Author Topic: Need opinions on my cp layout (Read 6486 times)

ITrek · « **on:** February 04, 2003, 09:42:17 pm »

Here's my first shot at a graphic overlay and layout for my cp. Please let me know if there is anything you might change. The size is 29" x 17". The full size version of this jpeg can be found here http://www.angelfire.com/trek/itrek/Control_Panel_I_full_size.jpg.

I'm not much of an artist so if anyone could offer ideas on how I could jazz up the background other than using just the simple gradient please let me know. The cabinet colors are black and blue laminant with blue t-molding.

Birdtales · « **Reply #1 on:** February 04, 2003, 09:52:06 pm »

Your design looks similar to Motorfish's on this thread maybe you can look at his and get an idea or two.

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=10;action=display;threadid=3066

ITrek · « **Reply #2 on:** February 04, 2003, 09:58:40 pm »

Yes, I shamlessly stole some of motorfish's design ideas but there was no way my components would fit in his layout (my trackball and joystick bases were too big).

s8n · « **Reply #3 on:** February 04, 2003, 10:01:06 pm »

personally i think the top 8 eight buttons can go. i try to keep unecessary buttons off the CP to keep is somewhat neat, i dont think buttons next to the spinner are needed, buttons over the trackball, yes. 3? maybe not. Your 8-ways and sevenbuttons layout is cool, makes all fighters playable. a 4way and buttons to me is also pointless, yea i know true 4way JS's are cant be beat when playing the older games, but an 8way should do. i like simple CP's that look somewhat normal, just my insight....

BASSOFeeSH · « **Reply #4 on:** February 05, 2003, 02:52:24 pm »

Just make sure that you can comfortably use all the controls(4-way, spinner) without having to rest your arms over other controls.

Just like everyone says, test the layout on cardboard first!

Carsten Carlos · « **Reply #5 on:** February 05, 2003, 03:02:49 pm »

Quote

Just like everyone says, test the layout on cardboard first!

I totally agree with this!

When you wanna slam the trackball harderit might hurt 'cause of the player2-stick!

Less is more, so think again if you really need all of it on one panel.

eightbit · « **Reply #6 on:** February 05, 2003, 03:04:05 pm »

I would suggest removing the labels from player 1, player 2, 4 way stick, trackball, and spinner. They look nice in the picture but will be redundant when it is built.

rhoelsch · « **Reply #7 on:** February 05, 2003, 03:05:20 pm »

Not sure about the extra buttons, but if that's what you want, its your cab, not anyone else's, so configure it for your own reasons. As far as layout, I put mine in cardboard and played games for quite a while using all the joy and button configurations. Remember, you might wanna be playing a game for a few hours at a time, and if your controls aren't intuitive, or if your upper body starts to ache from contorting around a control or button scheme, it's not too difficult to go back to the drawing board. To sum up: build a beta version and play the heck out of it.

A quickly built but difficult to play cab is like winning a new Ferrari without a steering wheel. Or something like that.

GSXRMovistar · « **Reply #8 on:** February 05, 2003, 05:14:45 pm »

I like the overall idea (as it

u_rebelscum · « **Reply #9 on:** February 05, 2003, 05:56:05 pm »

The design is pretty much up to you, but do you really need the special trackball buttons? You could use the player1 and/or player2 buttons instead of adding the extra buttons. Either player's buttons could be mouse buttons if you you want that.

Ignore my suggestion if you want to use the trackball outside of mame and don't want to enable the mouse for every game, or want the cp very easy to use like GSXRMovistar does.

SirPoonga · « **Reply #10 on:** February 05, 2003, 06:13:31 pm »

Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 05, 2003, 05:56:05 pm

The design is pretty much up to you, but do you really need the special trackball buttons? You could use the player1 and/or player2 buttons instead of adding the extra buttons. Either player's buttons could be mouse buttons if you you want that.

Ignore my suggestion if you want to use the trackball outside of mame and don't want to enable the mouse for every game, or want the cp very easy to use like GSXRMovistar does.

Ofr if you are like me I have a switch on the bottom of my cp to switch player 1 buttons 1 and 2 from ipac to mouse.

romid · « **Reply #11 on:** February 05, 2003, 06:32:00 pm »

Quote from: GSXRMovistar on February 05, 2003, 05:14:45 pm

I like the overall idea (as it

GSXRMovistar · « **Reply #12 on:** February 05, 2003, 06:48:55 pm »

The control panel graphic was done in Adobe illustrator (first time i've ever used it) and the 3D stuff was done in 3D studio max.

Jakobud · « **Reply #13 on:** February 05, 2003, 07:13:40 pm »

There is a lot of wasted room on your control panel. It seems like you could move all the page up /down/options/etc buttons down a ways, and move the player 1 and 2 start buttons down to right above the joysticks.

Also, I don't know what sort of people you are going to have playing your cabinet, but I wouldn't have all the option and setup buttons freely available to the users. This will allow too many things to get screwed. My option buttons are hidden on the backside of the control panel where anyone can still reach them, but not everyone knows they are there. Out of site out of mind...you know what I'm saying?

Also the page up/down buttons...you know you could almost always map the joysticks to do pageup/down in any frontend. Waste of buttons in my opinion.

ITrek · « **Reply #14 on:** February 05, 2003, 07:53:36 pm »

Some great advice - Thanks!

I hadn't really thought about your arm hitting the player 2 joystick when playing trackball games. I've seen a ton of cp layouts that look like they'd have this problem. Is this a big problem or just an minor annoyance?

Jakobud, Great advice about having option and setup buttons hidden so the kiddies can't screw everything up (too easily). If you map a joystick to pageup/down so it will work in a frontend, do you need to custom map the up/down keys for that joystick to pageup/down for every game? That sounds like a pain or I'm not sure what you mean.

GSXRMovistar, very impressive layout! You should be proud of that accomplishment. Can I assume you're spinner and 4-way use the same buttons? If you don't have 3 buttons for your trackball how do you play games like Missile Command? Your background graphic is also awesome. Where did you get it?

GSXRMovistar · « **Reply #15 on:** February 05, 2003, 08:18:18 pm »

The two buttons next to the spinner and the 4 way are just connected to the same inputs at the buttons [1/2] of the main one player controls, so in theory you can use any of them, but the ones at the top are most comfortable to use with these two controls.

The two trackball/mouse buttons are mainly for windows and non-mame games. Again the buttons for the main player one controls can be used on track ball games so that caters for 3 buttons no problem.

The reason I have mouse/trackball buttons on both sides of the trackball is that my other half is left handed and she finds it easier to control it like that (see I

Xphile · « **Reply #16 on:** February 05, 2003, 11:45:42 pm »

It just occurred to me (after re-reading the other CP thread again :-)
that since I'm using a PS2 kensington expert mouse as my trackball I'll have no
problems using the mouse buttons( hacked to player 2 arcade buttons 1,2,and 3) in
windows..they'll be seen by windows as mouse buttons 1,2, and 3... Then I just
have to set mame defaults to use mouse buttons 1,2,3 as player 2 b1,b2,b3...and
only in track ball games will I have to override the default setup to use
mouse/player 2 b1,b2,b3 as my primary fire buttons...

is it much harder to do the same sort of thing with a regular arcade trackball and an
optipack? (if it's an arcade TB hacked to a mouse, I assume it would be the same as
my <above>proposed setup

motorfish · « **Reply #17 on:** February 06, 2003, 08:02:40 am »

Who hoo! I'm pleased to see that I've helped to inspire ideas in the MAME community! This is great!

GSXRMovistar: Awesome CP! I love the high contrast colors!

Xphile: A good start! Try experimenting with different font sizes as well, using larger, or more pronounced fonts to emphesize importance. Don't get disgouraged, I went through several designs myself before I came up with a look I liked.

Keep 'em comming! The best ideas are usually realized when several people feed off of one another.

SirPoonga · « **Reply #18 on:** February 06, 2003, 08:11:54 am »

Quote from: Xphile on February 05, 2003, 11:45:42 pm

It just occurred to me (after re-reading the other CP thread again :-)
that since I'm using a PS2 kensington expert mouse as my trackball I'll have no
problems using the mouse buttons( hacked to player 2 arcade buttons 1,2,and 3) in
windows..they'll be seen by windows as mouse buttons 1,2, and 3... Then I just
have to set mame defaults to use mouse buttons 1,2,3 as player 2 b1,b2,b3...and
only in track ball games will I have to override the default setup to use
mouse/player 2 b1,b2,b3 as my primary fire buttons...

is it much harder to do the same sort of thing with a regular arcade trackball and an
optipack? (if it's an arcade TB hacked to a mouse, I assume it would be the same as
my <above>proposed setup

Or you could do that to p1 buttons:) Or like I said, make a switch to switch from ipac to mouse.

optipac act like a mouse, the buttons on the optipac are mouse button. But I believe only 2 buttons. Why do you need three mice buttons?

Xphile · « **Reply #19 on:** February 06, 2003, 10:14:32 am »

Quote from: SirPoonga on February 06, 2003, 08:11:54 am

Or you could do that to p1 buttons:) Or like I said, make a switch to switch from ipac to mouse.

optipac act like a mouse, the buttons on the optipac are mouse button. But I believe only 2 buttons. Why do you need three mice buttons?

I don't, but if I were hacking the other two mice buttons to player buttons,
I was going to do the third on my PS/2 mouse just to keep things simple..Missle
command uses three buttons, so I would get mame to use mouse 1,2,3..
although I guess I would only have to set it up in the software once, so it's
not like I would have to trace wires to buttons every other week :-)
probable issues with other games (fighting games) using mouse 1.2,3
(pressing 2 buttons at the same time - so i should try and use only two
mouse buttons mapped to player buttons i guess..

Jungle · « **Reply #20 on:** February 06, 2003, 10:29:14 am »

Quote from: Xphile on February 06, 2003, 10:14:32 am

Quote from: SirPoonga on February 06, 2003, 08:11:54 am

Or you could do that to p1 buttons:) Or like I said, make a switch to switch from ipac to mouse.

optipac act like a mouse, the buttons on the optipac are mouse button. But I believe only 2 buttons. Why do you need three mice buttons?

I don't, but if I were hacking the other two mice buttons to player buttons,
I was going to do the third on my PS/2 mouse just to keep things simple..Missle
command uses three buttons, so I would get mame to use mouse 1,2,3..
although I guess I would only have to set it up in the software once, so it's
not like I would have to trace wires to buttons every other week :-)
probable issues with other games (fighting games) using mouse 1.2,3
(pressing 2 buttons at the same time - so i should try and use only two
mouse buttons mapped to player buttons i guess..

I think you are making this more complicated than it is. I've got a trackball hooked up with my Optipac and have two mouse buttons on my panel. The only time I use these buttons is when I am using my trackball as a mouse in windows.

For games like Centipede, I've just gone into the options menu within mame and told it that Fire is mapped to my Player 1 Button 1. Similarly for Missile Command, I mapped the three fire buttons to my Player 1 Button 1 - 3. You can mix mouse input with keyboard-emulated buttons in any game you like - you aren't limited to the mouse buttons if you use the mouse for moving. Once you set it up once within the game, you are all set.

Xphile · « **Reply #21 on:** February 06, 2003, 03:42:24 pm »

that's the point, I don't want those two mouse buttons for windows on the panel..:-)

I want them integrated into P2's standard 6 button layout.

I'll be using p2 b1,b2 for mouse buttons within windows, and regular fire buttons in mame..

that's why i'll be connecting the p2 b1,b2 to the mouse and all the other buttons to the ipac/keywiz

Jungle · « **Reply #22 on:** February 06, 2003, 05:16:09 pm »

My bad...I didn't read it clearly enough....

SirPoonga · « **Reply #23 on:** February 06, 2003, 06:31:26 pm »

Quote from: Xphile on February 06, 2003, 03:42:24 pm

that's the point, I don't want those two mouse buttons for windows on the panel..:-)

I want them integrated into P2's standard 6 button layout.

I'll be using p2 b1,b2 for mouse buttons within windows, and regular fire buttons in mame..

that's why i'll be connecting the p2 b1,b2 to the mouse and all the other buttons to the ipac/keywiz

Do you plan on running newer pc versions of some games, like cetipede? Or golden tee golf?
You definately want mouse buttons then:) Like I said, if you want to switch the buttons I have the schematic to use a dpdt relay.

Xphile · « **Reply #24 on:** February 06, 2003, 08:09:45 pm »

Quote from: SirPoonga on February 06, 2003, 06:31:26 pm

Do you plan on running newer pc versions of some games, like cetipede? Or golden tee golf?
You definately want mouse buttons then:) Like I said, if you want to switch the buttons I have the schematic to use a dpdt relay.

But I will have mouse buttons, they'll just be in the player
2's button 1 and 2 spot. ( or 2 and 3 spot, I haven't figured
out which 2 buttons to route to the mouse and which 4
buttons to the ipac/keywiz..

when you play fighting games like SF, and need to make
button combo moves, do you usually press button one and
another button? or are there many different button combos
(2+4, 5+6, 3+6, etc) to get the desired move (never played
fighting games

) are they similar button combos
throughout the fighting genre? or is every game different?

I ask ( because now that I think about it,) there may be
problems routing a heavily used button (eg: button 1) to
the mouse along with another heavily used button (eg: the
2 'most used' buttons for combos in fighting games.. mice
don't accept simultaneous inputs , do they..) so I may have
to use a switch and relay with the button outputs after all..

oh well, It was just a thought.. trying to keep things simple
above and below the control panel..

SirPoonga · « **Reply #25 on:** February 06, 2003, 08:18:08 pm »

I doubt there is an issue, as I click my mouse buttons pretty fast when playing unreal.

Xphile · « **Reply #26 on:** February 06, 2003, 09:59:40 pm »

Quote from: SirPoonga on February 06, 2003, 08:18:08 pm

I doubt there is an issue, as I click my mouse buttons pretty fast when playing unreal.

but if someone needed to press *both* 'mouse buttons' at
the same time, for some combo in a fighting game, they
wouldn't be able to, it would only register the first button
clicked, not both simultaniously..

Looks like your switch/relay is the way to go..
start mame32, press the switch once, ipac handles the
buttons...finish your game of missile command, exit mame,
press the switch again, mouse hack takes control of the
buttons - and you're doin' your taxes or surfin' for porn..

thank you, I'm pretty sure I have my direction now.. :-)

SirPoonga · « **Reply #27 on:** February 06, 2003, 10:04:29 pm »

PJ made a schematic for me:)
http://www.planetjay.com/images/relay/relay.gif

Here's my actual relay.

http://www.fe.donkeyfly.com/images/dpdt.jpg

u_rebelscum · « **Reply #28 on:** February 06, 2003, 10:17:35 pm »

Quote from: Xphile on February 06, 2003, 09:59:40 pm

but if someone needed to press *both* 'mouse buttons' at
the same time, for some combo in a fighting game, they
wouldn't be able to, it would only register the first button
clicked, not both simultaniously..

Are you sure that's not a win32 API limit that doesn't apply to mame? (Mame uses directX for mouse button input.)

I have no problems pushing two mouse buttons at the same time, or holding a mouse button down and rapidly pressing the releasing another mouse button (narc for example; shoot and crouch mapped to the mouse buttons).

eightbit · « **Reply #29 on:** February 06, 2003, 10:59:31 pm »

I used to play a lot of FPS'ers with a mouse and I don't remember having trouble with holding one and hitting the other.

Xphile · « **Reply #30 on:** February 06, 2003, 11:41:49 pm »

Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 06, 2003, 10:17:35 pm

Quote from: Xphile on February 06, 2003, 09:59:40 pm
but if someone needed to press *both* 'mouse buttons' at
the same time, for some combo in a fighting game, they
wouldn't be able to, it would only register the first button
clicked, not both simultaniously..

Are you sure that's not a win32 API limit that doesn't apply to mame? (Mame uses directX for mouse button input.)

I have no problems pushing two mouse buttons at the same time, or holding a mouse button down and rapidly pressing the releasing another mouse button (narc for example; shoot and crouch mapped to the mouse buttons).

I..uhh.. I mean...umm

ok,here goes.:
I hadn't tried it in Mame yet..Just kinda ASSumed it would apply to all win 32 programs..

guess I better go check for myself, now that 2 folks told me
it should work fine..

(man I feel like a twit right about now..<

sheepish-grin> )

thanks again guys, learn something new every day

Elkor · « **Reply #31 on:** February 13, 2003, 07:51:40 am »

I did this, (although I used player2 4&5) it works fine.

Xphile · « **Reply #32 on:** February 13, 2003, 11:38:00 pm »

thank you...I couldn't play a fighting game to save my life,
so I didn't know which game to load to try it out on..Was going to wing it when the time came to solder..:-)

btw, what's a good game with combo button pushes in it..?
thanks,
x


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