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Newbie 4 Player Control Panel Thoughts
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Xiaou2:
A lot of people dont realize the arm positions when designing and building these panels.

 For example... do you want your arm hitting another joystick?  Or resting on buttons?   Do you want to reach deeply into a control panel... uncomfortably stretching for long periods of time?  If you roll your trackball hard.. do you want your hand to smack into the nearest joystick or even the monitor glass?

 By using intelligent placement, you can solve a lot of these problems.   Heres some examples...



Key:
Edited Image shows various arm placements.  Green is good.  Red & Pink show issues with arms intersecting other controllers... or other comfort / playability issues.   Black circle, shows optimal safety distance for trackball use.  Its far better to offset the trackball next to the left players low-height buttons... than to keep it centered... where you are more apt to smash into the 2nd players joystick.

 Notes:  For the hand drawn pic...  This was made for someone who was asking to have Asteriods Deluxe button layout.. as well as all the other controllers.  In this case, there was one compromise, which was that if the spinner was used... player had to rest on some buttons.   However, its not a bad compromise, considering the original layout design, which was plagued with comfort and playability issues.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,133856.msg1379612.html#msg1379612
Bobgilb1:

--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on December 10, 2013, 06:11:31 pm ---A lot of people dont realize the arm positions when designing and building these panels.

 For example... do you want your arm hitting another joystick?  Or resting on buttons?   Do you want to reach deeply into a control panel... uncomfortably stretching for long periods of time?  If you roll your trackball hard.. do you want your hand to smack into the nearest joystick or even the monitor glass?

 By using intelligent placement, you can solve a lot of these problems.   Heres some examples...



Key:
Edited Image shows various arm placements.  Green is good.  Red & Pink show issues with arms intersecting other controllers... or other comfort / playability issues.   Black circle, shows optimal safety distance for trackball use.  Its far better to offset the trackball next to the left players low-height buttons... than to keep it centered... where you are more apt to smash into the 2nd players joystick.

 Notes:  For the hand drawn pic...  This was made for someone who was asking to have Asteriods Deluxe button layout.. as well as all the other controllers.  In this case, there was one compromise, which was that if the spinner was used... player had to rest on some buttons.   However, its not a bad compromise, considering the original layout design, which was plagued with comfort and playability issues.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,133856.msg1379612.html#msg1379612

--- End quote ---

Great thoughts, makes sense to me. Jamming into player 2's joystick would probably not feel very good. How's this?

Edit: Oops, posted the wrong pic initially but I fixed it now, sorry
Bobgilb1:

--- Quote from: PL1 on December 10, 2013, 06:09:33 pm ---
--- Quote from: Bobgilb1 on December 10, 2013, 11:07:30 am ---I know that 6 admin buttons is kind of a crazy amount and am open to less but I read somewhere that (Enter, Pause, Left Mouse, Right Mouse, F2, and Escape might be worth considering)

--- End quote ---

Pretty sure that 6 admin buttons is overkill.

What emulators/FE are you planning on running?

Install and configure the emulators/FE before you decide on which admin buttons you need and want.

Escape and Pause are definitely a good idea IMHO.

You probably won't need Enter, mouse buttons, or F2.   :dunno

Scott

--- End quote ---

Honestly, I am not certain which emulators I am going to run yet, so I was thinking overkill just to be safe......seems to be a consensus that the overkill is definitely just that though, so I am definitely listening.
Nephasth:
Slippyblade:
Ah man.  Overkill.  Back in high school, buddy of mine had a 1950 Chevy pickup.  He also had a pair of 4' peavey speaker stacks.  We would drop those speakers in the back of his truck, wire up an amp, and look Overkill's awesome album "F*** You" as we cruised downtown Prescott.

Good times, good times.
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