which buttons do u need on the front?

[skybluestav]

Hello guyz from the UK! 

just started my project last year realy but only got down to working on it this year! lol!

anywayz ive bought a fully working Virtua fighter cabinet and im gonna strip it and make it into MAME. Ive got everything in place right now, with a fully working PC, monitor and ipac, all i wanted to know is which buttons do i need to have on the control panel of the cab?

upto ive thought of:

6 buttons player 1
6 buttons player 2
player 1 coin
player 2 coin
start player 1
start player 2
escape button

any others?

i guess another question is where do u all have the power up button?

thanks for you help

[RayB]

You don't need coin buttons. That's what your coin slots are for.

[Tahnok]

You don't need coin buttons. That's what your coin slots are for.

He wouldn't have included coin buttons unless he needed/wanted them. Using coins gets real old real quick.

That is a pretty good set of buttons. Depending on your setup and preferences, you may want a reset (F3) and Left/right click (can be overloaded on the P1 buttons).

[whammoed]

To each his own, but I feel coin buttons take away from the illusion of a "real" arcade machine.  Its been 1 1/2 years and I haven't got tired of plunking in the quarters.  If you want convenience, have a hidden way of entering credits like with the ipac shift function.

[paigeoliver]

You don't NEED any buttons other than the player start buttons and the gameplay buttons. If you WANT to add buttons then you can theoretically add up to 40 function buttons (Mame has 33 different possible ones, and some games also add their own to that list).

[RayB]

Personally, I would hide the exit and pause buttons up top... And put secret coin buttons that activate when you push in the coin reject.

[Wade]

I suggest using the coin slots to add credits, and only add one button for the Mame/frontent functions: Exit Game (can also be used as "Select Game" simultaneously).

[Dexter]

You can't go wrong with a pause button. I've mounted two on the front of my panel (to keep symmetry as I couldn't mount one in centre front due to the trackball). Black ones in the pic...
Sods law dictates that your phone will ring or you'll need to take a pi$$ as soon as you progress really far into a game.

If you're running an i-pac you can use player 1+2 start together as your exit from mame IIRC

Happy converting....

[whammoed]

In the past I have put a pause and exit button.  In the future I will only put an exit because I have a way for it to be both pause and exit using the safequit feature of advmame and a script I wrote.

[Chris]

I rigged switches behind the coin reject buttons to use those as coin buttons; that way I don't have extra coin buttons.

I'm sorry to hear that you're gutting a working machine for this project.

[Fat_Trucker]

Hi,

I have 7 buttons for each player, P1 & P2 Start, P1 & P2 coin, plus mouse buttons one and two on either side of the trackball.

Overall this is ample so long as they are placed conveniently to use with your controls (joys/T.ball/spinner).

For all the other functions I just use the P1 Start button as shift. It keeps your panel relatively uncluttered and for the amount of times you need a shifted function (pause, escape etc) I didn't see the need to fit a dedicated control. Running win XP with MameWah.

My start button is leaf switch arcade button mounted vertically just below the left hand side of the bezel along with the volume control where one of the coin slots used to be. I just ran the wiring from the pins on the motherboard to the leaf switch instead of to the PC start button.