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What additional buttons are essential?
nickynooch:
So I'm completely new and apologize in advance for my ignorance on the subject :)
However, I am excited to be in the beginning stage of building my 1st arcade cabinet (the planning stage).
I have read the wiki (which I must give much respect for whoever created that).
How accurate does the "shift" button work in a cabinet? I am trying not to have a million buttons on my cabinet (simple street fighter button style 6+6 and player one and 2 start buttons) Is it possible to have no "extra" buttons for escape, next list, insert coin, etc and still function ok in your loader by using "player one start button" as a shift button without problems?
Once again I am stunned at the community here. Seems very cool, and I'm stoked to find people helping each other out!
Thanks!
-Nooch
Ginsu Victim:
If you use a key encoder like the Ipac or Mini-pac from www.ultimarc.com, you can set a shifted key (default is P1 start), then set every input to have a shifted function. It's possible to use the setup you're wanting.
nickynooch:
Awesome! Thank you very much!
ahofle:
It's pretty accurate. The one issue I've run into with shifted buttons is that occasionally a shifted function is accidentally invoked. This usually happens with 2 people playing some coop quarter-pumping game and one player hits player one start at the same time another player hits a shift function key. The most common occurrence is both players pressing their start buttons at the same time and the game exiting! You can reassign the shift function to something other than 1 if it becomes a problem though.
One other minor suggestion would be to not shift the coinup buttons. IMO that is something each player should be able to do themselves.
Ginsu Victim:
I had some friends over to test the new arcade cabinet. Their kids mainly played it.
I thought, if anyone is going to find these shifted functions by mistake, it's them.
So I got the chance to let them play and see what problems they ran into.
By the time they left, I had edited my shifted functions (got rid of three of them), ditched the 4-player versions of Konami beat 'em ups (Simpsons, X-men, and TMNT), and fixed some UGC maps in Ultramap (pretty much found out DON'T USE EASY 8-WAY).
Definitely avoid P1+P2 start to ESC. Luckily, I'd thought of that before ever doing anything.