Hi all, I am new to this forum and I hate to say, 'cause I know it is not fair, I subscribed because i need your help. I wrote a driver to use ps2 lightguns on the PC, and it works very nice. The problem is that a lot of ppl using my driver are trying to use it with not lightgun-designed games. As you probably know to work well the gun needs to detect light from monitor, and if you aim to a black area the gun does not respond. So basically, I would need to software flash the screen each time the gun's trigger is pressed (for lightgun-designed games this flash is made by the game itself). I tried to use directX to do that but I was not able to capture the surface when MAME is running. I am very new in windows graphic programming, so I would like to know if it is possible to make a program that flashes the screen while another program (let'say mame i.e.) is running at full screen. Thanks in advance Diego [Edited by - marukiaro on August 4, 2005 2:45:30 AM]

I'm afraid I can't help, but it sounds an interesting problem - welcome to the forums by the way!

You say you're new to graphics programming, but if you wrote a hardware driver you're presumably quite experienced in C or C++ - this will help people target their advice to your skills better.

"but if you wrote a hardware driver you're presumably quite experienced in C or C++"

Yes I am. But really know nothing about Graphic handling :(

"The only solution I can think of is to use DLL injection to substitute your own d3d9/8.dll to the game, where you provide your own implementation of IDirect3DDevice9::Present (or similar) which will do the flashing for you - I don't have any details on this, though."

URGH !!! Sounds quite difficult for me :D Anyway whis would work just for games using directX right ?

Please show me the light.

Oh, the driver is downloadable from http://xoomer.virgilio.it/smogdragon

Thanks for the interest. Hope "Dustin Franklin" will help :D

[Edited by - marukiaro on October 27, 2005 11:30:54 AM]

I would feel free to send a PM to him (GDnet name is "Circlesoft"). Users here are generally quite happy to be PMed, especially for interesting questions they may have specialist knowledge in.

You might try http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups as well for techy DX questions - the "Graphics & Multimedia" option on the left has a "DirectX" sub-menu.