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First time project, control panel layout feedback
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epetti:
Made some tweaks based on the feedback here and reading a bit more:

- Removed the flightstick.  My Player 1 joystick will be an Ultimarc UltraStik 360, which should cover all my needs there.
- With the flightstick gone, I could move forward all my start and coin buttons, thus actually allowing me to shrink the width of the whole panel.
- Moved button spacing closer together.
- Switched green and yellow -- noticed this matched Gauntlet color order better.

New image attached.

thatpurplestuff:
I think it's fairly easy to wire buttons to do more than one thing, so I would suggest mapping any mouse buttons to the 1p set of buttons so you can just use the 1p 1 & 2 buttons to click through menus.

You may want to reconsider the number of admin buttons as well... my first cab had a ton and they ended up being wasted space.  I find that I really only need a setup and exit button... you mentioned needing an enter button for some pc games but either way I strongly suggest not having a shutdown button on your control panel since you don't want to be trying to access a menu and shut your machine down by accident.  If you insist on having a shutdown button I would stick it somewhere that stands no chance of being accidentally pressed (underneath perhaps?).

The other thing would be flush-mounting the trackball as opposed to using the traditional faceplate... in reality it won't give you any more space but visually it will look a bit less cluttered.

Good luck and have fun!
epetti:
Thanks for the advice on multiple mappings.  Does that run into issues of accidentally double-firing or sending double signals that could confuse certain emulators?  For instance, if 1P Fire button maps to Ctrl and Left Mouse, and both Ctrl and Left Mouse in MAME are equivalent to fire.  Could you be getting too many signals sent?  That's the main reason I separated them.

I wasn't too concerned about wasted space since I have the space to waste anyway -- I don't have plans to put anything else in that section so may as well have a spare button just in case I need it for something.  And actually, given some of the other emulators, I have found that Save and Load are two that I might want dedicated buttons for.  Especially those emulators that don't have automatic save states, and those games that support Quick Save and Quick Load.

So right now I'm thinking for admin:

Exit Game
Pause
Save
Load
Setup (useful to get to whatever configuration I need without needing to pull out a keyboard)
Enter
shponglefan:
I find some people get really weird about admin buttons (it's almost a religious topic).

That said, I found I liked having Esc (exit), Tab (setup), Enter and Pause.  In fact, on my 2P control panel I had two seperate pause buttons, each within reach of each player.

Haven't used Save/Load buttons, but if you do opt for them, don't put both of them right next to each other.  You don't want to accidently hit save when you mean to hit load.
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