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Author Topic: A 2 player vertical bartop  (Read 5676 times)

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nugarp

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A 2 player vertical bartop
« on: June 15, 2017, 12:44:41 am »
While my Sonic & Tails 2 player upright cabinet (https://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=138229.0) has forever been in flux, and I do some work on it to finally take steps towards finishing it every now and then, I'd also created some racing machines that I shamefully never posted about...

.

I plan to go back to actually posting things with the latest bartop concept I've envisioned. It's a 2 player bartop meant mostly for shmups, but will obviously lend itself well to other, older games. Open to design feedback, though I'm trying to cnc it on Saturday so I'm not sure how many changes I can make before then! I've been in decision limbo with its design for a while. You'll notice some obvious things are missing -- I just haven't added them to the CAD yet (coin button, volume, power, etc.). The plan is to use 1/2" white melamine for the build.







I've written about 75% (50%?) of the front-end for it. The games launch, the loader returns up when the game is over. I'm using a hardware scanline generator to get the scanlines. I'm using a debezeled 28" 16:10 monitor, and running most games at 480x640:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/221691786
« Last Edit: June 16, 2017, 01:08:55 pm by nugarp »
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nugarp

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2017, 01:10:21 pm »
Sorry, seemed like it didn't like me posting images with https://. links have been fixed.
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morton

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2017, 11:44:00 am »
Pretty cool! I wish I knew how to 3d Model, really gives you an idea of how the final product will look. If you feel ambitious, I think the speaker section would look cool if the front and top of each "pod" looked to be one piece and had no T-Mold above... kind of stealth them up, and keep the monitor as the only fully framed feature on the front. I like your solution to 2-Players though, and am regretting making my cab single player. How wide will the control panel be?

The front end video is coming along nicely, what are you running? I have played a bit with attract-mode on Pi, and the vertical crowd definitely doesn't get as much love - so it's nice to see there are a few of us who want pretty vertical front ends  :lol

nugarp

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2017, 07:31:32 pm »
Pretty cool! I wish I knew how to 3d Model, really gives you an idea of how the final product will look. If you feel ambitious, I think the speaker section would look cool if the front and top of each "pod" looked to be one piece and had no T-Mold above... kind of stealth them up, and keep the monitor as the only fully framed feature on the front. I like your solution to 2-Players though, and am regretting making my cab single player. How wide will the control panel be?

The front end video is coming along nicely, what are you running? I have played a bit with attract-mode on Pi, and the vertical crowd definitely doesn't get as much love - so it's nice to see there are a few of us who want pretty vertical front ends  :lol

1. Thanks! The 3D modeling really helps.
2. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by having them float or be stealthy? I actually explored a few different layouts (I can upload one of my prototypes from earlier when I get to a computer tonight) but didn't consider doing a 45 degree chamfer to make the angles work without t-molding. Since I'm using melamine, I'm not sure how a raw melamine edge would look given how it seems to like to blow out (even with a compression bit!). For that reason I took the safer approach of putting t-molded edges everywhere...I imagine you can just paint a little white over the blowed out stuff and cover it up sufficiently. I'd be curious to see what you mean though!
3. Thanks re:2 player! I really only like socially playing - so I try to make everything support 2+ players. This was a tough one for me to figure out because I didn't want a huge bezel on the left and right - and a screen that would be wide enough to comfortably fit 2p would be unreasonable on a bartop. The cp is actually quite spacious at around 28"X11".
4. I'm rolling my own front-end. It's not the most efficient way to go, but I do like the flexibility I get! I didn't design it to support a ton of games though - just for my own use case here. If I had to pick one I actually would've probably liked to use attract mode, but didn't really explore vertical options for anything since I knew I'd be doing my own thing. That lets me later add features such as "locking" the front end when I don't want someone touching it, or launching games remotely, etc (All of my cabs can be remotely managed with a web interface).



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morton

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2017, 09:25:55 pm »
The 45 degree chamfer - that is exactly what I was talking about. Shame. I wanted to use melamine and realized that the angle would probably look bad on the one part of my cabinet, and went a different route... so I get see your rationale. As for avoiding the wide bezel - good call. The vertical 16:9 and 16:10 monitors are starting to grow on me.

I am pretty new but the idea of a front end I can lock people out of and manage remotely sounds good. I am hoping I can lock people out of a lot of stuff once my cabinet is set up so only I can really access stuff via SSH.



nugarp

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #5 on: June 20, 2017, 02:00:01 am »
Pics..better late than never!

Here's one of the prototypes. It's the most similar to the final design I had. I'm really glad I didn't use this version in hindsight..it looks awful.



Here are some of the actual cutouts..




re:front-end...for stuff like locking you could always just run a server that disables input or something if the front-end doesn't support locking features already. I run a nodejs + express server + host client html files so that if I go to the IP of the machine, I have access to it from my phone. Of course, you can also always remote desktop into the machine as needed.

re:melamine...as much as it chips, it actually wasn't awful with the compression bit. The places I had issues at with the cnc router was where it was making "tabs" in the workpiece. I tried out a technique tonight that I had read about online and see that I can just melt white crayon and use it to fill in the chipped areas and it blends fairly nicely. The chipping is all less than 1mm (2-3 chips per piece) and I don't think most people would notice it, but I'm very happy with the way the melted wax covers it up.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2017, 02:02:32 am by nugarp »
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menace

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #6 on: June 20, 2017, 07:25:31 am »
I had never thought of the melted wax to fix melamine before--do you have any pics/vids of the repairs?  I have black melamine for a project but it chipped like crazy with a saw so I only used it for one project.
its better to not post and be thought a fool, then to whip out your keyboard and remove all doubt...

nugarp

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #7 on: June 20, 2017, 08:51:51 am »
Sure - I can certainly do some before/after this week and put them up. I just tried it on a couple of the pieces yesterday, but plan to do it to the rest once I cut out the t-molding slots. It's not perfect, but it will definitely stop wandering eyes.


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nugarp

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2017, 11:19:19 am »
I applied the wax last night. I actually wish I had better pictures. The ones below are my before/after, but the after ones aren't as good as some of the other after ones that I didn't take befores for...it can get fairly seamless, which it isn't necessarily in these pictures. In any case, I'm fine enough with the result to move on -- nobody is going to notice and the t-molding is going to pop.

Before #1:


After #1:


Before #2:


After #2:


Some lessons here:
1. cover your clothes with some plastic so you don't get melted wax on your pants.
2. to actually get a seamless finish, melt the wax so it is almost dripping, "drip" it onto the bare spot, then don't wait too long (maybe 10-15 seconds) before using a blade to trim the excess wax off -- otherwise instead of cutting the wax like butter, you'll end up cutting half of it and the other half will catch and it will all get removed.

I also received my 0.394" threaded inserts and cut the t-molding slots, and began to apply the t-molding. I used 5/8" and a FastCap quad trimmer. The quad trimmer wasn't working that great the way it was meant to be used, so I've been using "half" of the trimmer to trim a side at a time. It worked great. The 5/8" also worked super well with the control panel, which is 1/2 + 0.093" for the plexi = .593 (plus the thickness of paper if I decide to put in art), so I didn't need to trim at all for the cp.

The 0.394" inserts worked great in the 1/2" particle board. I made 5/16 holes down to a total depth of 0.42", and countersunk them since the inserts are flanged. I used the joystick mounting kit from groovygamegear for them -- they are #10-32 screws and inserts.





« Last Edit: June 21, 2017, 11:21:53 am by nugarp »
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menace

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #9 on: June 21, 2017, 01:44:16 pm »
Thanks for that!  I'm going to buy some black crayons and see if works with that..

Cab is looking good by the way!
its better to not post and be thought a fool, then to whip out your keyboard and remove all doubt...

nugarp

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A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #10 on: June 25, 2017, 07:43:43 pm »
Thanks! Please share how it works with black!

Progress update: glued battens and wired cp. the power strip was DOA :-(, so I can't check fit in the back of the cab.

« Last Edit: June 25, 2017, 07:46:41 pm by nugarp »
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rablack97

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2017, 08:38:31 am »
Really like this design.  Great work.

Black sharpie is my weapon of choice for black melamine.

I did something similar a few years back great idea on the screen placement.  Sharpie hides nicks very well.



Only issue i had was the thing was heavy and wider that i would have liked.  Your's looks a little more compact and the particle melamine is lighter, i used mdf core.
« Last Edit: June 27, 2017, 08:41:03 am by rablack97 »

nugarp

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #12 on: June 27, 2017, 12:59:16 pm »
Really like this design.  Great work.

Black sharpie is my weapon of choice for black melamine.

I did something similar a few years back great idea on the screen placement.  Sharpie hides nicks very well.

Only issue i had was the thing was heavy and wider that i would have liked.  Your's looks a little more compact and the particle melamine is lighter, i used mdf core.

Thanks! I'm surprised that the sharpie doesn't reflect (I've tried to use it to cover other things, but there is a blatant reflection on the places where I used a sharpie, but that wasn't on melamine or wood.) Have any close-ups? How wide was yours? I'm sure the trackball and 8 buttons made it hard to shrink down.

There are some rubber feet under this guy that span a total width of 25" and 15" front-to-back, so while not excessively large, it's still sizeable. I kind of wish I went down to about 22" and 11" so I could put it on a 24x12 table, but I'm not sure how I could make this smaller and have everything still fit :). Even if I just moved the feet, I was worried about stability when moving the feet closer together.
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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #13 on: June 27, 2017, 02:12:52 pm »
I usually hit it with the sharpie the wipe with alcohol, which help to blend it in.

I cant remember off the top of my head how wide it was, but I also had to take into account the guts, decased original xbox, the pi front ends weren't available back then or i could of used that and cut down on space as well.


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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #14 on: June 29, 2017, 08:50:20 pm »
Nice cabs!  Do you have any more details on those cool little Driving cabs?  I have a couple of Logitech G27s I'd love to use in a driving cab but just have no room at the moment for a full size twin driver.  Those little cabs you made there would be perfect.  Would love some info on dimensions, sizing etc.. and more photos.   :)

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Re: A 2 player vertical bartop
« Reply #15 on: July 05, 2017, 12:58:35 am »
Nice info to have, thanks.

@stuzza, I'm on vacation but I can find approximate dimensions somewhere I'm sure. The PC I originally used to design the things auto-upgraded to Win10 and my copy of Inventor doesn't seem to want to work with the Inventor updater to support Win10, so I'll see if I can find some way to get around that...I'll also dig around for some pictures!  :cheers:
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