Hey everyone!
My first project post is finally here and I'm really excited to get started! Please feel free to leave questions and comments as I go.
I am new to many of the skill sets required to pull this off so will need the full support of the community to succeed!
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Thread Table Of Contents:
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This section is kind of a place holder for now. When the thread is complete I will see if I can make a comprehensive table of contents for easier navigation to particular topics.
1. Intro / Project Details and Status
2. Where Ever I May Roam
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Primary Goal:
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My primary goal with this entire effort is to get this built quickly in 2020 so my kids and I can enjoy it together while they're still around the house. I'm hoping to find ways we can build it together as well so the entire project focuses around family and making memories.
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Backstory:
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I'm a child of the late 70's, so naturally I spent a lot of time at the arcades growing up. At one point I can remember trying to build one out of a giant refrigerator box in my back yard. I have been dreaming of building my own real arcade since the early 90's, but many obstacles stood in my way. I asked my dad to get me an old arcade shell and one day he did! He found an old Defender cabinet through my uncle who once had invested in arcades and he modified it to hold my TV and game consoles. That was as close as I got to the arcade dream. I pursued working in the video games industry going into college and was able to be a big part of reviving pinball into the digital console era. Fast forward to me being married with 4 kids, and the arcade dream is still hanging on. After finally getting a house with a basement to have room for it, saving small amounts of cash over the years, and getting a general OK from my wife, the time has finally come! I tried designing my own arcade cabinet almost 20 years ago and decided to throw that out once I found inspiration from sites like this one. I haven't seen a ton of other cabinets but the few I have followed on here were incredibly inspirational and really opened my eyes to what is possible and how to do it properly. The sheer amount of intimate detail and talent on sites like this and slagcoin are indispensable resources.
I decided to finally pull the trigger a year ago and started working on a detailed design and slowly started buying parts. I decided to go big or go home and am aiming to make this thing do a lot and hopefully look professional enough to fool people into thinking it belongs in a legit arcade.
Part of the journey will be developing a lot of new skills. I am NOT skilled in ANY of the major crafts required to do this (ie wood working, electrical, circuitry, lifting heavy objects, etc), so I am definitely looking to the community for advice as I go!
One skill I can leverage is working in 3D, so I decided that would be the best way for me to start playing around with concepts. So far it's helped me a lot, but despite the detail and looking like it might be finished in the renders, I still have a lot of underlying questions and problems to tackle. The devil is always in the details!
I'd like to put together a very comprehensive step by step thread here covering every detail and keep it well organized. At least that's my hope to offer something of value back to the community during this journey.
Here we go!
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Theme:
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Video games have had such a big influence on my life that there was no way I could settle for a single game theme. I decided to try to make my own theme that represents a good majority of my all-time favorites that I played growing up. Given that this machine will also play classic console games, I decided to represent a few from there as well. The real trick is finding balance in the design as I don't want it to feel like a car bumper littered with stickers of all colors from around the world. It needs to be a cohesive design that compliments my home but would fit perfectly in a real arcade.
The artwork for this is a combination of a lot of stuff I've found online, a lot of custom sprite grabbing from various games, and some original art.
I needed to settle on some base colors for the theme to be able to move forward on purchasing so I've settled on white / red / blue / purple / and black as my key palette. The artwork in the renders is still a work in progress.
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Design Goals:
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- Must be a 4 player cabinet minimum, with the ability to support even more simultaneous players with additional USB controllers for games like X-Men.
- Needs to be as light weight as possible since I'm likely the only one who will be attempting to move this thing around up and down stairs with a dolly.
- Needs to weigh enough and be sturdy enough to not accidentally move around when playing with 4 people.
- Must be low profile to not take up a lot of space and must fit through 28" door frames.
- Everything starts up from a single power button.
- It's not apparent that the machine is running Windows (convincing boot sequence)
- Support a control panel capable of authentically playing as many games as possible while not feeling cluttered or overwhelming
- Utilizes LedBlinky or similar application to clearly light up the relevant controls for the current game, simplifying the massive control panel.
- Primary player controls are easily distinguishable from secondary functions and emulator specific controls.
- Must look really cool in the dark with some custom attract mode sequences
- All core controls are easily accessible on the main cabinet for quick game selection, load / save state, pause. Additional control for master volume control, and custom game settings will also be available through a function key combo. Keyboard will be available but ideally never needed.
- Has a drawer to house keyboard / mouse, and additional USB controllers.
- Front coin door area is a hidden cabinet to easily access future controllers (steering wheel, analog flight stick / throttle).
- Working coin door that supports custom tokens
- Control Panel is removable with only a few disconnects to make arcade fit through small door ways.
- Arcade cabinet is height adjustable and able to make level on any surface
- Cabinet is not at risk of damage from any minor spills or ground water
- Thinking about how I can attach an additional control panel to the front to secure a wheel or flight stick for games that use them.
- Look into existing apps that can track recently played games and high scores. See if it's possible to integrate those into an attract mode state.
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Core Controls / Inputs:
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Joysticks:
4 Sanwa JLF 8 Way
1 Sanwa JLF 4 Way
Flight stick:
Ultimarc MiniGrip StickUltimarc Ultrastik 360FS
Trackball:
Ultimarc U-Trak trackball
Spinner:
Ultimarc SpinTrak
Light Guns:
2 Ultimarc Aimtrak guns
Light Gun Sensor:
ArcadeGuns.com Extreme IR Sensor Bar V2
Buttons:
Mix of LED button colors / styles from Arcade Renovations.
USB Input Controller:
Ultimarc iPAC 4
USB LED Controller:
Ultimarc pacLED64
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Key Inspiration and Special Shouts:
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This list will likely grow and apologies if anyone accidently gets missed!
- ALL companies that provide and support arcade products Without you none of this would be possible!
- Andy with Ultimarc for creating so many great solutions and answering questions along the way!
- Rich with Arcade Renovations for creating great product and providing additional support.
- Scott with GameOnGrafix for answering questions on Vinyl prints (my likely source when it comes time)
- Folks at ParadiseArcade for providing LED solutions!
- EVERYONE who has ever contributed to the BYOAC forum. It's clearly a community where everyone has inspired each other in some way. The free knowledge share and expertise is unbeatable!
- Arroyo / The Grid project that has excellent detail and originality. Also for encouraging me to approach the build with a fresh perspective.
- Space Paranoids Control Panel for looking really nice and inspiring me, but also making me realize I needed to do more homework on what works well for a 4 player layout.
- yotsuya and Mike A's advice early on to research the 4 player control panel, and providing general sage advice through out.
- Chance / Flynn's Arcade thread which was really the first major thread google happened to link me to years back when searching for 4 player cabinet designs.
That's it for now! I hope you enjoy my journey in this project and find something useful in the process!
Chris Kline
https://www.vertexguy.com