Main > Main Forum

What's up with the angling?

<< < (24/32) > >>

Vigo:
Well, one thing I will say in defense of "the industry" arguement is that Konami, Midway, Atari and Sega never had to deal with throwing 4 players with 20+ buttons between them, a trackball, spinner and God knows what else on to just one panel.

My point only really covers player 3/4 angling, not really a defense for P1/P2 angling, and you can make an easy argument that that much shouldn't be that much on one panel to begin with. But considering that an authentic arcade machines never used to dare taking up more than a few extra inches on each side of the cabinet, there isn't a whole lot of "industry standard" to cover some of the angling law on the frankenpanels.

BadMouth:
I don't get the "standing too close" arguement.

Which direction you push the joystick to move up has no bearing on how close you stand to another player.
A Gauntlet Legends CP has player #4 standing all the way on the side of the CP, but they still press the joystick toward the monitor to move up.
If they pressed the joystick forward in relation to themselves instead, they'd still be standing in the same friggin' place.

The appearance arguement makes no sense either, as you can't even tell which way a joystick is positioned unless it's indicated by the CP art or the bolts are showing.

The "feels right to me" arguement holds solid. (even if it feels wrong to me  :lol  )
The important thing is that you know ahead of time how most arcade CPs were done and why.
If you like angled better, it's your cab, build exactly what you want.

Green Giant:
Calm down guys.  I have solved dogfish's problem as well as the angling dilemma completely.

With my simple modification, angled sticks can work perfectly.


I presume industry execs avoided this as the added cost in materials would be bad.

Vigo:

--- Quote from: BadMouth on March 05, 2012, 12:31:45 pm ---A Gauntlet Legends CP has player #4 standing all the way on the side of the CP, but they still press the joystick toward the monitor to move up.
If they pressed the joystick forward in relation to themselves instead, they'd still be standing in the same friggin' place.

--- End quote ---

I don't think other players have much of an effect as well, but I guess I like to sit and play devil's advocate here.  :lol I would not rank Gauntlet Legends (non-pedestal) upright as a shining example of a well designed 4 player CP. You simply did not wan't to be player 4 on that machine. More than 10 minutes in and you would get a kink in your neck from playing with your head cranked to the side. Your wrist would get sore as you would try to correct your body position. Gauntlet 1 and 2 are not as big of a deal because there in essence is only one button you have to worry about. Potions were used few and far between.

I also have to point out that my Trog 4 player has the almost the same layout as a Gauntlet, when I bring in someone to play at player 4, they constantly get mixed up as to which direction is up. Sometimes they go from the angle they were standing, sometimes they go 90 degrees if they stood perfectly to the side. I believe since Gauntlet had the Atari Joysticks with the label to show which direction is up, as well as the tick marks on the CP art, it gives guidance to the players playing from a funky angle. Trog had Wicos and no art to designate up. It leads me to believe that towards the screen is not always the natural up for people who don't have that notion ingrained in their mind already.

In the end, that leads me to come at the same conclusion as you. For the people that want to angle, more power to you. It might, however, feel weird to me.

paigeoliver:
That would almost fix it. Now all we need to do is to add additional monitors on the sides for players that match the angles of the sticks.

Of course all this brings up the much more important reality that you aren't going to be playing more than a handful of fully populated 4 player games over the life of your machine unless you have 3 or 4 children (and do you really want to burden your least dominant children with cruddy angled sticks when they can barely see the screen).

4 player machines rarely saw much 4 player action out in the wild after they were a few months old and when they did it was mostly kids playing not adults.

I once owned a 4 player TMNT cabinet and had several 4 player boards that could go in it and when I had people over they would wait to play on it two at a time rather than all squish in at once.

Really, do YOU want to squish up against 3 sweaty adult nerds just to play the Simpsons? I sure don't.

Last time I played a fully populated 4 player upright was like 6 years ago and it was a Pong clone and the game lasted about 90 seconds.


--- Quote from: Green Giant on March 05, 2012, 12:32:03 pm ---Calm down guys.  I have solved dogfish's problem as well as the angling dilemma completely.

With my simple modification, angled sticks can work perfectly.


I presume industry execs avoided this as the added cost in materials would be bad.

--- End quote ---

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version