How did old school shooter gun games like duck hunt or arcade shooters accurately track your shots with only the gun and without a sensor bar or camera?
In: Technology
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As I recall, duck hunt used a simple light sensor in the back of the barrel. When you pull the trigger the screen turns black for a frame with a white square where the duck was. If the sensor reads light instead of black then you hit the duck.
When you point at a duck and pull the trigger, the computer in the NES blacks out the screen and the Zapper diode begins reception. Then, the computer flashes a solid white block around the targets you’re supposed to be shooting at. The photodiode in the Zapper detects the change in light intensity and tells the computer that it’s pointed at a lit target block — in others words, you should get a point because you hit a target. In the event of multiple targets, a white block is drawn around each potential target one at a time. The diode’s reception of light combined with the sequence of the drawing of the targets lets the computer know that you hit a target and which one it was. Of course, when you’re playing the game, you don’t notice the blackout and the targets flashing because it all happens in a fraction of a second.
The old NES light gun that was used with Duck Hunt, simply had a light sensor on it. The game would briefly flash the target on the screen in bright white when you pressed the trigger. If the light gun registered a bright light in the direction it was pointed the game counted that as a hit.
Other than timing there was no way for the game to know if you perhaps pointed the gun at a different source of light to fake a hit.
Other types of gun would for example be based on the timing of the electron beam sweeping across your crt display. Those devices won’t work with modern displays.
Some later ones had infra-red emitters placed around the screen and the gun measuring how far below and to the side of the emitters it was pointed. This required calibration and might not be as accurate.
There is a light sensor in the gun. when you pull the trigger the entire screen goes black and then each of the targets produces a white square one at a time. The camera in the gun notices whether it’s looking at a white square when that happens and if it is then it is counted as a hit
To everyone who answered, THANK YOU.
Also, I now see the unfortunate wording of my title, if I could change it I would. It should say old-school shooter, sorry about that….
When you pull the trigger, the entire screen turns black for a single frame, and the target becomes a white block. The photodiode sensor inside the gun detects whether it is pointed at a white block or not, and determines if your shot hit or missed.
This is the origin of the term “light gun,” as they are sometimes called.
If you watch carefully while you’re playing, you can see this tiny flicker happen.
Old school shooter game guns used pellets. The pellet would hit the metal “duck” and it would flip back showing the hit. If you didn’t hit the target, the duck would remain upright. No sensor bar or camera was needed.
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