X-Men 4-player [done]

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edekoning:
As I made too many mistakes cutting wood, I no longer had a piece large enough for the back door. Instead of buying a new piece of wood, I decided on making due with the many scrap pieces of wood I had left. So seven (!) pieces of wood and many hours later, this is the result. Looks pretty good.

I still need to route away 0.5mm from one side, as the fit is pretty snug now, so after painting I expect it will no longer fit.

The top hole is for a cam lock. I still need to add a wood strip to the top panel at the back for the lock to attach to. And another strip to the bottom of the door to hold onto the lower panel at the back. Otherwise the door will just fall out ;)

edekoning:
I am thinking about the control panel now, and am not sure what to do.
Games such as X-Men, TMNT, Simpsons did not have Start buttons.
Instead any regular button would function as Start.
Most other games, such as Alien vs Predator do require a separate Start button.
So, I can either:

* Add black Start buttons to the top the control panel; not a fan of this option, as placement wise one of them will end up obstructing the artwork.
* Add black Start buttons to the front of the control panel box; this will work fine, but might get awkward when hands go searching for these when playing with 4 people ;)
* Write a simple AutoHotKey script to auto press start shortly a coin was inserted.I am tempted to go with the last option, as I can always add buttons later (option 2) if that ends up causing issues or annoyances.

Any thoughts on this?

vertexguy:

--- Quote from: edekoning on August 20, 2020, 12:22:00 pm ---I am thinking about the control panel now, and am not sure what to do.
Games such as X-Men, TMNT, Simpsons did not have Start buttons.

--- End quote ---

Interesting considerations. I was contemplating how easy it would be to create a script at one point as well. I also wondered if it would be possible to simply wire both the coin insert and start button together, perhaps with an analog delay circuit of some kind.

I can't remember for sure but some games like Golden Axe might not work as well with an auto start feature because I think you would bypass the character selection option and always go with the default.
Your easiest solution is probably to just add the buttons, but a consideration on that might be the size you choose. Maybe the smaller diameter japanese style buttons will help? Or if you wanna go nostalgic and drop a lot more per button, the atari volcano buttons I think are a smaller profile as well. I was considering these for my system control buttons. Then maybe it fits better with your CP design? If you wanna go with a side option, as long as you have a 1/2 inch lip or more around the control panel and are able to put the buttons up higher towards that lip, it might help prevent players from accidentally leaning against them and getting unexpected results. I'm less of a fan of the side button look, but it certainly could work and you could even put them all on the sides of P3 / P4 so you wouldn't really see them from the front. Assuming you want to support a wide array of games, I would favor the solution that best supports all instead of a select few like x-men / simpsons, but that's just me. I'm also just offering thought points, not vetted advice ;)

On a side note what kind / grade of plywood is that? it looks really good! I'm starting to shop to try to see what's available in my area. :cheers:

edekoning:
The script looks something like this, where the sleep interval needs to be tweaked for some games:

5::
Suspend, On
Send, 5
Suspend, Off
Sleep, 1000
Send, 1
return

Trying it out on some games, it worked really well. Only Final Fight needed a very long delay to work reliably for some reason.
Though if it does not work, its kinda annoying that you need to insert a new coin to try again ...

As I am trying to replicate the original x-men arcade cabinet including the art, I don't want to have any buttons on the control panel that either look out of place (as a volcano button would) or would obscure the artwork. However, I just realized that the control panel box overhangs quite a bit, so maybe I can put the start buttons on the underside instead. That way you can't accidentally hit them, and they will be pretty much out of sight. Hopefully I have some time this weekend to work on the control panel box, so I can try out this idea.

Wood wise I ordered 3 sheets of "18mm grenen multiplex, kwaliteit B/BB onbehandeld". According to Google, 'grenen' translates to 'pine' wood. Not sure if that is correct as 'vuren', which is cheap soft wood typically used for battons, also gets translated to 'pine'. Anyway I am not to enthusiastic about it. A single sheet is about 100,- euro, the edges splinter all the time, and the wood feels very 'hairy'. I am really fearing the painting phase. I bought some ply wood before in a local shop, and that was much better quality. Can't recall exactly, but I thought that was Birch.

vertexguy:
If you are good with it being hidden, and if you presumably have 4 coin inserts, you could turn the coin returns into the start buttons.

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