mouse buttons on CP...yes or no?

[sdrob04]

Rather than taking a poll, can those who have strong feelings one way or another share their experiences with having/not having mouse buttons on the control panel?

[crashwg]

Mame sees the left mouse button as button one, therefore you could wire it up as your first button and have the functionality of a mouse button without adding extra buttons.  Only problem I see with a setup like that is emulators that you wouldn't be able to set up mouse buttons for.

[quarterback]

I've never been into the idea of dedicated mouse buttons on a CP.  Seems like a waste of space to me and doesn't seem 'authentic'.   I mapped the mouse buttons as my player 2 fire buttons and left it at that.

Similarly, my admin buttons are tiny ones from RShack and are hanging off the underside of my cp, up near the monitor.  You can't see them and I like it that way.  I don't need to see them, I know by 'feel' which button is which.  I have 4 mounted but only 3 hooked up, they're: Esc, 5 and P (for exit, coin and pause)

Also, looking at your CP, your 7th button seems to be in an odd place underneath all the others.  I think I'd accidentally hit it with my palm while utilizing the others.   YMMV, I guess.

[Chris]

I have dedicated mouse buttons on mine, on either side of the trackball.  Since my trackball is not in line with the other buttons, these make useful buttons for games like Centipede that require a fire button, or the Golden Tee or bowling games that have "left/right" buttons.

The only game that really suffers is Missile Command.

[darktemp]

I'd say no for dedicated buttons all together with the exception of exit.  PaigeOliver suggested using P1 and P2 buttons for mouse 1 and 2 and I'm glad I took the advice because it works perfectly.

[Bones]

I went for 3 dedicated mouse buttons mounted near my trackball.

I don't feel it looks out of place but then my CP is a little bigger than most so space wasn't really any issue, if anything it helped balance out the appearance of my control panel.

[SirPoonga]

I don't know if this problem still exists, but back int he days when I made my cabinet mame had issues with mixing mouse and buttons controls.  In some fighters and toobin you couldn't hit two buttons, one being a mouse, one being a keyboard, and be able to work.  There was like a slight delay int he processing of the two or something. 

What I did was make a switch to switch player 1 button 1 and 2 to mouse buttons.
I have a wiring diagram for a dpdt relay...