Trying to figure out how/what to do

[panterafreak]

Hi all,

I am trying to design a control panel for a sort of cabinet that I am making.  The idea is that the whole cabinet is portable with the monitor being seperate and the computer integrated.  I would like to be able to cart this to a friends house or lan party and hook it to their television.

I was looking at including the following:
2 x 4/8 way joysticks (TStik Plus) switchable from above the CP
2 rows of 4 buttons for P1 and P2  (have seen 2x3 buttons with a thumb button, can someone explain that to me?, any games that need 2x4, ive seem em on other CPs?)
1 spinner (probably from oscarcontrols)
1 3" happs trackball
optipac
ipac4 (do I need the 4? will a 2 work?)
P1 and P2 start and coin buttons, exit, settings for a total of 27 buttons.
I thought I would also add 5 more buttons for pinball (2 for flippers, 2 for tilt, 1 for plunger)

I will be running this on either a mini itx board or possibly a micro atx mobo

I was thinking the control panel interface would be roughly 16x36 and am currently working on a layout in visio.  I was thinking of having a spinnner over trackball config, can they share buttons?

Games most likely to be played:
mortal kombat series
street fighter series
marvel vs capcom
arkanoid (spinner)
missle command and centipede (trackball)


Anyone have any comments?

[Hoagie_one]

I bought a pair of folding table legs to do just this same kinda project....never finished it.

[AlanS17]

Are you talking about a cabinet where the control panel disconnects entirely or are you talking about just a stand-alone control panel that can plug into any random tv?

If you use a small motherboard with no expansion cards, there's no reason why you can't build everything into a control panel that will just detach from the rest of the cabinet.

I'm not exactly sure how beefy a mini-itx board would be, but I think it would be your best bet. It's got built-in tv output and it's small. It's only a matter of power, but there are some faster ones coming out lately. I know my P3 @ 866MHz handles CPS2 games like a champ, but I don't know how the Via chips stack up against Intels for raw processing power. Still, I would think that a 1GHz mini-itx board would suit your needs. Of course, don't kill me if I'm wrong since I haven't tested it for myself yet.

You'd have to double up on coin buttons, though - one set tied to the coin door and one directly on the panel for when it's removed.

[markrvp]

Based on the games you mention as most likely to be played, I would suggest Happ Supers as joysticks instead of T-sticks.  Then I would add a dedicated MsPacman/Galaga reunion stick for dedicated 4-way play.  The T-Stick pluses take a little getting used to and for a traveling party box for fighters, I think the Happ Supers would probably be a better fit.

This is all subjective and only my opinion.

[panterafreak]

No cabinet, think of it as a stand alone control panel that happens to have the computer with it and will plug into the tv via Svideo or red/yellow/white just like a playstation.

Here is a real quick drawing of what I was thinking of for the control panel.
I did two rows of 3 buttons with a thumb button, can someone please explain this to me, I see this as the most common layout, is the thumb button used with NeoGeo games or is there a different reason for having it where it is?

http://www.vulgardisplayofpower.com/files/cp_take2.gif
Sorry for the size, quick and dirty there but it's to scale.  The 4way joysticks would actually be top fire joysticks for games like smash tv.

There seems to be a lot of wasted space in there....


Thanks markrvp that's probably a better idea, I was only really interested in the 4 way for pacman for the wife and I was only interested in those particular sticks as they can be changed to 4 or 8 without tools or opening the box up.

[markb]

The Motherboard size inside will make little difference if you are building a 2 player portable controller as it will have to be a fair size to get 2 players around it anyway.

Here's some things to think about:-
Plenty of cooling both going in and out of the case, the temps on my portable are 10C higher than when the components were in a regular case.

Mobo should be AGP as PCI TV out cards are alot harder to come by than AGP TV out cards.

Mobo should also have internal USB pins so that you dont' have to feed a USB wire out the back for an IPac or some such.

The TV out card should be capable of sending out a signal to both a monitor and a TV at the same time. Some aren't and its a pain to flick between them.

I would suggest a 5m scart cable to plug into a TV especially if your are going to move it from house to house.

Isolate the hardrive inside the case from vibration as all that banging on the buttons is not going to be good for it.

Put in a network card as it's much easier for adding new games etc.

As for legs well I got a cheap set of screw in legs from Ikea for

[NoOne=NBA=]

The 2x3+1 (7-button) layout is designed to allow use of the 2x3 in standard Capcom format, but also allow 1x4 for Neo-Geo games with a single button layout.



For Capcom you get:

   O O O
   O O O
X

For Neo-Geo you get:

   X X X
   O O O
O

[AlanS17]

I agree with markrvp about the joysticks. T sticks have an incredibly short throw. It would feel wierd for fighting games.

As for the motherboard, the mini-itx boards are known for low noise and low heat plus they have a tv-out port. It's pretty much a no-brainer. The only catch is that they're not as powerful as others. But as you increase the power, you also increase the heat and noise. AMD processors, in particular, are known for being hot and loud because they require lots of fans for airflow. Plus those mini-itx boards are tiny. It's hard to beat a 17cm square!

Yes, I'm a mini-itx fan. 

[markrvp]

I think you can eliminate one of the 4-ways.  All the games that I normally play with a 4-way stick are alternating player (except Karate Champ which uses 4 4-ways for 2-player games).  By staggering the controls you can put two rows of controls like in the diagram below.  I moved the 3 mouse buttons up and left which allows you to use them with the 4-way joystick for games like Galaga, Donkey Kong, Ghosts N Goblins, etc.  You can also use the mouse buttons with the spinner for Tempest.  Your right hand can rest on the panel without touching the Player 1 buttons or the trackball.   I also like to have the center of the joysticks be 7" above the bottom edge of the panel to give plenty of room to rest the heel of your hand during gameplay.

[panterafreak]

What about adding 5 buttons for pinball, those just get attached to the Ipac4 correct and mapped as buttons in mame somewhere?  I've used mame before but it was with two playstation controllers with usb adapters ($10 radio shack) and they worked fine.  I haven't tried any pinball games in mame yet but I saw that others had done that with thier cabinet.  Considering my CP is like 36in wide should I even bother, that would be a bit too wide for a pinball feel huh?

In a related note how do i got about mapping buttons in mame?  I assume there is a setting panel or something to set that up but do you need to do that for each game?

[AlanS17]

Get into the game and press the "tab" key. That'll bring up a menu where you can modify individual settings for the game you're in or global settings for all games.

At least... I think it was the "tab" key...

I've been so busy with real machines lately that I forget MAME stuff. My brain can only hold so much! 

[panterafreak]

Ok here is an updated picture of my control panel layout.
I slimmed it down from 16x40 to 14x36 and it looks like it should fit fine, I will print it out tonight and lay it out to see how it feels (don't have any parts but the space should be good enough for a rough test)



If anyone is interested this is a modified template from this site and my visio file is herehttp://www.vulgardisplayofpower.com/files/cp_take3.vsd