My first build: "Mimic"

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Laythe:
By popular* demand, here's a short video of Mimic in action and the transition between games.

Mimic, switching games.

(For the sake of keeping this short, I switched fairly quickly between games, which makes the gradual fades of the control panel lights seem a little too slow. In normal use, the fade duration is nice. Also, this video was shot on a potato, which overexposed a lot of the brighter stuff on the screens that are of course not all bright white in reality - sorry.)

*: Well, two.

drakmarr:
Super nice job!!!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Slippyblade:
Good lord that is amazing. I want it to have my children.

Laythe:

--- Quote from: Slippyblade on January 22, 2016, 01:36:18 am ---Good lord that is amazing. I want it to have my children.

--- End quote ---

:laugh2: Thanks! That makes it worth my trouble to have shot the video, right there.

Laythe:
I guess there's a few things I might as well explain before anybody calls me to task on them, from the video.

Just in case everyone but PBJ is too polite to say the following:

"Championship Sprint... without 360 wheels or spinners? On joysticks? That's terrible!"
Yes. It is. But it's equally terrible for both players, so it's still a fair race, of sorts. The computer cars will of course ruthlessly destroy you after a few races - but they always did that. (Or maybe I always sucked at Sprint.)

"Armor Attack used an array of buttons, not joysticks!"
This is true, and if I set Mimic to the alternate 'Solo' mode, it maps 4 buttons in a horizontal line for one player in a pattern like Phoenix shows. But, that only accomidates one person. This video is in the default (2p) mode, and moving Turn Left + Turn Right onto the sticks makes it fit two players. (Same deal with Rip Off and Space War.)

"Why does Frogger light 4 buttons? Frogger has ZERO buttons!"
The throw on a Servostick in 4-way is kind of long for the tap-tap style of Frogger. I was testing to see if the game played better if I just tap buttons for movement. (This button layout is basically a D-pad, after all.) It's... maybe a little better, but it's very weird. I am undecided, so for now, they both work.

"That's not the correct marquee art for Shadow Over Mystara!"
Yes. Because the real marquee art on Shadow Over Mystara sucked. I made my own.

"Lunar Lander isn't a trackball game!"
True. But the throttle was an analog input. The trackball is my only analog control. It's quite playable, with vertical trackball roll mapped as throttle. I figured it was this, or motorize a throttle lever that pops out for that one game, and that way lies madness.

"All these wheel-based driving games. With no wheel. What is WRONG with you?!"
I initially had a notion of building a detachable steering wheel L panel that could swap with the current blank L panel below the fixed CP, which would have stuck the wheel out the center of that tall grey vertical wall. That lead me to do the graphics work for those games and add them in. I later decided that panel was a terrible idea and that swapping it in and out would kludge up an otherwise slick cabinet far too badly... but in the meanwhile, I had kind of gotten used to driving those games with the trackball. It's not that bad! At least, until I build a sit-down racing cabinet for all of them, someday. Then I'll take them off this machine.

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