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SeverdHed's 4-Player Showcase cabinet - keywiz frustrations
Rick Dangerous:
Well done, i love the guns with reload pedals, thats hurts !!!! well done :)
severdhed:
--- Quote from: andrewbean90 on August 31, 2010, 01:59:59 pm ---who said anything about artwork i was talking about playing it on there you got 4 joysticks use them man
--- End quote ---
ahh, i've never played that game. looks like it requires two 4way sticks per player. i guess i could manually rotate the restrictors on teh outside sticks and set the u360s to 4way mode, might be a little weird though
severdhed:
well, this afternoon, i stopped by a local pawn shop and picked up a used 3rd party playstation 2 controller for $4. this will be used as an interface for my reload pedal for my playstation 2.
first of all, i plugged the controller in and made sure it worked, and discovered that every button on the controller will work as a reload pedal in the time crisis games, this means that i can use any button i want. upon opening it up, i discovered that the L1,L2,R1 and R2 buttons would probably be the easiest choices, since they had a small separate pcb that was clearly labled, as well as solder pads just begging to be attached to.
i had a small 1/8" mono panel mount audio jack lying around, so i attached the two wires to the L2 solder pads, and put a small hole in the back of the controller to mount the jack. this way the controller is still fully functional if i ever wanted to use it for something else.(not that i would, it is pretty crappy).
then i took a piece of speaker wire i had, and soldered a 1/8" mini jack onto one end, and on the other end, i soldered on a 1/4" audio jack. (since the pedal i fixed the other day already had a 1/4" mono plug on it.
i then connected a controller extension cable to my ps2, plugged the controller in, plugged the 1/4" to 1/8" adapter cable i just made into the controller, and finally plugged the pedal into the adapter cable. i fired up my ps2 with time crisis 2, and it works beautifully
right now, i just have the 1/4" jack just sitting in the coin return slot, i need to cut a new panel to mount it on. i also need to search for a different controller extension cable, that one is attached to a spool which is hard to tuck away in the small opening between the two peices of cabinet. i know i have another one somewhere, but i'm not sure where right now. the controller just lays in the bottom of the pedestal portion of the cabinet, i will probably mount it with zip ties or something to keep it from moving around and possibly depressing one of the buttons.
i cant get over how much more fun time crisis is with the pedal. the buttons on the guncon 2 work just fine, but the pedal is just so much more fun. i dont see it being real necessary to have a second one, since i'll probably only ever use it by myself, but if i see the need, i can add another one down the road.
also, on a side note, i was having a problem with my u360 maps, and i finally got it resolved. I had a hard time peforming dragon punches, and many other special moves in fighting games, i found that on my old cabinet, by editing the 8way map to increase the size of the deadzone in the center, it made it feel perfect. well, i did this the other day on this cabinet, but it didn't seem to make a difference. i'm using MALA as my front end, with the plugin to automatically load the maps when you launch a game. after playing around a little, i discovered that when i installed that plugin, it asked me where my u360 maps were saved. the problem is, it apparently copied those maps into a maps folder inside my mala directory. if i would have edited my maps before installing the plugin, all would have worked well, but when i updated the maps in the ultramap program, it changed them in the default location, but not in the new mala location. after a quick copy/paste, my u360s are now performing very well.
i also forgot to mention the specs of my mame pc in this cabinet. it isn't really a power house, but it works well and plays the majority of the games very well. it is:
Pentium 4 3ghz CPU /hyperthreading
4gb DDR400 ram
80gb 7200rpm sata hard drive
ATI Radeon X1650 video card
windows xp pro
i still need to tweak the overscan settings to make the picture fit a little better, but for the most part, it is coming along very nicely. my next major project is to build a small box to sit between the control panel box and the pedestal to raise the panel up a little higher..it is just too low to be comfortable for extended playing.
severdhed:
well, i didn't get as much done to the cabinet as i would have liked this weekend, (wife was sick, plus i had some home improvement stuff that sat a little higher on her list than the cabinet). anyway, i did manage to get the control panel raised up to a reasonable level. it was just too low, it was uncomfortable to play for more than a few minutes.
here is the pedestal portion with the control panel box removed:
this isn't really the final product, i was just throwing together something quick to see how it would work. i wasn't sure if the height was right, and i didn't have enough MDF at the house to do it right, so i used some scrap mdf and a few 1x4 pine boards. i quickly cut them out (not very well) on my table saw that i have never used before.(should have clamped a board down as a fence i guess) i cut the pieces, glued them all together and slapped 2 quick coats of paint on it. (no sanding, just wanted a black box). i set it on the pedestal and ran a few screws in to hold it in place.
i then placed the control panel back on, and screwed it in place. this put the panel at a much more comfortable height. (just under 38" at the front edge)
i also took the time to clean up some of my mess around the cabinet, i figured now that there wasn't a bunch of crap sitting on top of it (i moved it all to the DVD shelf on the wall) i could take a pic of the power button i mounted on the top of the cabinet (in the hole where the wiring use to run through to get to the marquee box i removed). this button was in the original control panel when i picked it up, and since it covered the large hole completely, it seemed like the right choice.
finally, here is a long shot from the other side of my family room. as you can see, this thing takes up a big portion of the room, but it seems to work well where it is. obviously i have alot of cleaning up to do. not to mention getting my other cabinet back up and running. this room is really dark, since there are no overhead lights in the room. i mounted an 18" florescent light fixture to the back side of the cabinet to provide a little more light in that half of the room.
well, that's it for now. i need to play with this for a while to make sure the panel height is good, if it is, then i will make a new booster box to replace the crappy one i threw in there yesterday.
DCsegaDH:
Nice job :cheers: