Critique my control panel: Prepare to be underwhelmed

[trimaniax]

So, here is my first draft of first control panel. Be brutal.

One problem I have with designing these things is that I tend to want my design to be symetrical. Thus, I have put two 4-way sticks onto the control panel above and to the left of the regular joysticks. I even toyed with the idea of putting two spinners on the control panel, one for each player. I will probably backtrack a bit on this and just stick with one 4-way joystick mounted near the top of the control panel like most everyone else has done.

The group of two buttons on the left of the panel is the 1-player coin and start buttons, the group to the far right is for the second player. The other group of two buttons are the admin buttons, one will be a shift button and the other will be a pause button. Shift + pause will exit, Shift + P1 start will reset. Those are all the admin buttons I planned for.

Well anyways here it is.

[oldsage]

The 4-way looks disturbingly close to the 8-way... Looks nice though...

[Zeosstud]

I like the basic layout you have there.  Its alot like what I am going to change mine to.  Here is the thing, how are you gonna play Robotron?  My plan is to have the 2 fighter layouts w/neo geo button and trackball exactly like yours.  I am going to have 2 joysticks about the same height as your two, but they will be centered on the CP and be 10" apart (Robotron Distance).  If you use the T-Sticks they can be either 4 or 8 way, being a Robotron geek, I am going to most likely use Happ 360 Opticals for the Robotron sticks.  I am going to go ahead and mock mine up and see how it turns out.

Rodney

[cholin]

You can't be that bad with symetry or else you wouldnt allow those buttons on the right side top without putting them on the left side too.  Overall it's a nice panel, but I think you should move the 4-ways.  The 1p 4way is a little close and the 2p is kinda screwed because its close AND if you move it, youll have problems with your trackball for harder spins.

[shmokes]

Having two spinners can actually  be useful.  It allows you to play multiplayer games of Off Road and Sprint.  Those are fun games and who here has a cab with two 360 steering wheels on it (for the record I know that the answer to that question is not "nobody", but still...)?

[oldsage]

You can't be that bad with symetry or else you wouldnt allow those buttons on the right side top without putting them on the left side too.

[cholin]

We think alike lol

[quarterstringer]

I would get rid of the buttons on each side of the trackball.
Just use the bottom row of P1 or P2 for trackball games.

[GGKoul]

Looks like the same basic design that everyone does but with 2 spinners...

[paigeoliver]

I would lose the trackball buttons altogether and use the player one or two buttons. You'll have to do that for Missile Command anyway.

I would also place each spinner directly to the RIGHT of the associated button bank, it will be a lot easier to use that way.

[trimaniax]

I appreciate all the comments. I've been working on an updated layout and will probably do without the trackball buttons. For some reason I thought they were "required" since everyone else had them it seems but I'd rather just use the standard buttons if possible.

[Lilwolf]

The only advantage to using the mouse buttons is that you can use them in windows.

But you could just as easy use the mouse buttons as your player 2 buttons 1 - 3 and you would gain some inputs that could be used for something else later.

Mame is VERY good at remapping controls... One change and all games will be using the proper mouse buttons plus the trackball will work in the desktop