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The Complete Noob's First Project Thread - (No Theme/Name yet...)
MaxVolume:
--- Quote from: walterg74 on June 13, 2012, 12:07:49 pm ---
wow... you won the longest post!!! :laugh2:
Edit: little note, it's not just the games I liek that don't use that many buttons. If you go to KLOV, and do a search, you'll find less than a dozen vertical games with more than 3 buttons (and most of them are obscure titles)
--- End quote ---
Dude, next time I'll just answer "Yes and no... mostly yes, though" and leave you to figure out what I meant.
As for the number of buttons vertical games have, a lot of "bullet hell" shooters are vertical, and not having access to KLOV at work, I didn't know whether some of them might have more than three. Didn't seem likely, so it's not surprising that it is in fact the case.
I'm a little confused when you talk about "obscure titles". I sort of thought that one of the chief reasons we build MAME cabs was because some little gem we found through MAME wasn't available on "1001 Greatest Arcade Hits Ever" for the PC/PS2/PS3/360/Wii/etc. or on those 60-in-1 boards that claim to have every game "anybody would really want to play". Granted, I didn't play a lot of arcade games as a kid, but there are a lot of games that I never would have known about if it weren't for MAME, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
I'm not really sure you got my point about MAME's configurability, though. You don't need a dedicated "SHIFT" button... it doesn't need to be mapped to the "SHIFT" key to generate a different keypress, and it doesn't have to be the button wired as your I-PAC shift button. I actually need to download the MiniPAC programming utility to turn off the shifting function on my cocktail cab anyway. You can assign any button to cause P1 start to pause and P2 start to exit, and it will work flawlessly until you hold it down and press one of the start buttons. All you have to do is make PAUSE = button x AND P1 start and EXIT = button x AND P2 start in your MAME settings. As much experience as gamers have with combos, it seems really odd that they don't understand that you don't need a single dedicated button for every function.
I'll address keyboard drawers in another post... this one is probably too long already. :soapbox:
MaxVolume:
--- Quote from: the_gamer on June 13, 2012, 05:36:34 am ---I really appreciate this thread. Thanks walterg74. I want to build a cab soon and i got a lot of useful tips out of this!
--- Quote from: MaxVolume on June 12, 2012, 01:07:53 pm --- (and don't even get me started on keyboard drawers :angry: )
--- End quote ---
Please do. I don't know what speaks against them and i really would like to know :)
--- End quote ---
Since it's not as obvious as I thought... it's just like Walter says, they detract from the arcade experience, which is the whole reason behind building a MAME machine to begin with. Maybe at one time they were necessary, but wireless keyboards have become so cheap and compact, I don't see any reason why someone needs a mouse and keyboard hiding inside their MAME cabinet. I've already said that my first attempt at SUPER GAMES MUSEUM was thwarted by my internet computer dying so I had to pull the mobo, but prices have come down so much that nobody should need (or even want) to surf the 'net on their MAME cabinet. Not very ergonomic, just for starters.
Anyway, there wasn't any great dark secret behind my loathing of keyboard drawers on MAME cabs, just that they fly in the face of the very motivation to build such a thing. I feel the same way about spending time, money and energy building a huge cabinet and then the computer's still in its case sitting next to the thing in plain view. Again, I am being a bit lazy and using a complete PC in the case (including floppy and DVD-ROM drives that I don't need) in the FLYNN'S cab, but it's a mini-desktop that not only fits the footprint of the cab perfectly, it's also a heavy-as-all-hell IBM ThinkCentre case that adds some nice authentic-feeling weight to the bottom of the cab, and it's at least going inside the cabinet.
I'll step off the soap box now. :) I'll pre-emptively state that I'm not the guy who runs the CrapMAME site, but I swear that guy must be my "brain twin" when I read some of the things he says about those cabs. :censored:
walterg74:
--- Quote from: MaxVolume on June 13, 2012, 03:11:05 pm ---
Dude, next time I'll just answer "Yes and no... mostly yes, though" and leave you to figure out what I meant.
--- End quote ---
Nahh it was just a joke (hence the laughing guy...) so chill... ;)
--- Quote from: MaxVolume on June 13, 2012, 03:11:05 pm ---I'm a little confused when you talk about "obscure titles". I sort of thought that one of the chief reasons we build MAME cabs was because some little gem we found through MAME wasn't available on "1001 Greatest Arcade Hits Ever" for the PC/PS2/PS3/360/Wii/etc. or on those 60-in-1 boards that claim to have every game "anybody would really want to play". Granted, I didn't play a lot of arcade games as a kid, but there are a lot of games that I never would have known about if it weren't for MAME, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
--- End quote ---
Hmm maybe "obscure" isn't the word, I'll be more literal and say they're mostly unknown piece of crap games, those that are listed and use more than 3-4 buttons... Now is it clear? ;D
And btw, no, that's not the reason we build MAME cabinets... that may be the reason for the MAME project, but IMHO, the person that buildsa cab does so to actually play their favourite games, and not just accumulate crappy ones (although there are of course exceptions...)
--- Quote from: MaxVolume on June 13, 2012, 03:11:05 pm ---
I'm not really sure you got my point about MAME's configurability, though. You don't need a dedicated "SHIFT" button... it doesn't need to be mapped to the "SHIFT" key to generate a different keypress, and it doesn't have to be the button wired as your I-PAC shift button. I actually need to download the MiniPAC programming utility to turn off the shifting function on my cocktail cab anyway. You can assign any button to cause P1 start to pause and P2 start to exit, and it will work flawlessly until you hold it down and press one of the start buttons. All you have to do is make PAUSE = button x AND P1 start and EXIT = button x AND P2 start in your MAME settings. As much experience as gamers have with combos, it seems really odd that they don't understand that you don't need a single dedicated button for every function.
--- End quote ---
Ah.. gotcha... yeah for some reason I kept thinking you need a dedicated shift button/key... In that case, even better, I don;t need that extra clumsy button... We'll see...
:cheers:
walterg74:
Ok, so no updates for a while due to a combo of bad weather, social stuff, etc... :(
I did manage to learn something: don't go spreading putty/filler willy-nilly for no reason...
Did that this past weekend, (don't know why) and found myself with a lot of filler in places that didn't need it at all...
So I spent the time sanding it all away practically, leaving only in the screw holes area, and in the part where the top panel joins the angled top panel, like so:
So as you can see, besides putting excess filler (gone in the pics above), seems in the places it DID have to go it was not applied 100% correctly, since I was left with tiny holes still...
so I have just applied more filler (more discretely this time.. ::)) and left it like this now...
So now I guess I have to wait for it to dry, sand off the excess and see if this time it's ok :)
After that, I need to finalize the choice for bezel vs mount, and cut the ctrol panel already!
Speaking of that.. for someone who did it already, do you use the router for the joystick? (if you want to bottom mount it)
And then.. sand and finally start painting please!!!
Sadly I will be delayed about 1 month, since I'm leaving for Europe for work for 2 weeks this saturday, and then I'm taking vacation for another 2 weeks, so mixed bag of joy for vacation time (woo hoo! ;D) and sad to have to make a pause in finishing the cab...
Hopefully I'll still be able to come around and read posts and post back!
So 'til next time!!
MaxVolume:
--- Quote from: walterg74 on June 18, 2012, 09:38:01 pm ---
--- Quote from: MaxVolume on June 13, 2012, 03:11:05 pm ---
Dude, next time I'll just answer "Yes and no... mostly yes, though" and leave you to figure out what I meant.
--- End quote ---
Nahh it was just a joke (hence the laughing guy...) so chill... ;)
--- End quote ---
No biggie... didn't wanna come off as too harsh there, it just bugs me when people complain about long posts, e-mails, etc. but when someone is "concise" the message doesn't get across.
I know there are a LOT of truly crappy games in MAME (500 flavors of nudie mahjong, anyone?), but there are some real gems that most people would probably consider "crap" just because they've never heard of them. Don't know specifically which ones you were talking about, but I just had to make the point that even with the ever-expanding catalog of games that have been released on compilations, Xbox Live or Virtual Console, there are still some very obscure but very good games you'll only be able to play via MAME. Even prototypes like Freeze are often particularly entertaining. Just like there's more to '80s music than the #1 hits, if you're gonna go so far as to build a MAME cabinet, it doesn't really make sense to only include games that have already been released for every home computer, console and cellphone known to man.
As for the shift button, nope, you don't need that.
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