Arcade Anarchy Project - CPO Complete / Mounting in Progress 1/16/08

[Pun]

After trolling these forums for about 6 months I figured it was time to or get off the pot, so I decided on the latter. First, let me say thank you for having such an amazing resource for projects like this; it has made it my dream of crafting my own arcade machine come true. Secondly, I want to sincerely thank Roger for all his help brainstorming and developing. Now on to the goods!

About 3 months ago I acquired a gutted Virtua Cop cabinet. 2 major issues presented themselves right off the bat, mirrored display and lack of control panel .  I will update you with our solution which to me actually adds a unique twist to the machine.



I've also been slowly hacking away designing my sideart, CPO and marquee. Preliminary designs are outlined below:




Machine Features:

• 2 Player (6 Buttons)
• Trackball
• Cup/Beer Holders
• P4 / 1Gig RAM
• Unique Goodies! Coming Soon!

Please leave lots of feedback, as I want this to be a successful first project!

[Green Giant]

Sounds interesting so far.  The side art looks nice.  Good work planning the beer holding already.

Guess just interested in seeing where you go with the mirrored display and adding a control panel.

[shardian]

It appears your mirror is intact, so the first thought that came to my mind was a pedestal CP.
Of course, you could always make it into a nice gun cabinet.

[Pun]

As the chips fall into place I will continue to update you guys with progress. Here's some photos of the most recent work completed regarding the monitor. I decided to use a 29" TV w/ S-Video as the main monitor. Why a TV? Well, because it was free. 

This next part is EXTREMELY dangerous so please don't attempt to do this unless you know what the hell your doing! By using a mirrored cabinet, the image needed to be reversed in order to display properly. We opted to switch the yoke on the television. TV's carry a huge charge even when unplugged, thankfully it had been in the garage unused for months, even still the utmost care was taken.



The first photo is the determination of X and Y axis and the second is of results. Simple crimping was used even though we probably should have used heat shrink tubing, we were excited to see the results. The image looked fantastic, we will just need to increase the size of the bezel slightly, but overall worked flawlessly.



I will hopefully get some photos up this week of the CPO build, but I am still waiting on some parts to come in.

One question I do have, is regarding Killer Instinct and a few other games, which seems to run slightly choppy. I have increased my RAM and processor but see no drastic changes, anyone know how to fix this?

[javeryh]

Mirrors!!  ooohhhhh this is going to be sweet.  Nice job.  As for Killer Instinct, I have a P4 with 1GB of RAM and onboard video and it runs fine...   

[Pun]

So the t-molding finally arrived yesterday as did some of the steel pipes for the CPO. This weekend after much sanding and routing the console should be completed and then it will all just depend on how fast I can get the artwork completed.



Translucent molding? Took me a while to find, but once I did, I made sure I got plenty more than enough. I have spray painted the speakers and will post new photos this weekend of the progress so far.

Thanks for the info Javery, Bella's helped me out considerably and I will take a look into my RAM setup. I also have read that DirectDraw could play a major role, don't know if you fiddled with that at all.

[mountain]

Where did you get the translucent T-molding?

[AcidArmitage]

tmolding.com has them
http://t-molding.com/store/product.php?productid=59&cat=3&page=1

[Green Giant]

Mirrors!!  ooohhhhh this is going to be sweet.  Nice job. 

Mirrors reflecting mirrors? Hi-tech sorcery! Sorcery, I say!

[leapinlew]

Mirrors!!  ooohhhhh this is going to be sweet.  Nice job. 

Mirrors reflecting mirrors? Hi-tech sorcery! Sorcery, I say!

[Akuma]

Do you have any pics of installed t-molding yet? I'm very curious to see what the cab looks like with that translucent t-molding! : )

[Pun]

Alrighty, just a brief update as the last few weeks have been somewhat hectic. We always go all out on Halloween so I've been feverishly trying to get all our wiring and props mapped out this year so I can spend time on the machine. All parts have now arrived, except for the what will illuminate the translucent molding (soldering is proving to be more difficult then previously expected), but I think it will be worth the wait. The CPO has been a slow process and we are having to reinforce it considerably for the effect we are trying to achieve. The first photo is of the CPO process so far, Player 1 has been cut as well as the cup holders, the trackball hole in the middle was cut as a point of reference but obviously will have to be cut higher on the final CPO.



Raw piping that will attach CPO to machine, I have yet to airbrush rust color on and add epoxy for leaky piping look.



Not applicable to arcade machine but thought I add my spider web gun as it took time away from the build. It plugs right into my compressor and just coated my house in spider web in a few hours.



Akuma, I will snag a photo of what the t-molding looks like for you but again I haven't gotten the wiring yet for illumination, so it will be kind of hard to get the full effect.

[Akuma]

Akuma, I will snag a photo of what the t-molding looks like for you but again I haven't gotten the wiring yet for illumination, so it will be kind of hard to get the full effect.

Hey, thanks in advance for that! Infact, I'm interrested to see what it looks like without any illumination.

Besides that: I like your project very much and think it will look great when it comes together!

[Neverending Project]

Akuma, I will snag a photo of what the t-molding looks like for you but again I haven't gotten the wiring yet for illumination, so it will be kind of hard to get the full effect.

That's great about the pic of the translucent t-molding and all... but how about a pic of your house covered in spider webs?

[bfauska]

And some info on the web gun.  I've seen the results of their use on movie sets, but never seen a good tutorial on how to make one.

[bluevolume]

Can you coat in-laws with spider webs using said gun?   

[WaRpEd]

How about a giant spider?

[dmworking247]

So here I was browsing the internet today and I came across translucent t-molding at t-molding.com ... Immediately I thought about putting EL wire behind the t-molding and lighting it up.

Sure enough, I'm not the first

I'm really interested to see that T-molding installed, especially if its lit up from the spine (another thread mentioning this t-molding only had it lit from the edge).

[Pun]

Sorry, it's been awhile since my last update on the machine. Essentially with the holidays, a Disneyland trip and birthdays, minimal work has been done on it. I will however get some photos posted of current state by this weekend.

Needless to say the El Wire looks pretty amazing. Part of the issue preventing me from moving forward on the project is the mounting of the CPO. As many of you know...it's really freaking heavy. And it's been difficult to reinforce the floating effect as promised, but I will be victorious.

P.S. - Halloween bash was amazing! Teaching myself solenoid triggers and other crap so I can incorporate animatronics into next years extravaganza.