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My Space Invaders Telescope
jasonbar:
Howdy-
I got my art from tons of web searches. Google images, some arcade art sites, etc.
What I used--if you want any files, I can e-mail them to you or anybody--they're just free items I found from searching--nothing copyrighted:
- JPG of kick panel, Taito version, I think. 60k. Not high-res--probably not good for a full-size machine
- Then I photograhed my Simpsons coin door & made a crude Solidworks model of it and saved that as a JPG & overlaid it on the kick panel art
- AI vector art of Taito sideart. I used the same art for both sides & extended the blue background to be big enough to fit the shape of my "cabinet" (the marquee & control panel protrude on my telescope, unlike the real cab)
- AI vector art of Midway control panel overlay. Midway used 2 buttons for left/right, while Taito used a joystick.
- I found button artwork (I think from Johnny 5?) & overlaid buttons on the overlay artwork to complete the control panel
- JPGs & PNGs of bezel artwork, a few slightly different versions.
- ran MAME32 w/ overlay option turned on & bezel option turned off & took a screen grab for the screen. Edited the image to remove lots of invaders to make them spell out my initials, and then I found an old arcade font (that didn't quite match the SI font) & put the "first light" info in player 2's score. First light is the date when you first see something through your scope.
Found but didn't use:
- AI vector art of Space Invaders Deluxe bezel. It didn't really go w/ the rest of my artwork
- 2 AI vector arts of Space Invaders logo
- AI vector art of the blocky space invaders themselves (I didn't use those for the tube graphics--I just bought Invaders stickers from thinkgeek.com)
-Jason
ChadTower:
I was expecting him to say that when you look through the telescope it superimposes space invaders on the image.
jasonbar:
You give me too much credit, ChadTower! :]
Actually, you could put a big old space invaders stickers on the primary (parabolic) mirror on that telescope and go out & look @ the sky & you wouldn't see the sticker--your image in your eyepiece would just be a little dimmer b/c you'd be blocking some of the light that was supposed to be getting to your eyeball--wild stuff...
-Jason
jasonbar:
Got a new toy for my telescope: a bracket to hold a camera right up to the eyepiece to snap snazzy pics through the telescope.
I have a well-loved, old Casio Exilim EX-Z40 (4MP, 3x optical zoom). It has pretty decent manual control of ISO, white balance, focus, EV Shift (whatever that is), & zoom to take some fair pictures.
Aligning the camera to each eyepiece is a bear, but I got better by the time I got to my 3rd & final eyepiece (highest mag, fussiest, generally worst image quality but pretty darn good tonight for some reason...).
Pictures: http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/ff97/infernolab/Space%20Invaders%20Telescope/moon%201-31-2010/
The pictures are sorted in the order in which they were taken, going from low to medium to high mag eyepieces (though I messed around w/ the camera zoom during each setup, so the photos don't necessarily progress in increasing zoom levels...).
Mars was out tonight, but it's no more than a reddish dot with my scope. Someday I'll snap Jupiter & Saturn--those are both spectacular (though small) in my scope.
Thanks,
-Jason
Franco B:
I didn't see the original post but thats very cool Jason. I'm a sucker for anything Spacies :)