Button color and type advice....

[dfwpiper1]

If YOU had a Space Invaders Deluxe cab.... but wanted to pimp it a little with some LED buttons... what color would you pick?
The color scheme of SI Deluxe totally throws me. Red, White, Blue.. with some green and yellow and black thrown in. It's frankly more hideous than the regular Space Invaders... yet it's kinda awesome in it's garish, retro sorta way. It's aesthetically arguable that yellow, green, blue, red, and white could all look good as lighted buttons. Anybody with a better eye for color complimenting have any suggestions? 
(I'd like the 12 main buttons for P1 and P2 to be the same. Menu/nav buttons can be another color... or a bunch of colors.)


Also... what's everybodys' preference on concave vs. flat. I've never actually tried the flat.... but I'm leaning towards getting flat. (I'm obviously not a hard-core traditionalist)
Concave always felt a little sloppy to me....

[paigeoliver]

As a Space Invaders owner I would say swap out the buttons with some translucent leaf buttons and then light those up with 555 lamps or whatever it is that is normally used. Space Invaders is terrible with the microswitch buttons that you can put LEDs into.

Just realized that this is probably a mame setup.

I like the standard concave buttons better than the flat ones. It has little to do with the difference in concave vs. convex and has way more to do with the fact that most of the convex/flat buttons I have seen are so light duty that they could have come off a kiddy toy (my main problem with Asian joysticks too, they cost just as much as American sticks but have these weeny thin shafts that would bend in half if they saw a few days duty in an American arcade.

[yotsuya]

Also... what's everybodys' preference on concave vs. flat. I've never actually tried the flat.... but I'm leaning towards getting flat. (I'm obviously not a hard-core traditionalist)
Concave always felt a little sloppy to me....

I hate the flat buttons. They don't feel right. I've bought flat LED buttons and then promptly replaced them.

[ark_ader]

Keep it original.  Seriously.

[Unstupid]

Keep it original.  Seriously.

What he said..... Don't bastardize a classic!

[dfwpiper1]

sigh... I have to explain this every time.... it's already been bastardized when I bought it. The control panel has a joystick. No cpo on a poorly-matched red-painted plain board that's been screwed in with giant, clearly visible screws. Inside has been jamma'd. No original pcbs. Cab is beat to ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. I figure anything I do to it will be an improvement, so it just as well be a multigame. 

[edekoning]

Keep it original.  Seriously.

What he said..... Don't bastardize a classic!

Sounds to me the cab was bastardized by default in the factory

[PL1]

I have to explain this every time

Once per thread is enough.   

Makes it easier for us to remember your particular circumstances, especially if we've read a bunch of other threads since we looked at your other thread.


Scott

[jdbailey1206]

If it's that 'bastardized' why not start from scratch?  You could always get inspiration from the original Space Invaders Deluxe control panel. 


Maybe remove the instruction and high score card and center everything and work from there.  Put a trackball in the middle.  Run with it. 
Groovy Game Gear along with others also sell programmable boards for LED buttons.  And yes concave is the way to go.  More comfort when you get three hours into 'insert favorite game here'.

[dfwpiper1]

Already on it lol!


(lo-res version)

Shifted so the trackball is in the fire button thing and everything.

[chopperthedog]

This is gonna be keithpuetz part2.   


good day.

[jdbailey1206]

This is gonna be keithpuetz part2.   


good day.

?.....searches keithpuetz  Oh.  Oh no.  That can't be good.  Isn't this the Build Your Own Arcade Controls forum?

[dfwpiper1]

Wow. Sorry for asking for any tips. I'll shut up now. 

[jdbailey1206]

Wow. Sorry for asking for any tips. I'll shut up now. 

You're fine man.  If you look up who Chopper is talking about you'll see that keithpuetz just wanted the accolades of arcade building and nothing else. And that is kind of insulting around here since we put in the hard work.    Read keithpuetz's posts and you'll see what Chopper is talking about.

[yotsuya]

This is gonna be keithpuetz part2.   


good day.

As long as the OP doesn't set his girlfriend's mom's wedding dress on fire, he should be fine. 

[chopperthedog]

I brought up keith because he made all the wrong mistakes in my book. He took a donkey kong cab and puked on it with a 16:9 monitor, light up buttons, 2 joys and 12 buttons and teh hyperspinz with console crap galore. The brainiac also was only pulling one audio channel from the computer and going through one speaker when almost everything on the cab was stereo along with the "right channel only" juke box that had 1000's of songs. SI dlx cabs are unique and special with the mirror, black light and back drop art. If you want a 2 player street fighter control panel, then build or find a cabinet that is better suited for the type of games you're gonna be playing.


good day.

[zanna5910]

If YOU had a Space Invaders Deluxe cab.... but wanted to pimp it a little with some LED buttons... what color would you pick?
The color scheme of SI Deluxe totally throws me. Red, White, Blue.. with some green and yellow and black thrown in. It's frankly more hideous than the regular Space Invaders... yet it's kinda awesome in it's garish, retro sorta way. It's aesthetically arguable that yellow, green, blue, red, and white could all look good as lighted buttons. Anybody with a better eye for color complimenting have any suggestions? 
(I'd like the 12 main buttons for P1 and P2 to be the same. Menu/nav buttons can be another color... or a bunch of colors.)


Also... what's everybodys' preference on concave vs. flat. I've never actually tried the flat.... but I'm leaning towards getting flat. (I'm obviously not a hard-core traditionalist)
Concave always felt a little sloppy to me....

I use electric ice RGB's with the tru-leaf switch or whatever its called and I like it.  Although these are concave, they may represent everything your asking for and still have a retro feel.  Also, if you're rocking RGB, you can switch to whatever color you want with some mods, not sure how you would control these via the original hardware though.

Another option would be to get clear or opaque buttons, and then just switch leds to change color as it wouldn't be as painful as the whole nine yards.

As far as feel of button, I've felt the SWITCH feel is what I'm after VS. the actual button feel.  You can always try to get a flat button with a tru-leaf switch if its compatible, or any sort of combination.

Hope that helps, good luck.

[dfwpiper1]

I respect and understand being a purist on the matter. I was going to do this to a joust cab that I saw for dirt cheap on criags, assuming it was trashed. When I got it, it was pretty darn cherry and still working. I knew it would be a sacrelege to not just keep it the way it was. I bought it and left it as such. And this was before I knew about the forum and how passionately purist some here are.

I got the SI DX cab being sold as a 60-in-1 jamma, already messed with. It came with no back drop art. No light. No original innards. No original CPO or even panel. No mirror. No monitor. All I have is the cab, and a very scratched-up bezel The side art is fairly okay, but still pretty scratched and scraped.

My goal was to get a beat-up cab for cheap and start my mame from there, rather than from scratch...because old cabs ARE cheap when they're beat up... because they either go to a guy like me, or they remain in arcade limbo for eternity. I can either dump a ton of money and work into it to restore it to original... which I didn't set out to do... or use the ol' cheap, beat up cab as a base to start my mame project. Hell, I even want to preserve the side art and bezel and keep it 'SI Deluxe'-looking as possible. Either that, or the cab will have remained in trashed and already-partially-modded hades. I think I'm still in good favor with the arcade gods.

vanrose72 and menace pretty much did the same things to the same cab and did a bang up job. I don't recall seeing their project threads being crammed with flame and people screaming 'blasphemer' at them. 

Okay. Done now.

[Unstupid]

The problem with a Space Invaders cab is that it only "works" as a Space Invaders cab.  That's because the Space Invaders cab is that it is so ugly, a lot like the box my refrigerator came in!  If it is not in its classic form it is better off as firewood!   But that just my opinion!