So many buttons! How many should I really have?

[Crayola]

Hiya all,

I have been playing mame for a while on my PC and I have
decided to put together my first cabinet (playing on a
pc keyboard really sucks!). I am planning on building a UAII
cabinet and a 4 player CP. I have decided I am going to
have the following..

4 tstick plus joysticks with 6 buttons per player
one 3" golden tee track ball
one spinner
four 1-4 player start buttons
four 1-4 add coin buttons mounted on the side of the CP
ipac/4
opti-pac

What other buttons do I need?  I havent been able to
play the trackball games like centpide or spinners like
tempest but I would love to. Should the spinner and
trackball have dedicated buttons? How many for each?

Do I need any special control buttons for mame itself? I also
want to have this cabinet run atari, sega, and snes/nes games
and possibly some other systems in the future. Basically I want
to make sure I have everything I need without going to crazy.

What emulators do ya'll recommend for these other platforms
(atari, sega, snes/nes) ?

Thanks,
Crayola

[cdbrown]

Welcome to this wonderful place Crayola.

I must say you are very ambitious for wanting all the controls on one panel - but hey I have pretty much the same thing.

You don't really need any special control buttons as you can configure the existing buttons to perform other functions using the IPAC shift button.  http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac3.html

The location of the trackball and spinners and the distance away from the existing player buttons will help you decide whether you want to have dedicated buttons.  These extra buttons can be wired back to the ipac in the same terminal as other buttons - ie wire the joystick P1 button 1 and trackball P1 button 1 to the same spot on the ipac - they don't need their own terminal on the ipac.  How many do you need - hopefully someone else will let you know.

Good luck
-cdbrown

[slicer_d]

I havent built an entire decked out cp like you want to build but just a few things to keep in mind.  The i-pac has the shift so like cdbrown said you dont need and escape pause volume or coin keys because you can use the start buttons as shift button and use your regular buttons to do all those features.

Also I'm not sure where you like but if you live in the U.S. I would suggest getting all your buttons and 2 ( either supers or comps) happs joys from therealbobroberts.com the you could then use those joysticks for player 3 and 4 and they would cost half as much also you will probably end up ordering like 30+ buttons and they are abou 50 cents cheaper per button at bob roberts.  Having four T-stiks seems like over kill because you only really need them to the 4/8 way switch and I dont think there is a single 3/4 player game that is 4 way.

Of course if you live in EU this might be a null point becuase shipping from ultimarc would end up being much cheaper probably but you might want to keep it in mind.

Also when you get all your controls do a mock setup with some cheap particle board you really dont want to spend a ton of time and find out you hit your hand on the joysitck while playing golden tee or vice versa.  Also button position is a very personal preference thing so you should definitally put some thought in to it.

[SpamMe]

What games require 6 buttons per player for 4 players (or even 3) ?

[Syntax]

Yeah 6 for player 1/2 and 3-4 for player 3/4 should be fine.

[slicer_d]

I was just figuring 7 buttons for 1/2 player I like to create the capcom 6 plus an extra to make the neogeo 4.  Then 4 for player 3/4 then 4 start buttons maybe the 3 buttons to go with the spinner too then maybe 2 side buttons for pinball

7+7+4+4+4+3+2=31

so lets just make it about 28 plus or minus 3

thats of course assuming he uses the shift button and doesn have any exit pause or coin buttons which some people like to have.

[menace]

Of the admin buttons, I like pause and esc to be their own buttons.  When people come over I hate having to hover over the machine every time they want to pause or change games--people just don't remember to use the shift function.  If they are regulars they might, but for people who just use it at parties and stuff, this works out to be the best.

[unclet]

Here is a picture of my 4-player control panel:  

[unclet]

Here is the explanation as to which button does what:

[unclet]

Only thing I would do differently was to add one "tilt" button next to the pinball buttons on each side of the cabinet and one more "tilt" button in the front so I could bump the table while playing pinball from either side.

[gprime]

I just finished my cab a few days ago -- probably the most basic cab any of you have ever seen. But for me, it's awesome  

When I was ordering buttons I got 4 admin buttons just to be sure I had enough (ended up installing only 3). Since I only actually used ESC, I decided to give the other 2 Coin1 and Coin2 (there are actual coin  slots but after you but the first couple of quarters in , you get sick of doing it  ). I wired them up to different buttons on the i-Pac so I can disable the buttons or change them if I ever have the need for more admin buttons.

Anywho, that's 1 admin button for me. What other admin buttons does everyone have?

[gprime]

my god unclet, that control panel scares me!

i sure hope it's labelled (unlike mine )'

edit:

I can picture someone off the street trying to play by pressing random buttons

<insert simpsons quote>

(homer receiting fortune cookie messages to lisa)
"Lisa are you getting all this?"
(lisa slowly pressing random buttons on a chinese typewriter)
"I ... don't ... know ...."

 

[Brad Lee]

UncleT- Im curious about the 3 at the top right(MAME,nes, snes)

Do they close & launch the selected emulator, are they always active? What are they wired to?

[TheTick]

Geesh... all you really need is one button. That way Mario can jump over the barrels  

As for 4-player games that requires 6 buttons each... try to think outside of MAME. There are four player fighter games on consoles, some of which are emulated.

This site isn't www.BuildYourOwnArcadeControlsJustForMAME.org

[Stingray]

Geesh... all you really need is one button. That way Mario can jump over the barrels  

Hehehehe. I was thinking the same. All of my favorite games only use a joystick and one or two buttons. Having said that, my control panel has two sticks and 12 buttons...  

-S

[unclet]

Yeah I wanted all players to have many buttons......gotta plan for the future outside of Mame.

As for the Mame, Nes and SuperNes buttons......

.... I use a Hagstrom keyboard encoder which is programmed by running a BAT file.  Thing is, I can create multiple BAT files (one per emulator or one per each different joystick/button layout configuration I want) and then simply press a button and have all my joysticks and buttons re-mapped for the particular emulator I am using.  Anyway, this was my thought when I designed my cabinet, however, since each emulator has it's own mapping scheme which can be saved to my taste, I really never use these buttons, although there is another very useful reason to have these buttons......  If you would like to remap the buttons so your "player1" joystick is on the right instead of the left (basically swap joystick and buttons configurations) for left-handed players, then you basically just need to hit a button and everything is remapped (without having to change the Mame default game settings).   Does this make sense?   Basically, you can simply remap buttons for Mame by simply reloading the Hagstrom keyboard encoder with different keystroke output mappings.   You can have the buttons on the left or right of a joystick to be assigned to that joystick for a right-handed or left-handed player.  

[shmokes]

Yeah...I suppose if I were doing a four-player panel I'd probably do the same thing (at least six buttons per player.  Some of the four-player WWF games for N64 were a blast.  The panel looks a bit cluttered, but who's going to notice that when they're gouging your eyes or smaching a folding chair over your head in tag-team or royal rumble?

[unclet]

Actually, there is plenty of room for 4 players......note that the width of the panel is over 4-1/2 feet wide  

[Brad Lee]

^^I gotcha, I got similar .bats that load my ipac config based on what emu it's loading, and then reload the mame config when it exits
[/derail]

Anyway Im old school when it comes to my preferred layout. P1 has a stick and 4 buttons, P2 has a stick and 2 buttons. SPinner in the center. start & coin for each.
Wireless keyboard, baby!

esc/f2/3/P are up top, recessed mini momentarys. Out of the way yet convenient still