Building a general purpose control panel - 6 buttons or 7? Overlays?

[nickswanjan]

I am building a general purpose control panel (my first) and am trying to figure out whether I want 6 buttons or 7 per joystick group?  Most layouts seem to have 6, but the SlikStik has 7 and some others even have 8.  Any recommendations?  What will I be adding or missing?

The next question is the straight across layout for the 6 buttons or the middle buttons slightly raised above the other two?

I've got all the parts, got the wood cut out, ready to start drilling.  Just trying to finalize my layout to make it the best compromise to work with the largest cross section of games.  I'm not ready to start out building multiple special purpose panels.  

Parts: 3 Happ Supers (one for 4-way), 3" Happ Trackball, Oscar Vortex, Ultimarc IPAC and OptiPac, lots of buttons and lots of MDF dust...

Also, I would like to make some control panel overlays to show button function in different games.  I'm thinking of something like a thin sheet of plastic with graphics/help for the game.  Maybe not cut out around the buttons, but a cheat sheet above each group?  Where can I get the information for the sheets? Probably someone has tried this before?

Nick

[slicer_d]

I think the best bet it to do 7.  You do the capcom six which is the two parrallel rows of 3 and then add 1 lower button to the left of the first row and that creates a neogeo 4 button layout for you.  If you really wanted to you could add a second button above the other offset button but really I dont see any point to it and haven''t played a game in mame yet where I was like dam I wish I had that 8th buttons but maybe there is something I'm missing.

Also for the fourway you only need 1 or 2 buttons for all the games I can think of.  Or you could just use buttons on another joystick but that might be wierd.

EDIT:

As far as overlays go I dont see anyway to make one that would stay and be easy to use during play.  Most arcade games have a training think either on the attract screen or right after you start so I dont think you should have much of a problem there.  If you wanted to you could do one for capcom or neogeo but they are pretty simple to figure out anyway and noobs just mash all the buttons most of the time.

EDIT AGAIN:

If you look here you can get an idea the first pic has more or less the 7 button layout but for some reason they put it on the right instread of the left.  I like it on the left so I can use my thumb on it for 4 button games because the pinky isnt strong enough.  Somewhere is a nice layout but I cant find it any more.  Also I would suggest getting them close together some people put them like 2" apart I like a little less then 1.5" at that poin they are really close and easy to reach.

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=14371

[nickswanjan]

Some games have special keystroke combinations for certain moves - and some I won't know which buttons do what (at least until I play it for a while).  Is button function information available somewhere?