"Standard" Button Colors

[MisterB]

I am working on my CP overlay, and am planning on adding a colored glow around each of my buttons, which are black, to set them off from a dark background.  I'm sure there will be some debate about this, but if each of my 7 buttons were to be highlighted in a different color, what should those colors be, and which buttons should be those colors?  I know that Neo-Geo systems had a different color each of the 4 buttons, but how about the remaining 3?

Any help is much appreciated.

[Sephroth57]

personally i think multicolored button control layouts look ugly and like they were made from spare parts. i think each players button set should be 1 color. thats my opinion

[MisterB]

I completely agree - the multicolor buttons look pretty cheesy.  I am using black buttons, but I would like to put a faint colored glow around each button in the control panel overlay.

[rdagger]

How are you going to get a glow around the black buttons?
I tried inserting a super bright led into a black push button to see if I could get any outline around the button.  No luck, the black buttons are complete opaque (even when pressed, no light escapes from edges).

[MisterB]

I guess I wasn't very clear in explaining this...The "glow" effect will be printed on the overlay, just emanating a color around the edge of the black buttons.  This will allow the black buttons to stand out a bit against the black background of the overlay.

Does nobody have an opinion on button colors?  Can anyone at least remind me of what the Neo-Geo colors are?

[tonyarcade]

I think multicolors look terrible, too...but at the same time I think they may be helpful in helping new players -- like my little kids -- get used to what buttons to push. (Ok, being honest, the kids will probably take to the controls before the drunks in my basement bar do)...

I am intrigued by this color ring idea. I'd like to go all one color on one player and all another on player 2 and then maybe put colors around the buttons on the paint...

hmmm...

If you were to paint a ring on the board around each button it may not look as bad... From a distance it'd be all one color but then noticable enough to help when playing...

I'd be interested in discussions about color themes...

I want to build "Tony's Dream Machine" with likely a blue/clouds motif and then a side collage of 80s stuff, Pac Man, etc...maybe even some Journey-like graphics...
If I do that I will likely do the cab in Sky or Labatt's blue...

Assuming such, any suggestions on joystick, button colors??

-Tony

[Brad Lee]

^^^^ If youre looking for lt blue buttons, I think Bubbles had em. If so there should be repros out there somewhere.

Theres also the trick of buying white buttons and dyeing them.
1. Break the buttons down into their individual pieces
2. Boil a pot of water with some blue Rit dye in it
3. Throw the buttons in and let em boil for a little bit, till the color is right



Personally Im a fan of keeping each pplayers buttons to 1 color, Ive got a red stick and buttons for P1 and black stick and buttons for P2

[patrickl]

Does nobody have an opinion on button colors?  Can anyone at least remind me of what the Neo-Geo colors are?

You can look up the colors of the Neo-Geo cabs on the Neo-Geo KLOV entry.

Personally I don't really see the need to give buttons different colors. Most standard game controllers (PS2, nintendo, neo-geo and such) indeed have the "red, green, blue and yellow button them. But on the other hand, in my experience they don't really use those colors. All the instruction leaflets show the controller pic and then point to the buttons. Or the use the letter connected to the butto instead of referencing them by color.

[menace]

I found different colored buttons invaluable for guests--which button do I press they say, the red one i say--not button 1 or button 4 cause more often than not, their idea of a how a button layout should be numbered differs from the commonly accepted way.  Just my .02  Even on my new control panel, the primary fire button is red and secondary is blue, the rest are black.

[mahuti]

One of my panels has 2 7 button groups.

The top 3 are all red, and the bottom is made up of the 4 neo geo colors. I think it's quite tasteful.

[patrickl]

I found different colored buttons invaluable for guests--which button do I press they say, the red one i say--not button 1 or button 4 cause more often than not, their idea of a how a button layout should be numbered differs from the commonly accepted way.

But in 5 minutes they forget all the color codes and then they just try the buttons out themself (which they should have done anyway if they wont read the instructional graphics) So I agree that using numbers is of  as little use as using colors (indeed made worse if you don't put labels on the buttons).

So then the main thing to me is that the looks of my cab are more important to me than a lazy guest  

[DougHillman]

MisterB (or anyone else) did you ever go ahead with your plan for printing a color ring on the CPO?

I'd really like to see how something like this would turn out.  

My own panels are gonna be somewhat multicolored based offa the Neo-Geo pattern I think, but I'm also building a 4-player panel for a friend which I think would look much better with more of a monochromatic layout.  (Right now, I think I'm planning on giving each players buttons thier own color.  P1 = red, P2=green, etc.)