How many buttons?

[Kurso]

Hello folks,

I'm new to the forums and new to the hobby.  I'm getting ready to embark on my first cabinet as a Christmas gift for the kids this year.  I no doubt have many questions that I'll be posting but the one that is on my mind the most is:

1)  How many buttons should I be putting on my control panel?

I'm building a 4 player cabinet and am planning 6 buttons per controller (I know some have suggested only 4 buttons for players 3 and 4 but safe rather than sorry I say).  I'm also planning player 1-4 buttons, and 'escape' button to exit a game and...  that's it I think.  Some other things I have thought of but haven't decided on are:

Pause
Reset
Left/Right button for the track ball

Am I missing anything?  Have you built a cabinet and wished you had buttons for other functions?  Should I plan for a few extra buttons just in case?

Thanks in advance!

[Anubis_au]

Firstly, welcome to the forum, and the hobby! 

Secondly, people are right when they say six buttons for players 3 and 4 are overkill. As far as I know, no 4 player game needs more than two buttons for those players. But, nothing stopping you from going six buttons if that's what you want. It just means a (slightly) bigger CP.

Thirdly, the most common admin functions are: select game, exit game/ system, coin insert(1-4), player start (1-4) and pause. Alot of people use a shifter button to prevent accidental exiting from a game, for instance. The shifter can be your pause button, or any other button, for that matter.

As to trackball buttons for mouse, I'm afraid I can't advise on that. But I'm sure someone else will

[Fozzy The Bear]

Anubis_Au is pretty much spot on with his assessment of button numbers.....  However! there are a couple of 4 player games that do need more than 2 buttons per player.

The thing to remember though, is that you'll only need six or seven buttons for fighting game layouts. If you never play those you simply won't need that many.

One thing to note however, is that if you're only just planning this cabinet and want it for a Christmas gift this year! FORGET IT!! There is NO WAY!! that you're going to complete even one cabinet in that amount of time let alone more than one. Especially as you're new to this. There's just too much to the design phase and getting that right, let alone acquiring all the parts you'll need and if you need to ask these questions at this stage, then there's not a hope in hell of completing it, or even getting something that is just functional in that sort of timescale.....Christmas next year maybe.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Kurso]

Oops it did say 'cabinets' (fixed).  I'm only building one  

Getting it done by Christmas is certainly aggressive but I'm feeling pretty confident.  The cabinet design it nailed down (short of the control panel layout).  I should have the cabinet frame (short of the control panel) built and ready to paint by next weekend.  MAME is running the way I want it on the PC I'm planning on using.  The games look great using S-Vid on the TV I'm using.  I've ordered the input interface (which should be here tomorrow). 

I'm hoping to order the controls this weekend based on the input I get here 

[JimmyU]

If you're only using MAME, go with 4 buttons each for players 3&4 (the Dungeons and Dragons games used 4 buttons each).  If you're using other emulators like ZSNES, go for 6 buttons on them.

[Crafty]

The best advice is to look at what others have done and then see what you like the best. There are a lot of people out there who hate Frankenpanels, but done right they can look reasonable..

A question is how often will four players be going at the same time???

Will 2 player CP suffice... Look around there is a lot of variations out there..