Question about wiring 3 sided cocktail cab?

[xtravbx]

Well I'm currently in the process of building a 3 sided cocktail arcade. The middle section will feature 2 sidebyside players. The sides will have a standard controller setup on either side, such as something like this



So what do people do with the opposing end players?

Are they wired up on an IPAC2 with the same side by side controllers? And you just use those for flip games? Or do people wire those in as 3/4 players?

I'm building mine like that, but I guess I don't understand what people use the opposing ends for, and what player I would wire them in as. Would I use a 4 player Ipac? 2 player? Im kinda lost. Thanks!

[Franco B]

You have a similar 3-sided setup as I have on my cocktail. You have a few options depending on what type of joysticks you are using.

Judging by your model you will have 52 microswitches/leafs that need to be connected If you are using 4/8way joysticks and buttons.

You can wire each microswitch to a separate input or you can 'double up' some of the controls like the left horizontal joystick + vertical joystick on the left hand side, left horizontal buttons + vertical buttons on the left hand side etc. If you did the same for the right hand side that would give you approx 26 inputs required and you could use the IPAC2 FS32.

If you want to wire each input independently you would need an IPAC4.

If you wanted to use the U360s you could get away with out using a separate encoder at all if you could get away with hooking up eight buttons to each U360.

You could also just hack some cheap USB game pads. If you wanted to use U360s and wanted to wire 9 buttons to each player you could hack one USB game pad for the extra four buttons if you are dead set on six buttons and three admin buttons per player.

What I would suggest is to reduce the number of buttons to the vertical CPs to two or three. There are not many vertical playable games that require more than three buttons.

If you were then to use U360s you could connect the extra four admin buttons to the spare inputs of the vertical U360s.

Personally I'm using 4/8way joys and an IPAC4 purely because I have one left over from another build. I would still use an IPAC4 in your situation just to keep things simple in a sense and stop an issues with buttons being pressed on the CPs not being used (think (big)kids stood round the machine at a party).

No matter what solution you choose you can map the buttons in MAME etc so everything works ok.

 

[CheffoJeffo]

My first cab was a 3-sided cocktail (a design that I still love -- 4-ways on the verticals and 8-ways on the horizontal) and I wired up both sets of Player 1 controls to the Player 1 inputs on the IPac and same thing with the Player 2 inputs. It works fine, except when somebody grabs the "other" set of controls. This mostly happened when the kids were smaller, but still happens now when they want to annoy each other.

I entertained putting in a "kill switch" on each CP to just cut the common ground, thus deactivating the CP in question, but it hasn't been a big enough issue for me to worry about.

If I had it all to do again and had an IPac4 lying around (wait a minute, I do have an IPac4 lying around!), I would probably do something along the lines of what Franco B suggests and wire the P1 and P2 controls to the horizontal side and the P3 and P4 controls to the vertical sides, although it would take some time to reconfigure the inputs for the verticals. Since I spent the time configuring the verticals to set dips for cocktail mode, etc, it's not a lot more work.

[Turnarcades]

I've been wanting to build a 3-sided cab for myself, though I'm more curious about how you get on setting up the games/software to rotate as you see fit. These are the three things that got me stuck when I thought about it:

Do you have a front-end that runs in vertical mode or does it boot in horizontal?
Do you have to sit at the horizontal controls to read the list and then move once you've launched it?
How do you get the games to flip for 2-players in MAME vertical games if it is not supported?

[CheffoJeffo]

Do you have a front-end that runs in vertical mode or does it boot in horizontal?
Do you have to sit at the horizontal controls to read the list and then move once you've launched it?
How do you get the games to flip for 2-players in MAME vertical games if it is not supported?

Responding based on what I did at the time.

Horizontal (MAMEWah).
Yes.
I don't.

[Turnarcades]

Isn't it then pointless having a three-sided design? Wouldn't it just make sense to just build a single end panel or stick with the side-by-side controls? I know it's better to play vertical games vertical but part of the point is to have two ends for head-to-head play.

Has anyone here with a 2-ended cocktail found a way round this or used an external app for screen flipping?

[javeryh]

My first cab was a 3-sided cocktail (a design that I still love -- 4-ways on the verticals and 8-ways on the horizontal) and I wired up both sets of Player 1 controls to the Player 1 inputs on the IPac and same thing with the Player 2 inputs. It works fine, except when somebody grabs the "other" set of controls. This mostly happened when the kids were smaller, but still happens now when they want to annoy each other.

I entertained putting in a "kill switch" on each CP to just cut the common ground, thus deactivating the CP in question, but it hasn't been a big enough issue for me to worry about.

If I had it all to do again and had an IPac4 lying around (wait a minute, I do have an IPac4 lying around!), I would probably do something along the lines of what Franco B suggests and wire the P1 and P2 controls to the horizontal side and the P3 and P4 controls to the vertical sides, although it would take some time to reconfigure the inputs for the verticals. Since I spent the time configuring the verticals to set dips for cocktail mode, etc, it's not a lot more work.

Wow were we separated at birth?  I was going to post the exact same thing right down to my first cab was a 3-sided cocktail that I used an iPac2 on but if I could do it all over (which I plan to eventually) I'd use an iPac4.

Also, TurnArcades, I think in Mala you can configure the FE to face horizontal or vertical (with different lists) depending on which controls are touched but you need an iPac4 for this.  I'm not sure about screen flipping for player 2 if it wasn't part of the original game design but maybe there's a MAME setting for that?  A lot of vertical games with alternating 2 players have a cocktail mode.  Games with 2 player simultaneous would obviously not work vertically.

[Ginsu Victim]

Current nvidia and ATI cards have hotkeys for screen rotation. Couldn't you set a button that rotates the screen so that your FE rotates to where you need it? FE might not look that great rotated a certain way, but it's worth a shot.

[xtravbx]

Thanks a ton for the replies everyone. I'm still stuck though with same questions like turnarcade! Say I do wire it up each controller gets their own input, the only thing I plan on using the opposing end controllers for is for flipping vertical games where it goes back and forth between player 1 & 2. So really I could still double up since they are still just player 1 and 2, but I think I will do it as an ipac4 just for the ability of 4 people to play the cab, even at wonky angles.
But to reiterate - for vertical games, does MAME flip those as they should be fliｐｐｅｄ？　Ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ　ｉｆ　ｎｏｔ，　Ｉ’ｍ　ｎｏｔ　ｓｕｒｅ　ｈｏｗ　Ｉ　ｗａｎｔ　ｔｏ　ｗｉｒｅ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｔｈｉｎｇ　ｊｕｓｔ　ｙｅｔ．．　Ｔｈａｎｋｓ　ｅｖｅｒｙｏｎｅ！

[CheffoJeffo]

But to reiterate - for vertical games, does MAME flip those as they should be fliｐｐｅｄ？　Ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ　ｉｆ　ｎｏｔ，　Ｉ’ｍ　ｎｏｔ　ｓｕｒｅ　ｈｏｗ　Ｉ　ｗａｎｔ　ｔｏ　ｗｉｒｅ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｔｈｉｎｇ　ｊｕｓｔ　ｙｅｔ．．　Ｔｈａｎｋｓ　ｅｖｅｒｙｏｎｅ！

For games where the original boards supported cocktail flipping, you set the dipswtich and it should work just fine. There are some games where cocktail flipping doesn't work in MAME, but none in my play lists.

[caver01]

I just finished my own 3-sided portable cocktail and faced the exact same issues. I ended up using an IPAC4 and wired the vertical end positions as players 3 and 4, with 1 and 2 being the horizontal side-by-side.

I LOVE this configuration, although I will admit that there is some input programming necessary for some games. I use a game favorites list, and as I add something to it, I try every configuration for the best orientation and control setup which does lead to some remapping of the inputs.

For me, every player has a start button and a coin drop, so on vertical games, I usually double-map P1COIN and P3COIN (the vertical player 1) so you can hit the P1 coin or P3 coin for a credit, depending on where you are sitting. I do the same thing with the start buttons.

Cocktail DIP switches are in a lot of the vertical games, but I found a few that don't work properly. For instance, DigDug seems to put the player2 sprite in the wrong place when flipped for some reason. So, for these, I keep it rotated and leave the DIP switch to UPRIGHT.

I am using the MA front end in horizontal mode only. It's a cocktail, so if a person can't move 2 feet or turn their head to select games, well, that's just silly.

I skipped the trackball for space, but I did drop in two TurboTwist2 spinners! This will let my friends and I play Blasteroids side-by-side, Off The Wall (sente) and a couple of others. Although my spinners are on the horizontal side, my panels kinda wrap around the screen, so it's easy enough to just use the left spinner at the vertical side for games like Tempest. By the same token, two-player SmashTV works like a champ by sitting horizontally and grabbing both sticks!

For me, the programming time was worth the effort to get vertical games running vertically, cocktail games flipping if they can, and you just can't beat 4-player Gauntlet action!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L7L7BNoo9A[/youtube]

[javeryh]

Wow - sick!!!

[Ginsu Victim]

The DigDug cocktail flipping bug is confirmed at mametesters.org. Keep an eye on newer releases for when the bug gets fixed (it has been broke off and on since .125)

[caver01]

Thanks for the FYI on DigDug. I'd really like that to "flip" and this makes sense since I am running .125 or close to that I think.

[Ginsu Victim]

Where are the fans on that cocktail?

[caver01]

Speaking of cocktail issues, I found that running Omega Race in cocktail does something wonky with the Player 2 spinner. In addition, Omega Race cocktail mode doesn't flip, but that suits me better, actually, since my P1 and P2 spinners are side-by-side on the horizontal. Two-player switching works fine in that game, but the analog input for P2 is screwy, even if I swap spinner mapping (or even use the SAME spinner). Take it back to UPRIGHT and it's fine, but you gotta move out of the way when you change players. I guess I should head over to mametesters.org and log this if it hasn't already been done.

[caver01]

Ginsu Victim,

Let's talk about my cab over on the other thread I just created for new project announcements:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=89491.0

Sorry, xtravbx, I did not mean to hijack your thread, but merely show you that you can go ahead and wire a 3-sided design with success if you like my example.