How many coin start buttons should i use?

[GroovyTuesdaY]

I am at a funny junction of my panel development and i need a little guidance here.  
I am building a 2 player panel that has 4 joysticks and 16 buttons. The trouble i am running into is trying to figure out whethere i need to have coin button for each player or do i need just one for both?    I am wanting to use the KEYWIZ MAX, just because it has 32 inputs on it and i dont want to spend a fortune on an ipac 4 player when i dont need so many inputs.  So, in order for me to have a pause button, i am trying to see if i need to lose a coin button.  I wasn't sure how many games out there that actually need a separate coin insert for each individual player.     So if anyone out there can give me a little guidance on this one it would be MUCH apprecited hhehe.

I want to stay away from shift key type functions as it seems to always screw something up when i am in the middle of a game when i would hit certain key combos or if player one and player 2 would make some funky combo and do some strange things as well.
 
                  groovy~

[wpcmame]

There aren't many games that need more than one coin button. I only got a coin1 button and then use a shifted input as coin2. I use pause as shift button so there is no risk of hitting it during gameplay.

[Tiger-Heli]

Gauntlet definitely needed individual coin buttons if you wanted to play as the red character, etc.  I think maybe Simpsons or a few other games do as well.

Suggestions - if it's a 2-player panel, I don't know of any 2-player games that used dual joysticks and more than 2 or 3 buttons.  You might be able to map one of the joysticks to some of the action buttons and free up some inputs.

Otherwise, it is possible to program the KW MAX as follows:  Set-Shazaaam! and Player 1 button 8 to be programmed as 6 (Coin 2).  Now wire a button with diodes to activate Shazaam! and P1B8 at the same time.  This is your coin 2 button.

No shifted codes to remember, and since Shazaaam is an independent function - no chance of accidentally hitting it either.

You could use this same method for both coin and both start buttons and create 4 additional inputs.

Drawbacks to this approach -

Whenever someone presses Coin 2, for as long as the button is held down, every other button will send it's shifted rather than regular input.  (This can be minimized by programming the shifted and standard output to be the same key.)  (Of course P1B8 will insert another P2 Credit in this scenario, and if all the start and coin buttons were shifted, you might end up with lots of extra credits)

The joystick directions cannot be shifted, so the Player 1 and Player 2 characters will briefly freeze while the Coin 2 button is held down.

The P1 Left (or right?) button will swap codesets when shifted so there is a possibility of changing codesets althogether if coin 2 is pressed while the Joystick is moved Left (or right?).  This can be overcome by some clever wiring tricks.

None of these are show-stoppers, in fact I plan to use these methods on my panel.  I just wanted to point out what to expect.

See http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/arcadepanels/encoder/shiftkeys.htm for an explanation of wiring a shifted button with diodes (the "Advanced Method" on the schematic), and see http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/arcadepanels/encoder/nocodeload.htm for how to wire the KeyWiz to avoid alternate code set swapping.

If I lost you, you could E-mail RandyT and he can explain this also.

[Brad Lee]

Is therea 2P version of gauntlet? I know on Simpsons and some of the other 4p games like that, they had 2p versions where you could do a character select

Yeah i just did some playing, and there is a gauntlet (2 player) rom, so you would hit coin1 for the 1st players credit, and coin2 for player2. At the beginning of the game you pick your character

I would vote for 2 coin inputs

[crashwg]

Gauntlet (2 Players, German, rev 1)      gaun2pg1
Gauntlet (2 Players, German, rev 4)      gaunt2pg
Gauntlet (2 Players, Japanese, rev 2)   gaun2pj2
Gauntlet (2 Players, Japanese, rev 5)   gaunt2pj
Gauntlet (2 Players, rev 3)                    gaun2pr3
Gauntlet (2 Players, rev 6)                    gaunt2p

 

[Tiger-Heli]

Is therea 2P version of gauntlet? I know on Simpsons and some of the other 4p games like that, they had 2p versions where you could do a character select

Yeah i just did some playing, and there is a gauntlet (2 player) rom, so you would hit coin1 for the 1st players credit, and coin2 for player2. At the beginning of the game you pick your character

I would vote for 2 coin inputs

If I understood correctly, the question was 2 or one coin input, not 2 or 4.  So what we would need to know is if you can put 2 coins in Coin 1 and start a 2P game?

[wpcmame]

Gauntlet (2 Players, German, rev 1)      gaun2pg1
Gauntlet (2 Players, German, rev 4)      gaunt2pg
Gauntlet (2 Players, Japanese, rev 2)   gaun2pj2
Gauntlet (2 Players, Japanese, rev 5)   gaunt2pj
Gauntlet (2 Players, rev 3)                    gaun2pr3
Gauntlet (2 Players, rev 6)                    gaunt2p

 

Unfortunatly there are no intermediate releases of the 2 player roms. If you think the normal release is to difficult you need to use the 4 player intermediate version.

[Brad Lee]

Is therea 2P version of gauntlet? I know on Simpsons and some of the other 4p games like that, they had 2p versions where you could do a character select

Yeah i just did some playing, and there is a gauntlet (2 player) rom, so you would hit coin1 for the 1st players credit, and coin2 for player2. At the beginning of the game you pick your character

I would vote for 2 coin inputs

If I understood correctly, the question was 2 or one coin input, not 2 or 4.  So what we would need to know is if you can put 2 coins in Coin 1 and start a 2P game?

Understood. For the majority of games, you can use coin1 to accumulate credits and just push Start1 or Start2 to start playing. The couple examples(gauntlet, simpsons, 4p wrestling & basketball) games NEED independent coin slots. If those are games he's interested in playing, it would be beneficial to have 2 coins instead of 1

[Sephroth57]

oh those versions are actually harder? ive been playing the 2 player one... maybe thats why i thought i sucked at gauntlet =P

[Howard_Casto]

Regarding the 4 player games.... almost all of them have special two player clones which aren't effected by which slot you put the coin in.  So unless you are building a 4 player panel this won't be an issue.  

[Tiger-Heli]

Regarding the 4 player games.... almost all of them have special two player clones which aren't effected by which slot you put the coin in.  So unless you are building a 4 player panel this won't be an issue.  

Not true!  I just tried Gauntlet (2 player), (in MAME V0.70 b/c I didn't have the latest rom, but it shouldn't matter.)

While you can now select any of the four characters to play as, if you just drop coins in Slot 1 ("5 key"), you can never start a 2-player game.  Only when you drop coins in Slot1 and 2 ("5 and 6 key") can you start a 2 player game.

So at least for these few games, you do need both coin slots.

[wpcmame]

oh those versions are actually harder? ive been playing the 2 player one... maybe thats why i thought i sucked at gauntlet =P

I thought so too. The game seemed so much harder than I remembered but then I read this faq http://db.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade/file/gauntlet_i_ii.txt