Please evaluate my planned panel.

[shatter]

Please take a look at my proposed control panel for a mame cabinet/project a friend and I are working on. I am not sure what to do for a TRON joystick and I put in a q-bert (45 degree rotated) joystick in green but I don't know if I will actually go with that. I put a 4-way between the tron joystick and spinner but perhaps that is not needed if I use the Ultrastik 360s as I can reconfigure those for 4-way play electronically?




I was thinking of a 3" happ trackball, blackhawk spinner, and ultrastik 360 for joysticks. Not positive on how many admin buttons I need so I just threw a bunch in there for good measure.

All constructive criticism is welcomed!!

Thanks!

[leapinlew]

Please take a look at my proposed control panel for a mame cabinet/project a friend and I are working on. I am not sure what to do for a TRON joystick and I put in a q-bert (45 degree rotated) joystick in green but I don't know if I will actually go with that. I put a 4-way between the tron joystick and spinner but perhaps that is not needed if I use the Ultrastik 360s as I can reconfigure those for 4-way play electronically?




I was thinking of a 3" happ trackball, blackhawk spinner, and ultrastik 360 for joysticks. Not positive on how many admin buttons I need so I just threw a bunch in there for good measure.

All constructive criticism is welcomed!!

Thanks!

The Ultrastick can also map Qbert to a 45 degree angles. Might as well ditch the dedicated qbert stick.

It's a pretty busy control panel. I'm more of a fan of simple control panels that anyone could walk up to and figure out.

[shardian]

I noticed that you have 8 buttons, yet you did not mention console play in your description. Just wanted to make sure you understood why there was 8 buttons on your panel. 6 is plenty per player, but some people prefer 7 to better emulate a neogeo control panel, and possibly a run button for mk3.

I was also wondering what the blue buttons on either side of the trackball are?

Remember this: You don't HAVE to have every control imaginable. Please refer to the quote under my avatar for further instruction.

[sphetr2]

No offense but...

Kind of crowded. I would make swappables.

[ahofle]

If Ultrasticks are in the equation, I'd remove both the 4 ways and move the Tron stick over where the green 4-way used to be.  That way it will be safely out of the way of psychotic Golden Tee players' knuckles.    Also maybe get rid of some of those extra buttons to clean it up a bit.

[shardian]

When it comes to admin buttons, you should really keep it to a minimum. There is no need to have true administrative buttons on the cp. recommended admin buttons would be a dedicated pause, an exit game button, and possibly software volume controls (if you don't have readily available physical volume control. Other admin commands can be accessed by using a hidden shift button and the various panel buttons. You can keep a list of these admin commands pinned on the back/top of the cabinet. Never, ever, under any circumstances let anyone other than yourself have access to the administrative menus of your FE or emulator. You are just asking for a screw job if you do.

[Dervacumen]

If Ultrasticks are in the equation, I'd remove both the 4 ways and move the Tron stick over where the green 4-way used to be.  That way it will be safely out of the way of psychotic Golden Tee players' knuckles.

You beat me to it.

[shatter]

Thanks for all the great replies! This gives me some great ideas to clean up the panel. I was getting concerned about the panel being way too busy also. I'll make some adjustments suggested with trimming down the admin buttons, using the ultrastiks for 4-way and q-bert controls.

On the blue trackball buttons, I was placing them for fire control when playing centipede. Would it make more sense to just use the P1 button bank for that?

Also, I did the 8 button layouts for P1 and P2 because my current x-arcade controller is set up that way not that I knew that I needed them all. I'll cut back to 7 buttons to again clean up the layout.

I'll post my clean up panel tonight for review. Any ideas on what to use for the tron joystick? I have read a lot of discussions on here regarding tron but still don't have a good idea what way I should go based on the psuedo 8-way tron joystick setup.

Thanks very much for helping me out.

[RetroACTIVE]

I prefer to have the (1p Credit) (1p Start)   (2p Start) (2p Credit) orientation somewhere in the center towards the top of the panel.  I have a 4p configuration and I spread them out...

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=43594.msg423024#msg423024

and hate it... I'm re-doing it

As far as admin buttons go... for me hiding them like shardian said is it... However, I've found that when friends use the machine I could use the following:  "Play Game", "Pause Game", "Quit Game"... mainly because my artwork is crap/non-existent.  Either way for newbie players... multi function buttons are kind of a pain.

And... yes move everything from the track ball... my dumb idea was to put the spinner right in front of it... had a friend almost bust his hand.

[leapinlew]

Shatter....

Have you played tron on the 8 way your wanting to use? Tron used a special type of restrictor that allowed great 8 way play and also allowed the 4 way stage (light cycles) work well.

It's possible that unless you are getting an actual tron stick - you won't have tron performance. I'm sure it'll work fine for Gorf! Except Gorf is broke except in older versions of mame. The need for a trigger stick starts to get trivial when you factor in that these games are also vertical games.

[ahofle]

On the blue trackball buttons, I was placing them for fire control when playing centipede. Would it make more sense to just use the P1 button bank for that?

That's what I do and it works well.

Also, I did the 8 button layouts for P1 and P2 because my current x-arcade controller is set up that way not that I knew that I needed them all. I'll cut back to 7 buttons to again clean up the layout.

I'm one of the few people that actually have 8 buttons for player 1 and 2, similar to how you have yours setup, but not offset like that.  The main reason is to have a somewhat decent way to play my alltime favorite game Toobin.  But having 8 buttons is also nice if you plan on doing any console emulation on your cabinet.  And 7 vs 8 buttons isn't really saving that much anyway.

Any ideas on what to use for the tron joystick? I have read a lot of discussions on here regarding tron but still don't have a good idea what way I should go based on the psuedo 8-way tron joystick setup.

I haven't found a perfect solution yet either (I don't think one exists shy of using an original Tron stick).  I'm waiting for someone to come up with a way to mount a trigger stick on a 49-way or Ultrastick360.  Probably the best current solution (but still not great) is to use the omni stick top fire from GGG and switch from 4 to 8 way in game: http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=192

[shatter]

Ok. Here is my latest revision of the panel. I decided to go with the top fire GGG joystick with 4/8 way switching for my tron joystick. My top buttons are P1, C1, Play, Pause, Quit, C2, P2.

I love playing 2-joystick games like Robotron and SmashTV but doubt I'll have need for 2-player action of SmashTV. Should I try to fit in 4 joysticks (2 per player) on the bottom half of the panel or just stick with two? Right now the joysticks are about 21.5" apart, does that seem too far for comfortable use when playing games like Robotron?

I also decided to keep the 8-button layout for future console emulation.

Thanks for all your help!

[ahofle]

I love playing 2-joystick games like Robotron and SmashTV but doubt I'll have need for 2-player action of SmashTV. Should I try to fit in 4 joysticks (2 per player) on the bottom half of the panel or just stick with two? Right now the joysticks are about 21.5" apart, does that seem too far for comfortable use when playing games like Robotron?

Looking good IMO.  You can also move the coin buttons to the front of the CP, mounted horizontally to eliminate another couple buttons from the top. 

The remaining questions can really only be answered by yourself.  If possible, your next step should be to get some sturdy cardboard and make a rough mockup of your design.  You can loosely screw in the sticks and drop in some buttons and test it out to see how everything feels.  Since this is by far the most important part of your cabinet, you should make sure it feels right for you and the games you want to play before building the real CP. 

[leapinlew]

Those green admin buttons will get hit by people playing bowling/golf games.
I have nothing in front of mine, but I have some buttons off to the side and even they will occassionally get hit.