I'm new here so I'll share a little about me and I ask a few ?'s about large CPs

[eds1275]

 
So first a little about me. I'm an audio engineer who does sound for big acts when they come through town. I also own a small company that oneday will be my main money maker writing music for a living. I write jingles right now and some web stuff and some small local film stuff but I'd rather be doing movies and video games. One step at a time I suppose.

Two years ago I bought a house and gutted the lower level and have been renoing it ever since into a pretty big recording studio. I'm a big gear head so eventually it got to the point where the weak spot in the quality of my recording wasn't my gear, it was my recording space so of course on my neverending path for good tone I went and bought a house. It has my control room, a machine room for housing my computer and any noisy gear, a live room for my main jamming and recording needs, a small bathroom, an isolation/vocal room, and a lounge that doubles as a guest bedroom [at least it will when I'm done]. Anyway, this space is not going to be open to the public because I prefer to just write music alone and not have to deal with people. I'm not really a people person. However I will be recording my own music and my friend's bands. So it all comes back to my 5-year plan in the making - my arcade machine for the lounge. I also had to move away to afford the shouse, so I'm often entertaining friends. I live close enough that it's just a 2 hour ferry ride from the mainland, and often have people for a weekend.

I've been planning this for a long time but renovations went way over budget [of course] and before that I was saving for a house. I'm nearing completion finally and it's heading into spring so now is a good time to get the ball rolling.

I hope to have 2 players with 6 buttons each, an analog control stick, a spinner, trackball, and 2 aimtrack lightguns. My first question is: Does anyone have experience with this many devices that all operate like a mouse? I know the aimtrack guns do, most spinners and trackballs also do. Would I have to configure each one every time I reboot the computer? Can I even run all this stuff at once? Another thing I'm going to include on mine is a pair of usb ports so that I can plug in some xbox 360 controllers if I wanna play 4 player. If I have to lose a few devices, I'll start with the spinner but after that I'm going to be sad.

My second question is analog sticks. I have seen many and all throughout the forums people are calling for the Ultra Stik 360. It sounds like a great product, and I like ultimarc's innovation, prices, and involvement in the arcade community. But it doesn't look like a flight stick - in fact, the only ones I have found that do are happs, and they cost a small fortune and yet I can't find anyone with a review of them. I would LOVE ultimarc to have an airplane style version. I find that the ones they make for PC just don't hvae the right feel that I'm going for.



So my arcade machine is going to run a 32" LCD widescreen TV and will be a little over 6' tall. The control panel will have to be removeable [to get it through the doors in my place in case I ever need to move it] but I'm thinking some carriage bolts with lockwashers and wingnuts will do the job and make it easy to remove.  I'm thinking a black machine with a dark purple "mist" on it, and possibly some sort of lighting in the control panel - the trackball perhaps or some of the buttons. The buttons will be coloured in the order of Super Bishi Bashi Champ, because I freakin LOVE that game.

[Jefferson]

Hey man, sounds like an awesome setup. I'm just starting out here too but I can tell you pretty much all of what you're planning is possible and can be seen in many of the project threads. You should be able to run 2 players with 6 buttons, a spinner, trackball that doubles as a great mouse, lightguns and extra controllers. The only limiting factor ought to be the comps number of usb ports for the CP encoder(s), guns, and extra controllers (and maybe a powered usb hub would fix that. In any event I've seen it done)

Control stick too. Why not use a tron joystick as a flightstick? Has anyone modded one to be analog? I wouldnt be surprised. Crazier things have happened.

Be prepared to hear the word 'Frankenpanel' a lot. Luckily you're not planning on 4 player buttonsets. Here is a list of what to avoid:
http://www.wickedretarded.com/~crapmame/

welcome!

[RobbyMac]

I recently finished my cab which is 4 player. it has 6 buttons for 1&2, 4 for 3&4, a spinner a trackball and 3 admin buttons.
I was originally intent on adding a flight stick but realized the flightstick wouldn't be used as often, and would be easy enough to plug in a usb flightstick for this.
I also have 2 usb ports in the front of my cabinet for plugging in external devices.

Currently, all 4 rear usb ports are full with: spinner, trackball, ipac-4 & led wiz. If for some reason I'd need more, I would just add a hub/usb card.
There are no real conflicts, but if anyone moves the trackball and the spinner ar the same time they both affect the cursor movement in windows and such.
Some games I have noticed I have had to spec mouse1, mouse2 etc.
Unless I plug them into different usb ports, there is no setup or additional configuring after the initial setup. In fact, running TinyXP, each of the devices was automatically detected and installed without need of drivers or manufacturer cd's.
All in all, it's fairly straightforward and easy. But I have not messed with lightguns so I am unsure of those.

[drventure]

Welcome!

Yeah, the only snafu I've run into with USB devices is if you unplug them and reboot, but don't plug them back into the EXACT SAME ports you had them in before. If you do that, windows will tend to want to remap them all, causing all your mame config to have to be redone 

I've had similar probs plugging and unplugging devices while windows is running.

But if you can lock the cab down, the mapping does seem to persist properly between reboots.

So it's not a huge problem.

[angryred]

I have a U-Trak trackball hooked up via a USB Opti-Pac, and my spinner is a mouse hack hooked up via the PS2 port. On the desktop, both 'mice' are working. The X axes will actually compete against each other; if you spin both X axes in opposite directions, the cursor will bobble about, not sure what to do, until one stops spinning (spinner always wins).

In MAME, they work the same way, so as long as you don't bump one while using the other, there's no conflict at all. The only issue I've noticed with this setup is in Typhoon 2001 (a Tempest 2000 clone). On startup, the game adopts the mouse settings for the first mouse used.  I have the settings the way I want them with the spinner, but if I happen to move the trackball after starting up Typhoon and before I touch the spinner, then the control is absurdly fast. Restarting the game then avoiding the trackball until I touch the spinner clears this.

As far as the flight sticks go, I bought a couple of Saitek Cyborg sticks off of Ebay for like 8 bucks each. I stripped the base casings, which were mostly empty space, then mounted the guts and sticks in the panel. A few month later I discovered Randy's TRON and Satan's Hollow handles, and replaced the Cyborg grips. They look great.

Now, they are analog sticks, so they don't behave in certain games as you assume they should just by looking at them. For the games that use flight sticks, it's pretty easy to bump the sensitivities and get the feel you want (I've got a pretty low sensitivity set for using them in tandem for Assault, for example). The only thing I absolutely cannot get them to work for is the TRON light cycle levels. It's impossible to get an analog stick to behave like a perfect 4-way, but then I have a Pac-Man style 4-way right next to the flight stick, so for the light cycles I just bite the bullet and use that, with a panel button for speed control.

They also don't feel like crowbars that you could use to drag the cabinet around, but then I got two sticks for less than the cost of one Happ (and the Happ has no TRON or Satan's Hollow style).

There's a lot of pics in the thread linked in my sig.

[angryred]

Welcome!

Yeah, the only snafu I've run into with USB devices is if you unplug them and reboot, but don't plug them back into the EXACT SAME ports you had them in before. If you do that, windows will tend to want to remap them all, causing all your mame config to have to be redone 

I've had similar probs plugging and unplugging devices while windows is running.

But if you can lock the cab down, the mapping does seem to persist properly between reboots.

So it's not a huge problem.

I've avoided remap problems by having all my USB controls plugged into 2 daisy chain hubs, which are in turn hooked into a single USB port on the MB via an extension cord. I wrote the port assignments on the hubs with a Sharpie. The hubs are accessible behind the coin door. If I need to pull the whole panel, I just disconnect the PS2 mouse and keyboard, and pull the one USB plug from the extension.

If I have to pull one of the USB devices from the hubs for whatever reason, I just make sure the machine's off, and to plug it back into its labeled slot when I'm done.

[eds1275]

Thanks guys, this really helps a lot. I plan on having my CP have USB ports on it [not like I'll be taking it anywhere, but for convenience's sake]. I'll be drawing up plans soon and I'll post them.  Damn this is exciting. Every couple of weeks when I see major improvement in my renos I get so excited because "when I'm done building my recording studio I can start on my arcade machine!". Boy do I ever have my priorities backwards lol.

[RobbyMac]

cardboard is your friend, so recycle, reuse, and build a mockup with it
Seriously, it will help you in determining the ever so familiar questions for button spacing, size, space between players, etc...

[Paul Olson]

I have a U-Trak trackball hooked up via a USB Opti-Pac, and my spinner is a mouse hack hooked up via the PS2 port.

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you hook up the spinner to the optipac as well?

[angryred]

I have a U-Trak trackball hooked up via a USB Opti-Pac, and my spinner is a mouse hack hooked up via the PS2 port.

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you hook up the spinner to the optipac as well?

I built my first spinner before I had the U-Trak or OptiPac. Since it worked fine on the PS2 port, I've never bothered to change it.  I've actually rebuilt the spinner twice since then, and it just never occurred to me to try it through the OptiPac.