Help modding my Control Panel

[tykenfitz]

Ok so I just finished turning an old die hard cab i got for free into a MAME machine.  The control is the original from the die hard game


It's been great for playing metal slug and simpsons and such, but I somewhat limited.  What do you think about putting three more buttons per side directly under where the ones are now?  Would they be awkward because of the shifting?  Also, the joysticks are both 8-way only, so I can't play some of the classics like pac man right now.  I want to put a 4 way stick in the middle there but i don't know if there's room, also, how many buttons should i put next to the 4 way stick?  The classic games don't usually use more than 2, right?

Finally, has anyone tried the True 4 from GGG? It looks good but I don't want to order it if it's not going to have a true "old-school" feel, 'naw mean?

Thanks guys

[tykenfitz]

bump :/

[drventure]

You could replace the sticks with Magsticks (which are 4/8 way switchable) or U360s.

I've got my buttons in a cluster arced like yours, but I have 2 rows, 4 on the bottom, 3 on top. They work perfectly fine for me.

As for the middle of the panel, I'd consider putting a trackball in, though I can't tell if there's enough space for that.

[LeedsFan]

Personally if it was me I'd junk the whole panel and start from scratch. I never saw a Die hard cabinet before and after looking at your project thread the thing that hit me immediately was those two horrible coin inputs in the middle of the CP. They take up soooooo much space. Getting a dedicated 4-way in there with a couple of buttons would be a piece of cake then. Cutting a new panel out of MDF wouldn't take much time at all and you can keep the Die hard panel unmolested should you ever want to go back to original.

Having said that I don't don't know what the cabinet design is like under that CP. If there are fixed coin chutes or mechanisms directly under those coin inputs then my suggestion may need a little more modification to the cab design.