Taking the post off the tracks is where all the fun is PBJ
I have to say, when it comes to the actual building of the cab, the woodwork and hardware, that is a breeze for me. The problem I found (at least on my first 2 cabs) was finding free high quality artwork and then finding someone (other than Staples) to print the stuff at a half decent price. When I first started building, the only graphics program I ever touched was MS Paint. But as more cabs got built, the more I learned. I moved up to IrFanview first, as it was free and the computers at work had this program installed. It did not do anything in vector, and was only good for cutting up big jpegs I found on the net. I now use Inkscape (also free) and bought a large format printer. I ordered 20 sheets of Inkpress adhesive vinyl and started to print my own. I don't like relying on anybody, and now I decide what I am going to print and how I want it to look. I give the graphic artists and printers on here much respect. It is actually a fairly long process from start to finish if you want it to look good....
@Le Chuck, First off, your Darkade build is sick
I must have looked back at your build post 5 or 6 times. It has inspired me to do the auto-switching joysticks next build. I would have liked to have the front look just like yours, but practicing the bends on a scrap piece of plexi didn't give me the warm and fuzzies. Also, I don't think my art work would have reached all the way down to the front lip. Here is a couple more pics showing the CP in action.
Couple of notes and a question. I used a 19" 16:10 Acer monitor, it was on sale for $89.00, so I thought what the hay. Now, before I bought it, I researched how MAME games would look on this aspect ratio, and I was under the impression that the horizontal 4:3 games would have black bars on the sides. None of mine have these black bars. I know that MAME is stretching these games (some ini setting somewhere), and that is probably a no-no to the purists. But, if I did not tell anyone that it was displayed wrong, they would not know. The games, IMO look fantastic. Just thought I would share that in case anyone was sitting on the fence. 1944 Loop Master is displayed in a few pics below...
My question is: I am using Mgalaxy as my front-end and I was going to do an instruction card and stick it to the bottom of my bezel. After I installed the bezel, it looked too nice and I did not want to clutter it up. So, (and I am probably not the first to do this) I came up with a really neat solution. I noticed that Mgalaxy was listing games that I did not have ROMS for, so being a smarty pants, I made up an instruction card in Inkscape (using the same artwork I used on the CP) and I dumped it into the snaps folder and named it "005" which happened to be the first one listed in Mgalaxy. Lo and behold it worked perfect. What I want to know is, where is Mgalaxy pulling these game names from. They are not in my "ROMS" folder or my "Snaps". I am guessing they are default game names that are downloaded with the front-end. Of course, I don't want my instructions to be called "005", since the games get listed alphabetically, I will probably call it "0Instructions0", that is if I can find where this list is stored and modify it. Does anybody know? Instruction pictures also below...