The right number of buttons!!

[marcopolo]

Two part question for the experts out there:

1. do I need to have six buttons for each joystick on my control panel if I really don't play the "Fighter" games - Street Fighter, etc.

2.  I'f I only go with 4 buttons, what layout has worked for people?  just a simple square, etc?

Thanks everyone, I'm almost done after the buttons, I'll post pics soon.

Marco

[Dave_K.]

I think you are the only person that can answer this question.  What is the layout of your favorite game (or game you will be playing most often on this cabinet)?  

Personally, I choose the ergomomic way of layout out  4 of my buttons: match the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers in an arc.   I rest my palm on the control panel, and fingers extend to each of these buttons comfortably.  I also chose this layout because its the same layout as my favorite game Soul Calibur.  Virtua Fighter is also in this layout (but with only 3 buttons).  Even though these two games are fighters, this layout is generic enough to be comfotable with any other non-fighting game I have ever played on my cabinet.

Of course I have a lot more buttons on my control panel, but the main 4 are layed out in this fashion.  The remaining buttons are combined with the middle & ring finger buttons to form 2 rows of 3 buttons for traditional Street Fighter, Tekken, Capcom... fighters.

[m3talslug]

I like MotorFish's layout the best



I wouldn't stagger the buttons though, ONLY BECAUSE american fighting machines are built with a STRAIGHT button layout.  <-- it's important to be able to still be able to play at a regular arcade.  It may seem like a subtle difference, but it makes a difference in fighting games which involve pressing several different buttons to execute a combo.

[Smittydc]

Marco,

I don't play the fighters much either (though I love Mortal Kombat) and gave the same question a fair amount of thought.  I decided to go with 3 in a row + thumb button for player one, and 3 for player two, while leaving room for more in case I changed my mind later.  I'm using mini Atari volcano cone buttons for coin/pause/etc.  Managed to fit all of them (and a trackball) into 25x9":

[Silverwind]

A few other things to consider:

1) how much room do you have on your panel? Do you think you'll have room for extra buttons?

2) how much room do you have open on your encoder?  If you have some open pins.. it won't hurt to add a few extra buttons


Bear in mind... the buttons don't have to go to waste if you don't play fighters... you can still map them to pause or tab or coin or whatever you want... might be nice to have an extra button onhand..  plus the cost of a couple extra buttons isn't very much considering how much resources have gone into other areas of the cab..

[Jakobud]

Can't Arcade@Home or Mame32 or something organize the games by how many buttons it uses?  I would do something like that and take a look at all the games that require more than 4 buttons.  If you never plan on playing those then just do four buttons per controller.

[Smittydc]

Check out:
http://mittelalterlicher-markt.de/arcade/cp-stat.htm

[Brax]

I really like Neo Geo games. If I was only going 4 buttons I'd be tempted to do that layout. (even though most Neo Geo's only use 3 out of the 4) But its personal like was said before. What feels best to you? Maybe try a few different layouts in a cardboard box. Then you can easily move them around.

[BASSOFeeSH]

Another layout if you're interested.  While I like the "4 on the top row" layout, I also liked having the "thumb" button.  It really IS just a matter of preference.  I tried out a few on cardboard(DO IT!) and decided on this.  The only small downside was having to program the settings for games that used the bottom 4, which really wasn't a big deal though.