brain before just spewing some idiotic response.
- tonydapony10, on 04/13/2009, -0/+38well, here you go:
http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-212.htm - andrewfahmy, on 04/13/2009, -0/+36some people just aimed at a lamp
- gcauthon, on 04/13/2009, -6/+40How did they solve this "big mystery"? Did they finally read the little booklet that came with their zapper, like 20 years ago? Did they finally, after 20 years of playing duck hunt, notice that the screen flashes every time they shoot the gun? When I was 10, I pretty much figured it out immediately but I guess I'm a freaking genius...
- dagr8tim, on 04/13/2009, -8/+38Dude, I figured that out when I was 10 or 11. I always assumed there was a sensor in the gun that detected colors on the screen and registered a hit or miss.
- ahatter, on 04/13/2009, -4/+34i thought that was well known..
- 80hd, on 04/13/2009, -1/+30Slightly more correct and totally more nerdish:
The idea is that the electron gun is only at one place at one time so if you measure the time it takes for the spot being pointed at to light up, software can figure out exactly where onscreen that point is. This only works on CRT's though since the nintendo is able to control the sync pulses and on any other display type, the scanlines are converted to another format before being drawn which wrecks the timing scheme.
When you pulled the trigger, the nintendo draws a very bright area around anything of importance. The TV would display a full field and the nintendo would wait for pulses of registered brightness to come back from the gun after the trigger-pull. If the pulse was strongest on the 45th of 262.5 scanlines (interlaced video), that is the y axis location which divided by 256 is the software instead of display position. The x axis location was found by measuring the time from Hsync pulse of the corresponding line being swept, multiplying it by the horizontal resolution of 256 pixels and then dividing it by 41.6μs (assuming nontextsafe areas are not assigned pixels)
The presence or absense of a white box has nothing to do with the process. The nintendo could not possibly know which box it had detected unless only one was drawn per frame which means getting the game up to a level with 15 ducks would cause a half second per shot delay as each duck would have to be white-boxed one at a time. The boxes were there to help make sure the point sensor would have enough light to work if it were pointed at something of interest.
I'm an electrical and computer engineering major at Purdue. This stuff is way more entertaining to me that than it should be. It'd be sad if I didn't want to work designing electronics for a living. - brainflakes, on 04/13/2009, -0/+28Actually the Zapper didn't use the raster beam position, instead it used the simpler system described. From wikipedia:
The first detection method, used by the Zapper, involves drawing each target sequentially in white light after the screen blacks out. The computer knows that if the diode detects light as it is drawing a square (or after the screen refreshes) then, that is the target at which the gun is pointed. Essentially, the diode tells the computer whether or not you hit something, and for n objects, the sequence of the drawing of the targets tell the computer which target you hit after 1 + ceil(log2(n)) refreshes (one refresh to determine if any target at all was hit and ceil(log2(n)) to do a binary search for the object that was hit).
An interesting side effect of this is that on poorly designed games, often a player can point the gun at a light bulb, pull the trigger and hit the first target every time. Better games account for this either by detecting if all targets appear to match or by displaying a black screen and verifying that no targets match. - ThugThrasher, on 04/13/2009, -0/+26Actually, possibly. Though it might not be the colors as much as the brightness.
I remember back in the day hearing that if you messed with the brightness on your TV in JUST the right way, you couldn't miss the duck. - Ratatoo, on 04/13/2009, -2/+28"This has been Dave sayin’: “When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.”"
This is me sayin: "Dave, that's a bizarre thought to end that article with." - danwallace, on 04/13/2009, -0/+25That doesn't work on later games. The screen is black for one frame and the gun must detect the black frame before it will detect the target light in the next frame(s).
- DelMonte, on 04/13/2009, -0/+24"So if I horrible skew my TV's display colors, will the gun not work?"
The article is wrong, it doesn't have anything to do with color, only brightness. The gun detects a white rectangle over a black background. - LethalGeek, on 04/13/2009, -1/+25I'm pretty sure it detects luminous intensity in a very small area. White on a CRT TV is going going to produce more light than black. Zapper works every shot if you point it at a lightbulb, as all it picks up is incoming light.
- Jough, on 04/13/2009, -1/+25I actually didn't know it...
- ClownbloodBZ, on 04/13/2009, -1/+22Dude, I patented this technology while I was in the still in the womb.
- Chupacabraz, on 04/13/2009, -2/+23Pretty sure it captured the retrace of the CRT and not a flash of color. This is why the gun won't work on a non-CRT screen like Plasma, DLP, or LCD - there is no retrace to capture. If it simply captured a flash of color, the gun should still work on a modern TV - but it won't.
- punkcat, on 04/13/2009, -1/+22if not all. the guy who wrote this is on crack.
- bemenaker, on 04/13/2009, -0/+20ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
- cartmam114, on 04/13/2009, -0/+20I wish the gun worked on you.
- DelMonte, on 04/13/2009, -1/+19" Zapper works every shot if you point it at a lightbulb, as all it picks up is incoming light."
No it doesn't, as it includes an anti-cheat system to prevent that.
When you pull the trigger, the screen first becomes completely black, THEN a white rectangle flashes where the duck was.
If the Zapper detects light while the screen is supposed to be completely black, your shot will fail.
"What about when there are 2 ducks?"
The screen will flash twice, showing the white rectangle for the first duck, then the second duck. - themastersb, on 04/13/2009, -9/+27Don't tell me people are just figuring this out now by reading this article...
- xaeon, on 04/13/2009, -0/+18I was 2 when I figured out my first light gun.
- jmkiii, on 04/13/2009, -0/+17What about when there are 2 ducks?
- Jektal, on 04/13/2009, -2/+19Rudimentary digital camera?
- leif777, on 04/13/2009, -8/+24i figured that out when I was 12.
- iritegood, on 04/13/2009, -0/+16You could just aim at a bright light.
- potsee, on 04/13/2009, -1/+17Ok, so I conceptually understand how it works but I'm still a bit unclear on that actual details. How does the sensor actually determine its looking at one of these boxes that appear? Does it detect the white box. Can I stick something white in front of the zapper and thus always register a hit? Forgive me if this a stupid question.
- finaldrumgod, on 04/13/2009, -0/+16You just said you were 10 in another post. You can't fool me.
- carbonfilament, on 04/13/2009, -2/+18LIES! ALL LIES!
it works by laser beams. LASER BEAMS I TELL YOU! BWAHAHAHA - eon42, on 04/13/2009, -5/+20finally, after all these years...
- mgbuddy, on 04/13/2009, -23/+38No, That's NOT how it works.... By far.
I thought that's common knowledge, but as it looks like it's not. For all of you that are not from my era, this an application of what we know as a "light pen". It's munch more easy than that. When you pull the trigger, the CPU waits for the next screen retrace and counts how many time take for the light sensor on the zapper to get the light.
The screen is drawn on the screen from top left to down right line by line. Before that the screen is black, after that the screen is painted. That happens fast, so you don't notice the black (like films).
When you pointo the screen (The gun have a lens to focus on a small portion of the screen) and push the trigger, the system waits the next screen retrace (So waits for the screen to be black) then starts counting until the gun receives some light. A simple division of the time it took with the time to draw a line gaves you the Y, the modulus of the division gaves you the X.
You have X,Y and you can calculate if you were pointing to the correct sprite.
Who wrote this? Just inventend a fantastic explanation to say how clever he was? The you are owned. This is known for ages... I had a light pen and a gun for my amstrad CPC and I took the time to learn how it worked, because yes, looks very intriguing, until you know the true.
BTW, this will not work on modern LCD systems, that's why wii uses infrared cameras. - Xiata, on 04/13/2009, -1/+15So it doesn't go pew pew? It was all a lie?
Weak. - FaithclubDotNet, on 04/13/2009, -1/+15And if you're wondering how the information gets from the Light Gun back to the Nintendo, I solved that mystery too. Electrical impulses go through the wire! Amazing, but true.
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