Main > Project Announcements
First Time Build - "Chimera" (Completed... mostly)
javeryh:
This project is crazy! Really cool. I do think you should finish it before bringing it inside or I fear it will remain unpainted forever. Once you get a cab functional motivation goes out the window (at least for me...).
Also, does everyone around here have a 600sqft workshop with 15 ft. ceilings??? :cheers:
zeorangr:
--- Quote from: javeryh on November 14, 2021, 05:06:07 pm ---This project is crazy! Really cool. I do think you should finish it before bringing it inside or I fear it will remain unpainted forever. Once you get a cab functional motivation goes out the window (at least for me...).
Also, does everyone around here have a 600sqft workshop with 15 ft. ceilings??? :cheers:
--- End quote ---
Thanks!
I wish this was my workshop. It actually belongs to the father of one of my friends, and it's about an hour or so drive from my house to get there, which is part of what's taking me so long to work on this build. He's retired now, but used to be a professional carpenter, so he's got a LOT of woodworking tools and equipment. And thankfully, he's been gracious enough to both let me use the shop and the tools to work on this, and offer a few pointers along the way - otherwise I'd be in my garage with way less space and without all the access to the toys in the woodshop, like the planers, the air compressor and nail guns, or the table saw.
I'm going to have to pretty much take it entirely apart to paint it, but I'd also like it available for family and guests to use for the holidays - so it WILL likely sit in the living room unfinished for a few weeks, but after that it's getting finished. I'm pretty sure my wife would be upset with me if I got this far with it and DIDN'T completely finish it out. :) Especially if it's going in her living room. lol.
While the cabinet itself is down at the shop, I actually have a ...we'll call it a 'test bench' ... at home for all the work I've been doing on the marquees and artwork, as well as getting the software tested and all the scripts needed to automate things in place.
I started working on this project just from my own 'main' PC, but earlier this year I managed to get in on an early beta test for these, so I've got a 40" TV attached to one of these mounts from BuyStuffStore, using an ATGames Legends Gamer as the control panel for it right now. I've got an older PC in there currently that's running BigBox with all the software, and I've got a smaller 25" LG ultrawide nearby to act as the 'marquee' display for this. I've been using it to test out various things, like some light customization of the BigBox theme I'm running, scripting loading and unloading various game-specific controller mapping to the arcade controls using AutoHotkey, JoyToKey, and UCR, controlling forcing screen rotation or changing resolution on the fly for a couple of games that simply do NOT play nicely with the 1080x1080 resolution, force-dismissing pop-up dialogs or 'launchers' for some of the UNITY based steam games, and other stuff, and then returning things to a 'default' configuration once the current game is exited. Once I get the cabinet completed, I'll be pulling the old PC and moving over drives and components (like the GTX 1060 that's in there now - video cards are STUPID expensive right now!) to the PC I have earmarked to be the cabinet.
As it stands, though, I've pretty much got the software to a point where I can mostly just drop a hard drive in the cabinet and go once the woodworking part of the build is completed.... so technically, it's 'playable' now. ;D I've got about 650 arcade games on it emulated through MAME or DEMUL (for NAOMI games), and about 100 or so 'Steam' games that translate well to an arcade cabinet ('newer' fighting games, beat-em-ups, shmups, and stuff, though not all of them are actually FROM steam - some are smaller indie or 'web' games, like Cho Ren Sha 68k, for example, or some of locomalito's freeware games that were really good, and a couple of them are from other platforms, but they kinda 'fit' into this category, so that's where I've got them for now). I've also got a number of music videos loaded on there, in their own section within BigBox, which I thought was nifty. I managed to set up a way to partially automate creating a marquee image for each video, so it shows the title and artist for the song that's currently playing, and it will cycle through all the games and categories whenever bigbox is in attract mode. I've been trying to cobble together a way to get it to show an entire music video before cycling to the next one, but I don't have a great solution for that just yet. That's something I'll probably continue to work on after I've got the build completed.
I recorded a quick video of this all running on the test system though, if anyone is interested:
vertexguy:
Awesome work so far! I love that you're going way above and beyond with this creative approach. Having access to all those tools and a hands on pro grade mentor sure must be nice. Looking forward to seeing this all come together! :cheers:
bobbyb13:
--- Quote from: javeryh on November 14, 2021, 05:06:07 pm ---This project is crazy! Really cool. I do think you should finish it before bringing it inside or I fear it will remain unpainted forever. Once you get a cab functional motivation goes out the window (at least for me...).
Also, does everyone around here have a 600sqft workshop with 15 ft. ceilings??? :cheers:
--- End quote ---
Mine is only 500 sqft and 10 ft high ceilings
;D
I thought the pinball slide integration here was awesome as it was-
The marquee work is next level.
Stoked to see the rest as this gets finished.
DaOld Man:
Man I love this idea! (Of course I am a automation\stuff moving junkie).
Great work and precise engineering.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version