Posted by CthulhuLuke on 21, 2001 at 2:54 AM:
In Reply to: Re: Another crack at it.. posted by Tony C on 21, 2001 at 12:48 AM:
If you haven't gotten a coin door for the cabinet this bad boy control panel is going on, you should look for a 4 chute coin door, and get matching return button colors to go with the control panels colors. It will make it look realllly snazzy.
: Thanks much for the very good suggestions. As it's drawn now, I'd have to use the yellow buttons for all games involving the spinner, trackball, or 4-way. It wouldn't be too much of a reach or anything, since the whole thing is 38" wide I'd say it's maybe a foot between the 4-way and those yellow buttons, less for the spinner. It's not really intuitive or obvious that those would be the buttons for those games, but it would work.
: Yeah I would have to be careful when locating the spinner and 4-way. I wouldn't have a problem sacrificing a little room for the street-fighter layouts (blue and yellow) in exchange for some room in the center, if necessary.
: I guess for all of this to work I'd need to buy two of those I-PAC units since by my count there are (as drawn) 44 inputs (controllers and buttons.) Plus an Opti-Pac for the spinner/trackball. Andy (forget his last name) will love that!
: But I think if it's got enough space, my setup adequately covers controls for 99% of the games that don't have oddball controls like a racing wheel or flight yoke.
: I think I'm going to start ordering my stuff soon. Just a small order for one prototype controller right now... But this hobby is going to consume me, I can feel it!
: : : Well I tried moving the 4-way over just to see how it looks, not sure how I'd handle the button situation. I thought about adding some more fire buttons in the center but it seemed they'd get in the way of using the trackball or spinner... I think to do 4-way games I'd just have to use the yellow player 2 buttons.
: : Just a thought you might want to think about: some spinner and trackball games use a button or two (Arkanoid and Cabal, for example). Which buttons would you use for them? The same as those used for 4-way games?
: : As I think you've read, you probably should draw it out at full scale before making it. This would really help in testing the locations of the spinner, trackball, and 4-way. Just pretend the joysticks and buttons and spinner and trackball are there, and see if anything gets in each others way when playing with other stuff.
: : The one thing that might need special locating is the spinner. If too close to the joystick, they might get in the other's way. It's in a good place now, but half an inch one way or the other can make a huge difference in the final playability.
: : JM2C.