spacing between push buons & joysticks

[mimic]

Can someone point me in the direction of proper spacing between push buttons and spacing between joystick & pushbuttons (how far apart they should be).
I found somewhere recommendations in milimiters, but I'd like to see it in inches as well, as well I'd like to compare if it's about the same.

[Anubis_au]

The standard distances seem to be:

Middle of joystick to middle of nearest buttons: 3 inches
Spacing between buttons: 1/5 inches

Although, someone will tell you to space them however it feels comfortable to you. But the above is the standard.

[deadkenndys1105]

I have a single player fighter cabinet and my center joystick is 9 inches from the first attack buttons.  The buttons are 1.5 inches apart from the center of them.  My Start buttons are 3.75 inches apart.  The overall CP is 24 inches wide and 13 inches deep.  Trust me if your going to make your controls like I did don't make your CP 13 inches deep.  I made a mistake in the math when building my cabinet but im building a second one soon anyways.

[mimic]

The standard distances seem to be:

Middle of joystick to middle of nearest buttons: 3 inches
Spacing between buttons: 1/5 inches

Although, someone will tell you to space them however it feels comfortable to you. But the above is the standard.

I'm assuming 1/5 inch is between push buttons, what would be the distance center to center?
Thx

[mimic]

I have a single player fighter cabinet and my center joystick is 9 inches from the first attack buttons.  The buttons are 1.5 inches apart from the center of them.  My Start buttons are 3.75 inches apart.  The overall CP is 24 inches wide and 13 inches deep.  Trust me if your going to make your controls like I did don't make your CP 13 inches deep.  I made a mistake in the math when building my cabinet but im building a second one soon anyways.

I don't know about 9 inches, seems like pretty far apart. Besides I read somwhere that you lose hand coordination (in games of course not in general) if they are further apart than 120 milimiters (less than 5 inches)
But i didn't test that claim myself so I'm not gonna say it applies to everyone.

[Anubis_au]

The standard distances seem to be:

Middle of joystick to middle of nearest buttons: 3 inches
Spacing between buttons: 1/5 inches

Although, someone will tell you to space them however it feels comfortable to you. But the above is the standard.

I'm assuming 1/5 inch is between push buttons, what would be the distance center to center?
Thx

Buttons: distance from centre to centre: 1.5 inches.. sorry, wasn't 100% clear before.

[Crowquill]

In the end, you're going to have to figure out what's most comfortable for you, but to find that out I'd suggest using a template for an existing game. I did quite a bit of research on this by downloading manuals for conversion games. Here's some links to the better ones (Joystick-to-button measurements are measuring from center-to-center):

CAPCOM 6-button layout - Used on Street Fighter II and others. Joystick is 4" from first button (center to center) and buttons are 1-5/8" apart. Download it from this page

Neo-Geo (SNK) - First button is 3" from joystick, 1-5/8" apart. This I measured on my own dedicated cabinet.

TMNT: Turtles in TIme (Konami) - First button is 3-9/16" (91mm) from joy, Buttons are 1-7/16 (37mm) apart

Primal Rage (Atari) - First button 3.5" from joy, buttons are 1.5" apart. Measured this on my dedicated cabinet, but the drilling template for Guardians of the 'Hood is the same.

Altered Beast (Sega) - Buttons approximately 3.5" from joystick, Buttons are 1.75" apart. They are an unusual (but decent) layout. They kind of look like this:

  O
O  O

This layout was used on most 2-player system-16 games (golden axe, e-swat)

Most manuals can be downloaded from here. There is also a nice archive of manuals at www.crazykong.com/manuals
For most classic games you can find the manual at one of those two places.

[DaveMMR]

Here's what I did.  I made my CP layout in Photoshop and then I imported the picture of the Street Fighter II CP from klov.com as the top layer (feel free to substitute your favorite game's layout) and set the opacity to around 50%.  I transformed it to be the same size as my layout (keeping the same height width ratio of course - and jpeg artifacts do not matter) and tried, as best of possible to match the distances of the buttons and joystick on the layout and the pic of the CP.   You can kind of fudge the distances a little bit but it gives you a decent idea of how it'll feel, assuming you've played SFII in the arcades.

It should be noted that it's not 100% exact, since most of the times the picture is taken an an angle (you can skew it if it helps).  The SFII pic I imported was actually pretty straight, so it worked out well.  Although you should still test it out to make sure it's comfortable, it'll eliminate some guess work.

[Crowquill]

Even better yet...if you have Illustrator you can open the Capcom PDF Directly in it. Then you can edit the vector shapes all you want. I was originally going to use the official capcom template, but the button & stick spacing took up too much of my 24" wide panel.

If you care to use it, here's the drilling template that I made for my MAME cab. Buttons are spaced 1.5" apart, and the joystick is 3" from the first button. It's pretty much an exact copy of the Neo-Geo layout with 3 extra buttons on top. The PDF is set up to print on legal paper so that I could position it on half my CP (7"x12").

[RobotronNut]

be sure you carefully account for "protrusions" from joysticks, like the switches that stick out, crimp-on wiring connectors, etc.

here is an example of a simple panel i made for testing joysticks. note that different joysticks have the protrusions in different places, so examine the actual joysticks you'll be using.

[mimic]

Even better yet...if you have Illustrator you can open the Capcom PDF Directly in it. Then you can edit the vector shapes all you want. I was originally going to use the official capcom template, but the button & stick spacing took up too much of my 24" wide panel.

If you care to use it, here's the drilling template that I made for my MAME cab. Buttons are spaced 1.5" apart, and the joystick is 3" from the first button. It's pretty much an exact copy of the Neo-Geo layout with 3 extra buttons on top. The PDF is set up to print on legal paper so that I could position it on half my CP (7"x12").

Thx for the template. I'm using it right now. I got a question though. I'm building cabinet with 2 player 2 joy setup, for smash tv or robotron. How far would you place second joystick from last button? Same distance, meaning 3 inches, center to center?

[paigeoliver]

It is impossible to mount your buttons TOO close to the joystick that they go to. Even right up against the base is fine. If you have extra space to burn on the panel then use it getting the player 2 joystick further away from the player 1 buttons.

There is no STANDARD for any of this. It differs wildly amongst games. I would study a few real cabinets before making your layout though, as a LOT of BYOAC people make control panel layouts that are unusable in many situations. If you want a completely safe layout then copy the streetfighter one exactly.

[NiteWalker]

I've found the most universal and friendly layout is having the buttons 4" on center away from the joystick. Space between the buttons is 1 1/2".

Here's a drilling template for what I mean. Print with no scaling. For Happ buttons and sticks.


And here's how it turns out.


Nice universal layout that's comfortable and works well with a lot of games.