Newbie in need of control panel help

[djsting]

I have already made my decisions on my control panel and need some additional help.  Please do not debate my choices with me...just help a new person out...PLEASE!!  

I AM building a 4 player control panel with a Happs USB trackball, an Oscar Pro USB spinner, Oscar joystick restricters, an I-PAC4, and 7 buttons per player.  I already have all the parts, the I-PAC and Oscar parts arrived today!  

1 - Does anyone have a template that they can share with me to get me started?
2 - What is the CORRECT key mapping for the 7 buttons in the following layout?  
                                           xxx
                                         xxxx

[JustMichael]

Forgive the stupid question but what emulator(s) are you going to run??  Considering that different emulators use different default key setups, this question needs to be answered first.

[SirPoonga]

One, you can map them to whatever as long as you map it tot he emulator you want.  You can chang ethe ipac config.

Second, you don't need more than 4 buttons for players 3 and 4 for mame.

[rampy]

I have already made my decisions on my control panel and need some additional help.  Please do not debate my choices with me...just help a new person out...PLEASE!!  

I AM building a 4 player control panel with a Happs USB trackball, an Oscar Pro USB spinner, Oscar joystick restricters, an I-PAC4, and 7 buttons per player.  I already have all the parts, the I-PAC and Oscar parts arrived today!  

1 - Does anyone have a template that they can share with me to get me started?
2 - What is the CORRECT key mapping for the 7 buttons in the following layout?  
                                           xxx
                                         xxxx

#1 well since you're doing something somewhat unconventional, there'll be no template for you (7buttons for ALL 4 players?! you doing a console hack or ? sorry just a small comment bear with me) However you can make you own template in Visio - someone way cooler than me made some Visio .vsd templates that match the size and layout of generic arcade control parts (joys/buttons/spinners)...

It helped me tremendously. I was able to layout and futz and try different things in Visio and then print it out and use it to drill through right on to my CP...  (The stencils are available in the download section of the main BYOAC faq)arcade visio stencil

ArcadeFX ed has a neato online control layout engine thingie.. I'll dig up the link and post it in a sec... Interactive Control Panel Designer

#2  There isn't a correct layout only personal preference to maximize playing favorite games...  look for a thread about "neo geo control panel"  where the merits of different mappings are discussed ad nauseum..

I hope that helps... some links will be editting in shortly to help..

rampy

EDIT:
PS  as noted by other posters please provide some more background as to your goals you want to achieve... iI assume its to make a SFII/neo geo setup but you didn't really say...  *Shrug*

[djsting]

Sorry, it looks like I did leave out some information.  I will be running MAME32 and the occasional PC game or other emulator.

My goal is to build the most versitile control panel I can allowing any game (or as many as posible) to be played in as an original as possible manner.

Why would I only need 4 buttons on players 3 and 4 instead of 7?

Here are pix of two control panels that I have seen which appear to accomplish what I'm looking for; including the pinball buttons on the first one (I just don't know why I would need 3 on each side).  Any help on the pinball button question would also be great (i.e. why 3 and what are they mapped to).

This one has most of the features including the pinball buttons, except that it only has 6 buttons per player.  Don't know what the row of black buttons at the top map to either since this is supposed to be built with the I-PAC which uses the shift feature.
http://www.custom-arcade.com/httpdocs/black_controls2.htm


This one too has most of the features I'm looking for including the 7 buttons per player, except the pinball buttons.  This one is much closer to what I think I'll end up with...just add pinball buttons to the sides.
http://www.custom-arcade.com/httpdocs/dcp_0095.htm


Sorry for the broken image links, I thought that I did this right but they are showing as broken for some reason so I put in the URL to the pix also.

[SirPoonga]

Why would I only need 4 buttons on players 3 and 4 instead of 7?

No no, re-arrange that.  Ask your self, why do you need more than 4 buttons?

[rampy]

Why would I only need 4 buttons on players 3 and 4 instead of 7?

No no, re-arrange that.  Ask your self, why do you need more than 4 buttons?

In MAME (and in arcades at least) there are NOT any (or very very rarely)  games that are BOTH 4 players concurrently that have more than the 4 buttons at each stick/station.

Also I just realized you might be confusing how we are assuming we/you view the player layout on a 4 player is why you think we're crazy on this...

We think of a 4player CP like this:

  Player3                                 Player4
                Player1     Player2

roughly...

So.. you'd have 6/7 buttons (1 of which could even be redundant electrically depending on your scheme) for players/positions 1 and 2  to play six button two player games SFII etc, etc. et al...
and only 4 buttons per player for the "outer" players/positions for 4 player games...


  Player3                                 Player4
  4 buttons                             4 buttons  
                  Player1     Player2
                  7 butts.     7 butts.

Does that make sense/clarify? Do you see why (unless you are doing a console thingie for 4 player sports/etc games) there's no reason for the extra buttons on the "outside"....  note not picking on you/your idea -> just explaining conventional wisdom and why it's the convention =P

Rampy

PS no one asked, but I think the custom-arcade example machines are both crafted very well/professional finish and supremely gaudy at the same time, but that's just my opinion =)  then again I like my setup cuz I bled/sweated over it... but for free I wouldn't kick a custom-arcade cabinet out of bed, er.....

[djsting]

Ok you have all helped me a lot!  I have decided to go with player 3 and 4 only having 4 buttons.  This will leave me with a few spare parts but that's ok, I can always sell them or hang on to them just incase I need a replacement down the road.  I started on the layout earlier this evening.  I'm working with a cardboard layour first before cutting into my first piece of wood since it is free to screw up cardboard.  

WOW this thing is big with 4 player, a spinner, a 3" trackball, and an additional joystick with Oscar restrictors.  Currently it is 3.5 feet wide and 2 feet deep...and I'm not sure it is quite big enough!  

Those of you who have build the same type of control panel, how large are yours?

[cdbrown]

Well that's kind of personal ....

My panel is a 4 player without the additional stuff (they will go on the other panels) and mine is 1.2m or about 3'11" for the non-metric inclined.  My layout for player 3 and 4 is slightly different to the norm as I tried to keep all players joystick orientated the same.  Most people save some room by having the outer players angled towards the screen.

What I'm trying to say is that the panel you have seems small considering what you are putting on it.  There have been some other threads where people have put the overall width of their panels and mine was not the largest.

One thing to bear in mind is you don't want the panel to be too big it seems out of place within the cab.  Having looked at my panel by itself it seems very large, but in front of the 27" TV it seems ok.

Hope this helps a little more than it confuses.

Cheers
-cdbrown

[Tiger-Heli]

Pinball buttons -

I got out of the visual pinball scene, but some real tables had separate buttons for upper and lower flippers.  I don't think any Visual Pinball tables emulated this, but I plan on dual flipper buttons (redundant with the P1B1 and P1B4 and P2B1 and P2B2 buttons) in case any table requires it.

I have no idea why 3 buttons per side would be required, maybe tilt and plunger

Anyone else??

[spidermonkey]

You'll want two buttons for "nudge left" and "nudge right" as some pinball emulators or pc pinball games use buttons to simulate shaking the machine side to side. I also used a real pinball plunger assembly that hits a microswitch to shoot the virtual ball.