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My arcade cabinet (unorigional title)
GaryMcT:
You are further inspiring me to make mine Jamma-capable. . the main reason I want it is to put a JROK Williams board in there. :)
romshark:
--- Quote from: drventure on August 27, 2009, 05:49:14 pm ---Cool robot.
You +really+ need to integrate that robot (or some robotics) into that arcade cab!
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Something I'd like to do. However, I don't see it working on a video arcade machine. Maybe on a pinball table, or some sort of redemption machine. I did a previous "show" where the robot did an underhanded thow movement I thought came out nice. Maybe it can sit on thatpurplestuff's "That's How I Roll!" Skeeball machine.
"Come on up, folks! Just roll the ball like this [makes movement]."
Heh, maybe I should program up a demo for fun. Need to brush up on my animatronic skills.
Realistically, while it may work for videos and such, the type of motors wouldn't handle being powered and moving all day. I've actually burned out the torso motors (two of them, actually, at $55 a piece! :angry:) Disney and such use hydraulics and Pneumatics for their stuff. That's why they work so well. They have a little bigger budget, too. :'(
A great arcade I used to frequent in the next city (gone now :cry:), used to have some sort of target or skeeball machine, or something that gave tickets for hitting certain targets. In the back of the machine was an animatronic green alien. I think it tuants people to play, and says stuff during play. Wish I knew what made the alien move, but I bet it was a heavy duty DC motors and positioning sensors, kinda like an oversized Furby.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, I think the "alien" only had flashing light patterns in it's eyes. It had a voice, but the mouth didn't move, nor did any other part of it's body. Oh well.
--- Quote from: Ond on August 28, 2009, 02:49:26 am ---That video goes for over 10 mins! - yes I watched the whole thing. Love the 'Rick' lock out feature, jeez I need that on all the pc's in my house full of curious kids. I'm not sure I understood the button mapping though maybe you could explain that here, it sounded like a good setup. Oh yeah very cool robot.
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Video was a bit longer before! Had to trim stuff out, but managed to keep the good stuff. For most uploaders (excluding directors), videos can be up to 11 minutes.
The Rick Astley video plays using Media Player Classic. There's a special copy (saves to it's own .ini file, so it doesn't interfere with any other installed copies) that plays at full screen, and has every button except quit (mapped to F2) turned off, even the right click mouse button menu. Make a shortcut to the player, putting the video and -fullscreen in the command path, and put the shortcut where Mala can load it. Mala filters out the other controls that I couldn't disable. Took some time to configure everything, but the outcome was great.
About the control, do you mean about the layout mimicking the Hanaho Hotrod joystick, my shift key / pause stuff, or the 15 pin connectors under the panel?
--- Quote from: GaryMcT on August 28, 2009, 03:42:59 am ---You are further inspiring me to make mine Jamma-capable. . the main reason I want it is to put a JROK Williams board in there. :)
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I think being JAMMA compatible (or at least having one cabinet that is) is a good thing. You can play stuff that doesn't work quite right in MAME, and legally play your favorite games (if you can find the boards!)
At least you have your eye on an easy to get board. Try buying the boards for Bubble Bobble (not JAMMA, but I can get an adapter) or TMNT Turtles in Time. They're either hard to find or can be crazy expensive. I'm looking for both, but don't want to spend a whole lot.
Ond:
--- Quote from: romshark on August 28, 2009, 06:52:00 am ---About the control, do you mean about the layout mimicking the Hanaho Hotrod joystick, my shift key / pause stuff, or the 15 pin connectors under the panel?
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I was asking about the shift / key pause setup, can you explain how that works? I know you described it in the video but I'm not sure I understand. I'm getting ready to start planning my own two player button config mapped through Mala so I'm interested.
romshark:
I'm using an Ultimarc I-Pac as the controller interface. This has a nice feature called a shift button, where a button (normally P1 Start) can be pressed along with another button to send a completely separate key command. For example, normally, holding down P1 Start and pressing P2 Start sends ESC (escape) to the computer. Keeps the admin buttons down to a minimum (only 1 for me, really. In fact, using P1 Start as the shift, you don't need any admin buttons at all! Good for MAMEing a real cab, but making restoration super easy.)
I'm not sure if I explained it well enough, but Ultimarc goes into detail here (bottom half of the page).
On my cabinet, I wanted to use one button as Pause / Shift button. Why? The shift button only sends it's regular code when you let go of it. I'd rather have my start button send "1" as long as I have it held down. Just a nitpick, really. Or maybe I'm just being too anal. :lol So I decided that if there was going to be one admin button, might as well be a pause button. Everyone needs a drink, use the bathroom, answer the phone, ect.
This page says how to change which key is the shift key (towards the end of the page).
drventure:
I'll second romshark on the ipac shift feature. It's VERY cool.
Configure it right, and if you ever drop to windows explore from Mala, you can setup desktop shortcuts with hotkeys to logout, poweroff, or even restart mala or start some other frontend.
So even if you do drop to windows every once in a while it's trivial to get things rolling again (no reaching for the keyboard).