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Space Invader theme slim build
shateredsoul:
Soooo... I actually started work on the arcade cabinet! Here are some pics. I'm basing it on Knievel's woody. It might not end up as nice because I won't be using laminate.. but man mdf is heavy.. about 100 lbs a sheet. It was pretty embarrassing when we dropped the wood in the parking lot (seriously, they all slided out piece by piece and it was too heavy for us to stop). Luckily the wood wasn't damaged. Also, the handsaw we had was doing crooked lines.. so we did all these cuts with a router (took forever), but it came out pretty clean!
We still have to figure out a few things... such as mounting the monitor, where to install the speakers, whether I will be using the 15" touch screen (he thinks it might fight right under the monitor), and whether I need an admin panel. We also made it wide enough to give room for my lcd sensors. We had to readjust the measurements to match the size of my monitor and to account for the fact that my control panel is bigger than Knievel's design.
shateredsoul:
So i have a space invaders theme, and I have been working on the side art.
I was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on how to improve the side art? I have this so far.. I want a big space invader, but I don't know what to put around the space invader graphic. Should I cut it out into a perfect circle? Square?
What do you guys think?
shateredsoul:
shateredsoul:
Build Updates
Building is going a lot slower than I expected. We recently finished the cabinet door that will conceal the desktop pc. In additoin we finished the drawer but haven't mounted it on yet. After working on this cab with my friend I think I might invest in a router, an better quality drill, and a sander. That's pretty much all we've been using, and it will come in handy for building my next jukebox project.
Ok back to the arcade, the monitor seemed like a difficult thing to figure out because it doesn't have any versa mounts. We decided to route out a slot for the monitor to fit in tightly. The only issue now is placing the top gun II sensor bars. We have 2 pieces of wood that will lay against the monitor from behind. We created these type of "L" looking pieces by attaching 1 piece to another, these piece catch on to the hole where the connection in the monitor are and underneath the monitor.
Software Update
I recently downloaded a Hyperspin collection from ... you know where. It came with complete art sets and videos for all systems ever up to dreamcast. A few are missing (atari st is one), but overall it's an amazing collection. I believe this torrent was put together by a group of British users because most of the art matched the European consoles and cartridges. I went ahead and change the art to match the US releases (system names and default themes). The only thing I haven't changed yet is the dreamcast default theme. I was very impressed by the default theme for this system. Like mos themes you get the game art, and the video, but you also get the disc art (which enters the bottom of the screen while rotating and remains in the bottom right rotating).
I haven't actually set up the systems on yet, since I'm still in the process of renaming roms. I'm mostly done, I'm taking the longest with the ps1 roms. I'm using fatmatch and directing it to the wheel art for roms and the roms as the media (so it renames my games to match the wheel art). Fatmatch takes a lot longer to rename bigger files so I'm doing this in batches.
From the torrent comments it seems like it's a lot of work to make some of the systems work and some changes need to be made to the included .ahk file. I already have turbo grafx, virtual boy, nes, snes, n64, atari 5200, genesis, gamegear, and a few more systems setup already on my old hyperpsin setup. The plan is to just setup those systems first using the methods I know work, then use the torrent wiki they have setup to figure out the other systems.
I added the following systems:
Atomiswave: main theme and wheel art, wheel art, themes, and videos
Sega Naomi: Main Theme and wheel art, used default theme but removed anime characters, no videos (i'm working on making my own videos.. some games are giving me a really hard time so I might have to settle for screenshots)
Sony Playstation 2: Main theme and art, Need default theme, need to figure out wheel art, tried making own vids but couldn't figure out.. will settle for snapshsots,
Nintendo Gamecube: Main Theme and wheel art, Default theme, need to figure out wheel art, making vids works for some games, other's don't run well on dolphin yet (or run too slow with fraps) so i'll use snapshots for those
Nintendo Wii: Main Menu Theme (crappy one I made), Default theme (same one as main menu), need to figure out wheel art, making vids works suprisingly well for some games.. better than gamecube and I'll use snapshots for those that don't work.
Adding some games
The dreamcast set is missing some games I own, I think I'll ad those in. I don't know if I have the energy to check the other game lists that came with the torrent.
*interesting fact* The torrent has a famicon disk system section.. many of these games are pervy games with nudity. I'm going to have to either edit this system out or take out the games. Come on people! really? Makes me wonder if this is why the famicon section was added (you'd think so based on the % of these games included). Ha ha ha.
opt2not:
I don't know how I missed this project till now. The Terminus arcade is one of my favourite designs on this board, and am glad to see others using it. Looks like you've got great progress so far.
As for the art, you could go with the circle since your cabinet has a pretty angular profile. But my concern is that the side-art image is too similar to the CP.
Do you have a title for your cabinet? Perhaps you can add the title to the side-art, banner it somehow?
Something you could play with to spice this image up is adding some small details to it. Stuff like wire-frame grids, glows, or tracer lines, perhaps some nebula-like background or star field...Galaga Legions has some of these elements that I think makes the game look amazing:
A bit messy with the lines and hard to tell when not in motion, but you get the idea with the tracers.
Nebula style background...it's just colour gradients.
The other thing to think about is playing with the Invader itself.
Space Invaders Extreme did some graphical updates that I thought kept the old school look, but brought it more relevance for today.
I like the way they coloured their Invaders with gradient shades, but instead of using black to outline, they used a darker colour than what was within the lines.
Another thing to note is their use of textile patterns, things like checkers to faded boxes, text overlays and and underlays with motion blurs:
Anyways, I hope this generates some ideas for you. I love this cabinet's design, and would love to see the artwork really bring it all together well.
:cheers: