Question about required inputs.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm on the home stretch with my racing cab finally and I'm trying to finalize the control panel layout.  I don't want a bunch of extra buttons on the thing, mostly because I don't have a lot of room on the dash.  So in terms of gameplay buttons, the 4 view buttons and a start button should do it.  The question is what else and how should I lay it out?  I'm pretty certain at this point that my start button will press ENTER instead of the 1 key.  Every pc racer I've tried wants the enter button and mame and the other emulators have no problem remapping.  I'll need a coin-up button, but I don't know if I want it on the dash... maybe underneath?  Back buttons are an interesting one.  Some games use escape (which I'll need anyway) and some use backspace.  I really don't want a back button AND an escape button.  I'll also have to add a switch..... Since I made the wheel detachable anyway, I'm building a yoke and it'll use the brake pedal as a Y axis.  The switch will turn off the brake. 

It's menu buttons that get me.  Badmouth I know you mapped the VR buttons to the arrow keys, but a lot of pc games have steering default to the arrows.  I can slap a d-pad on there, but space is limited and I don't like the looks of them.  I'll be making a custom interface via a teensy, so I have toyed with the idea of alternate key sets, but I'd have to either have a shift key like on the I-pac/Keywiz, or add yet another switch. 

What about service menu buttons?  There seems to be a lot of fiddling, so would this make things easier, or hard due to the way every emulator seems to map these to something different?

I'm going to start installing stuff on the dash tomorrow and I'll FINALLY take more pics so maybe that will help, but I'm sure open to suggestions.

[BadMouth]

On the last sega model 2 (or 3?) dashboard I hacked, I tried putting the coin input up above the view buttons and didn't care for it there.
Some of the cabs that only had 1 or 2 view buttons actually had a credit button there.
Maybe just habit, but I like:

4 view buttons in a row on the left bottom of the face of the dashboard.  Sega style, but the midway games also had them there.
Start button above those.
Coin button below the dashboard on the left side somewhere.  I'd keep them on the same side because you usually hit start after coin.

Radio and any other buttons on the right side of the dashboard, where they were on the midway cabs.

As far as keys posted, I've never had a PC game other than offroad thunder use the back button....and I've gone all the way back to Daytona USA and Sega Rally for PC.
ESC worked for everything I ever put on my cab with the exception of the 2005 version of NFS Most Wanted.  It worked for menus, but the game required you to press Q to quit the game.
Easy enough fix in autohotkey.

I can't say I'm as certain of the arrow keys.  I never had any issues with them.  Even if they did effect the game it was only for a tiny fraction of a second it was pressed to change the view.
IIRC, it might have been an issue on ridge racer with the vivanonno emulator, but it's been a long time.

I think you're overthinking it.  The pedals also.  Nobody else has had to install a switch to keep them from registering (except for the clutch pedal.
Usually if you have them marked combined in the old games, it gets rid of that.

[Howard_Casto]

No the switch is to turn off the pot on the pedal and turn on the one on the yoke.  I tried and in tests having the Y axis on a separate joystick caused issues on some pc games.  So I'm stealing the wheel's pedal an re-mapping via the profiler to a Y axis. 

The new need for speed port uses the back button.  Mind you I think it's re-mapable on that one, but it made me think there might be others.  Maybe it's a post-xbox360 thing?


Atm I've got the view buttons on the left and the start button above them.  That's about all I can fit without it looking weird .... it'll make more sense tomorrow.

As far as radio buttons and stuff I'm not sure I'll have room.  I was thinking of a tablet or second monitor and maybe a cheap touchscreen mapped to a joystick....so I could have different layouts for different games. I don't know if I have the room now. 

[terminator2k2]

I have the following hooked up on my ipac:

start - Enter
vr1 - left
vr2 - right
vr3 - up
vr4 - down
coin - keyboard 5

with it setup like that I find it easy if I play pc games aswell as you can go through most menus.

Then if some thing pops up which needs a different mapping , I just use a AHK script to change them to what ever I want....

just like your outrun 2, I think its F1 to change outrun mode/music by default , so I have a script to use vr1 to change view and outrunmode/music selction. I use this script in hyperspin to launch when the game runs and kills it when the game exits...

ive also done a script where I can use start + vr3 for volume up and start + vr4 for volume down

ive also got start + vr1 for escape

[Howard_Casto]

I started thinking about it some more.  I'm not using a keyboard encoder, I'm rolling my own, so I can do things however I want.  I was thinking maybe pressing start + a VR button could switch to a different set of keys.  I could have up to 4 presets that way and maybe use a rgb led indicator to show which one. 

I'm also thinking a coin key isn't really needed.  I can have start and coin up mapped to the same key, I've done it on machines in the past, and they worked fine.

So I already drilled the buttons on the left side.... 4 vr + start.  The question is what do I need on the right?  I guess an escape key, but what about misc stuff?  I had honestly overlooked the radio buttons, but I'm wondering how useful they'd be and if I should do something dedicated or a more generic button.  I wonder if I can get the half-scale buttons in the oval midway style like the half scale vr buttons I found.

[baritonomarchetto]

As most commercial cab pc-to-jamma interfaces docet, you can use one button (es. "Start") as "shift" button: when you keep it pressed, other keys will be sent by pressing the other buttons on the CP (es. ESC could be sent by keeping START and the red VR light); only when the "shift" is released, it will send it's own keypress (or whatever) so that you don't even need a dedicated button to change button map.

[BadMouth]

As policy, I try to avoid needing to manually change things when switching between games.
To each their own though.

I've found the radio button useful as an extra button for oddball stuff.
For example in the 2005 version of NFS Most Wanted, the ESC key acts as a back button for the menus, but you are required to press Q in the main menu to quit the game.
Making my exit button post Q would mean I couldn't navigate the menus anymore, so I used the radio button to post Q.  (actually an ahk script to change the key)
IIRC, I also used it to post F2 in Outrun2006, but that was before FXT.

[Howard_Casto]

Well considering I'm going to have a yoke and a 360 degree wheel, occasionally changing things manually will be unavoidable. 

I could change modes via sending a serial command, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth.  I'm not sure about what I'm going to do with the led controls yet.... I might have them running with the keyboard on the same teensy, but then again I have a ledwiz collecting dust..... it seems a bit overkill for this project though. 

I'm not a huge fan of the shift buttons.  I always forget the combos I setup.  I always remember escape and pause, but anything I don't use too often ends up a mystery. 

I was just thinking that it could default to the arrow keys, but maybe have r,f,d,g as a second, the maintenance buttons as a third (f2,f3,9 and tab), and something else as a fourth.  I would rarely ever use the others, but when the need arose I wouldn't have to whip out a keyboard. 


Yeah I'm pretty sure I want dedicated escape and at least one radio button.  I'm just trying to figure out how to do a nice layout.  I still haven't given up on the analog touchscreen idea either.  I do have some psone screens lying around somewhere.