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4 Player Vs. 2 Player

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CPickler:

I plan on folloeing the recommendations in the book "Project Arcade" and building a 4 player control cabinet with a trackball.  (No Spinner)

What would you recommend as decent dimensions for the size of the control panel?  I am planning on players 1 & 2 having 7 buttons and 3 & 4 having 4 buttons each.

I was doing the design in cad, and then the problem of actually having humans standning there to use them came into my mind.  So I don't want to make the board too small.

Chris

Dexter:

Standard, i.e. like a dynamo showcase/slikstik quad panel, is about 48" wide, 5-6" high (between top and base, and 18-20" depth IIRC.

Dexter


Lilwolf:

Trouble is that a 4 player with a trackball with player 2 and 3 with extra buttons (for 2 player games) are hard to get everything in a realistic control panel. 

I would recommend this... Get some cardboard out and make one.  Draw boxes for joysticks and buttons ect. in the locations your thinking of.  Put it up on a table about the right size.  And see how comfortable all the controls are.  Make sure you can use the trackball without your arm sitting on joystck (really bad) or buttons (kinda annoying).  see if you can have 4 people sitting around it.  Ect.

You can also get some super cheap press board for 5 bucks for a 4x8 sheet at home depot.  And try it with real controllers... but this takes some extra time.

Anyway... once you have the smallest comfortable layout... you can decide if its too big. 

And if it is...

Then time to go with hotswap control panels or a modular design of some nature.  You can get a 4 player control panel with 4 buttons each in a much smaller control panel pretty easy when you don't care about the trackball and the extra SF type buttons.

CPickler:

ok, thanks

johnnysmitch:

Just gotta throw in: make sure you REALLY want to build a 4 player cab... I struggled to come up with a decent 4 player control panel with a trackball and spinner, and now I somewhat regret all the work/money I put into the extra controls for players 3 and 4... I build it for some harcore simpsons/xmen action, but I find that it just isn't nearly as fun playing these games as I remember, and since there's only a handful of 4 player games, my extra controls see hardly any use, and take up valuable space that could have afforded players 1 and 2 more room... don't want to be a drag here, just make sure you really want to go for the full-on 4 player layout, and consider other options, such as controller ports to allow for the occasional 4 player game with 3 and 4 using gamepads when needed.

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