HELP! How many buttons for the control panel

[Jeromebechaz]

This is my first ever time building a mame cabinet. And I really want to know how many buttons I will need for a 2 player control panel? I know I will need 6 buttons for each player 2 joysticks, 1 player and 2 players, player 1, player 2 start and the coins for player 1 and 2.
What else? Buttons on the side? Do you need escape and enter? Pause?
Please help

[Howard_Casto]

This isn't really a software question, but ok I'll bite. 

It wholly depends upon your personal aesthetic sense and what kind of interface you are using.  A lot of us (read myself) are purists and don't like admin buttons on our control panels.  Any additional buttons we might need are hidden inside the coin door and/or we have a keyboard stuffed in there for changing settings, ect..

Your most popular keyboard interfaces, the ipac and keywiz, both have shifted functions support.  So I don't need an exit key on my cp, rather I can press 1p start and 2p start at the same time to exit.  The same goes for any other admin buttons you might need. 

A joystick hack or something similar obviously isn't going to have this BUT in the case of mame and only mame, you can define hotkeys to functions inside of mame as well. 

So you have some options. 

Also... do you like the neogeo games a lot?  If so you might want to consider 7 buttons per player (bottom row three buttons with a 4th down and to the left of the first button, and 3 button on the top row) as it makes 4 button fighters easier to play.  It's also helpful for the run button for mk3. 

[Jeromebechaz]

yeah sorry i didn't realise where i was when i posted it haha.
to be completely honest i have no experience whatsoever with these, but i'm learning a lot from youtube and these forums.
i will probably go with the 7 button layout.

if i was to start building this i would end up going with the i-pac, but i was confused with it.

1. i am confused where the wires from buttons like player 1&2 start, exit, start, pause etc go?

[Howard_Casto]

You don't have additional wires for the shifted functions.  The keypresses are determined via the firmware of the device, so if you hold down 1 and 2 it knows to actually send the esc key. 

[Jeromebechaz]

ok but what if you dont want to do the 1&2 button press, you want a separate button.

also where do you plug things like guns in?

[Howard_Casto]

Well then you wire up a separate button... the keys you mentioned aren't special or anything.  All an ipac boils down to is a really fancy keyboard encoder (the pcb inside a keyboard).  You program it to have certain switches press certain keyboard keys. 

lol guns don't have ANYTHING to do with an ipac.  If you want guns, you buy guns. 

I think you need to go to the main website and read the wiki/faq/ect. 

[Jeromebechaz]

I will do that. Thanks for your help