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I have finally started my cabinet!!! (Now With Pictures! 13-APR-2008)
Jdurg:
December 9th, 2007. A day that will live in infamy. I have finally begun the process of building my own arcade cabinet. The transaction that started it all was with Happ controls for two Competition 8-Way Joysticks, and a whole slew of Competition Convex pushbuttons! I have been working on a control panel design for a while now, and have settled on a panel which will have two 8-ways with seven buttons each. (Set up in the classic SF2 set up with the seventh button to the bottom left of the low-kick button. This will be used for Neo-Geo games, and as the run button in the MK games). I will have a player one and player two start button, a trackball with two buttons, a spinner, and a four-way stick with two buttons. I haven't ordered the trackball, spinner, or fourway stick yet as I'll wait until my next paycheck.
Sadly, this project will take a lot of time to finish. I hope to have it done by August of next year. I have ZERO space to construct a cabinet and need to either find a friend who will let me take his garage for a few weeks, or have one custom built. I have found someone who will custom build me one, but right before I placed the order a friend of mine saw my Project Arcade book and said "I want to do this!!!" So we've been figuring out the plans and I said I'll buy the MDF for my cabinet and his if he'll be able to store them during the construction/painting phase. Once we figure out the logistics, we'll start building. I'll photograph everything so that the process will be documented.
One thing I do have in mind is to have a cabinet with the basic LuSiD design. I like the fairly simple design of it, and it will work well with the 27" arcade monitor I plan on putting in. Not quite sure what brand I'll get, but it will be a 27" Multisync so it will work easiest with the games I plan on running. I also plan on getting a coin door for the cabinet and hooking up the coin-inputs to register as coins in MAME. I'll leave it unlocked so you can just pull your coins right out and keep using them, or I'll even get a ton of the BYOAC Tokens and just use them. I just want that experience and feeling of dropping a coin in, hearing the sound and having it register. :D
For the name of the arcade and the artwork, I'm still not sure yet. One thing running through my mind is "Heavenly Hell". The artwork at the bottom will be mostly black with flames and the arm of the devil reaching up to the middle of the cabinet. The top will be bluish with clouds and the arm of God reaching down towards the middle. Where the two arms meet will be a lightening ball and electric cloud with arcade icons flying out of it in a blur. (Characters like Pac-Man, Ryu, Donkey Kong, Bubble Bobble, etc.). I really need to work on the art, but that overall idea sounded kind of cool to me. Artistically, however, i'm not sure if I can do it. :D
The Marquee would just be "Heavenly Hell" with the blue-cloud top and the black flaming bottom met in the middle with the lightning burst and the words "Heavenly Hell" on the foreground.
So what do you guys think? It only hurts me that it will take so long and it might be a while before i have anything to post. At the minimum, I'll at least have the control panel built within a month or two. :D
Jdurg:
Just to add a photo of some very rough mock artwork, but here's the gist of what I'm thinking of. I decided that having arcade characters coming out of the lightning burst was kind of dumb, so that has been nixed. As has the blue coloring at the top. I'll leave it all black. PLEASE remember that I created this mock in about an hour using a cheap IBM laptop with a thumbstick and no mouse. This was all done in Paint. When I get the time to fire up my desktop computer, I'll create a more "professional" looking artwork. For now, this is just the gist of it.
fjl:
And Dec 10th 2007, the day you gave up. :laugh2:
j/k
I like the art. I'd like to see what he final art piece will look like.
Jdurg:
--- Quote from: efjayel on December 10, 2007, 05:14:54 am ---And Dec 10th 2007, the day you gave up. :laugh2:
j/k
I like the art. I'd like to see what he final art piece will look like.
--- End quote ---
:laugh2: Perhaps. But this is something I've been planning for a while, just needed to do a few things such as buy a house so I'd have a place to put it. Now that the house purchase is out of the way (still pissed that I couldn't wait any longer and get a place with a garage, but oh well) I just needed to wait and see how the funds were holding up. Each month I found that I have enough spare cash to pick up various parts and over the course of a few months have everything I need. The computer that runs it all will be last since it's crazy to get the computer first if the cabinet isn't going to be ready for a few months.
With the art, I need to get on my desktop computer and fire up Photoshop and some of the other art programs I have. MS Paint let me get a mock-up together, but it looks like crap in paint. I'll post the final art when I get it all cleaned up. The other side of the cabinet will have the same art, but mirrored for that side. The flames will extend around to the front, and the control panel will have the lightning streaks going across it. That will keep the CP art fairly simple, but will have nice continuity for it.
Now that I have a general idea of my control panel and my artwork, I can really see the cabinet in my head and can't wait to make further progress. ;D
Jdurg:
Okay, below is an out of scale, quickly thrown together mock-up of the control panel. Just imagine the light blue lightning bolts as purple/blue lightning with a nice haze effect around it. That would be what I'm looking for. I'm going to need to download some software to make sure I have it scaled properly, but any comments would be welcomed.
Once I get the proper scale, then I'll have a better idea on how everything fits. Right now, I think I have the buttons quite a bit too small in relation to everything else.
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