The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: flynnb on January 20, 2023, 12:10:20 am
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I've been considering rebuilding my 4 player cabinet - going with a simpler design by removing the trackball, spinner, and the single 4-way. Currently, players 1 & 2 have 6 buttons and Players 3 & 4 have 4 buttons. I'm heavily leaning towards getting 4 Ultrastik 360s and setting up each player with 8 buttons plus 2 additional ones (start and coin/select/back). I understand that for arcade games, buttons beyond 6 (or 4 for players 3/4) would be overkill. However I want the 10 buttons (8 plus 2 coin/start) so I have sufficient buttons to match an XBOX controller for PC games.
Yes - I will still have an encoder for admin functions
Yes - I know I could put start/select buttons on the encoder
Yes - I know I could use 8 buttons and with shift feature I could press two buttons vs having a dedicated physical button --- but I like dedicated buttons
Yes - I know I can simply hook up an xbox controller - but that's not what I want. I have them connected today.
I realize that some/most people would find it sacrilegious to move away from 4 and 8 way controllers in favor of an analog controller but for the primary players of the cabinet (my teenage boys) they really don't have a point of reference to arcade machines. They don't know what they are missing - that's fine. Plus, and probably the main driving factor, I would like to play more PC games on the cabinet. I've done a lot of work to emulate a xbox 360 controller with my arcade joystick/buttons, and that works fantastic for a lot of PC games, but it falls short on having sufficient buttons and an analog stick. Examples of games I can't play are castle crashers or overcooked (there are many more). Those two both require analog controllers.
I wanted to do something different with wiring up the diodes so I played around with creating a PCB. I designed one (my first one ever) using easyeda and I'm sharing the results here for comments/feedback. It's designed to permit up to the most allowable virtual pushbuttons from the ultastick. I'm also going to re-post a diagram I found in post "Shift Key in I-PAC" by PL1 to show how the diodes should be wired up.
Please keep in mind that I don't have any ultrastiks purchased yet (still debating if worth the cost to rebuild, fingers crossed Andy from Ultimarc puts them on sale, and I don't have any spare time right now) so I can't test what I'm proposing anytime soon.
Posting for comments and to give some inspiration.
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Diagrams Attached
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Attached (3D View)
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I forgot to mention each board would be about 3 3/4" x 3 3/4" and I would have 4 of them installed (one for each ultastik).