Mounting Controls in Acrylic

[ukchris]

I am slowly getting my cabinet plans together, I have the PC finally working and have tested the IPAC2 etc for controls, the next step is to plan the layout for the controls, for this I have a few questions, I'd me most grateful for some guidance.

1. Joysticks - I have (I think) two Ultimate Joysticks. It looks like they are designed to screw in from underneath but as I will be using acrylic I think I'll have holes cut and use a bolt instead. Regarding the central hole I'm not sure I know how big it should be, it looks like there is some sort of floating plate around the stick that is intended to cover the hole and "float", does anyone know of any instructions or tutorials for th ebest way to mount them?

2. Buttons - it seems most people go with six buttons per stick, this seems like overkill to me as I don't think I have played games that require more than two buttons. Would I really be making an issue if I went with fewer buttons? I realize I need something for controlling the front end but would probably use smaller buttons for that located elsewhere.

3. Spinner - I like Arkanoid and would like to add a spinner, I saw a couple on the HAPP site, will these plug straght in to the keyboard pass through on my IPAC2? As I'd like a spinner I think I need to plan ahead, especially to ensure there is sufficient clearance underneath if I decided to wait and add it later.

4. More buttons - What buttons (key mappings) are typical? Obviously there are usually at least two for the game, insert coin (do I need two of these?), P1 and P2, what do I want the others to do? I assume one for ENTER and one for ESC, any others? My goal is to use MALA as the front end although I have not tested with it yet.

Thanks for all the great advice so far!

Chris.

[TheChairmanH2K]

the six button layout is pretty standard if youll be playing fighting games such as street fighter, mortal kombat etc.  if you wont be playing fighters, even neo geo ones as they only require 4 buttons, the six would be overkill yes.

[ukchris]

Thanks Chairman, I think I'm going to go with 4 buttons per joystick then look at mounting some smaller buttons across the top of the panel for other controls like Escape and Enter and so on, hoping this will give me a more compact board as well as saving some space for a spinner mounted in the center.

I assume that for two player games that use a spinner (such as Arkanoid) the players would typically take it in turns and share one spinner, I need to confirm which buttons to use with it though as I want to be sure the buttons are to the right of the spinner. Need to test with Arkanoid if both players use the P1 buttons, from what I recall Arkanoid only had one set of controls as for the two player game they players take it in turns.

Any recommendations on a spinner? The Happ one?

Chris.