SPIDEY SENSE SYSTEM COMPLETE!So with the help of BadMouth and a tool by “kasty”, I was able to clean up and finalize the Spidey Sense anti-front-end system. Calling it a front-end is kind of a misnomer since you really never see any kind of menu screen except when the system first launches. The whole point was to do away with the typical front-end, menu-driven experience and substitute it with a tactile, physical experience. Here it is in a nutshell.
At the initial power on, the Spidey Sense system boots up (through Windows) and the user is greeted with a sort of splash screen. I have a generic Spiderman pic for now, but I’ll probably swap it for something else.
The user then grabs a game token. Here is a pile of various tokens.
I struggled with a way to store and access the tokens. I went with a binder using display sheets for coin collectors.
Each page has labels for easy reading.
I have to say, I am not totally satisfied with this approach. The tokens are not very easy to remove if you have fat adult-sized thumbs (but the kids seem to have an easier time with it). They also slip out too easily if the binder is turned upside down. Still waiting for that perfect approach to come to me after a few beers.
I also have what I call the “Rotating Handle” page. This gives me 20 tokens to rotate in and out and assign a temporary slot to see what we like. I’ve loaded it with a lot of sports games at the moment to play around with.
I’ll probably trick out the list with some marquee graphics when I get some time.
Once the user picks a token, the execution is easy as pie. Just stick it in the special middle yellow glowy slot and after a delay of about a second, the game fires up. The token passes right through and back out the coin return. Best practice is to immediately take it out and put it away.
Here’s kind of a lame picture of the RFID reader mounted to the coin mech.
When the user wants to switch games, there is no need to back out or press any keystrokes. Badmouth helped me modify MAME to accept directinput, so the software can execute the keystroke to exit. All you have to do is put the next game token in and the system does the rest! There’s a brief flash of the windows screen and then the next game starts up. It’s great for kids and random adults. The best part is, at parties I don’t get nagged every 10 minutes to change the game. It’s so simple an ape can operate it. With LEDblinky lighting up the buttons to use, the system is just about as basic as a multi-game system can get!
Honestly, I find myself just using the tokens most of the time for my favorite games. I have a Hyperspin install as well which I use to browse the library for new games. You don’t get previews or other fancy stuff with this anti-frontend setup, but hey, previews only tell you so much about payability anyway.
It’s kind of nice how someone else can browse the catalog while others are playing...