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Sanity Check my ideas?
Praxi:
One thing I'm still trying to understand, the 7 button neo geo is just a layout right, and some of the buttons are just repeats?
PS and thanks for the welcome!
Chris John Hunter:
Welcome Praxi
Very few games use more than 3 or 4 buttons. The 7 button Neo Geo layout is overkill. Neo Geo games had 4 buttons originally in a curve going up and as I remember a lot of the games only utilized 3.
7 Buttons can sometimes be useful for playing fighting games. But I personally feel any game that uses more than 6 buttons is badly designed dross.
The originating reason we have six buttons at all is because of Street Fighter 2. Which came out in 1991. Previously there was wait for it! Street Fighter. (Which was a fairly good but not supreme side scrolling 1-on-1 beat em up a bit like Way of The Exploding Fist and many others of the time. )
which originally employed a 2 pressure sensitive pad-DEPENDS HOW HARD YOU HIT THE PAD WOULD MAKE YOUR FIGHTER PUNCH OR KICK HARDER system. But this resulted in lots of machines being broken and people hurting themselves. So they redesigned it and replaced it with Light Medium Heavy for both Punch and Kick, resulting in the 6 way button system. When Street Fighter 2 came out on Consoles, the most faithful conversions- six button controllers were sold specifically for SF2.
N:B I cant remember now if they came bundled with some versions but I believe they might have.
Then we have six buttons. For everything before SF2, 1990 you need 2,3 buttons. Throw in a Pause button and you get 7.
I personally like to keep the system control buttons on the underside of the control panel and stick with less buttons.
:angry:
What people tend to do is, keep all the buttons the same colour. Which is madness. The original games used colours to differentiate what each button did. Sadly this has fallen by the wayside somewhat and people have become drones/sheep and copy each other.
My two player button panel is quite unique because it uses different colours to show which but does what. All consoles did this. All arcade machines did this. Also its not a two player its a one player 2 joysticks setup (4 way) and (8 way)
I just find it easier to know what things do with Red is fire. Green is grenade rather than Button 3. Which one is 3 again?
Anyway, if your not a fan of fighting games, Mortal Kombat and SF2/3/4 modern games you can happily get away with 3 buttons. A lot of the old games only need a 4 way joystick also. 8 way can hinder older games because the game is looking for just UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT and not TOP RIGHT etc. So every time you press TOP RIGHT on a 8 way and its a 4 way game, it goes. What? You didn't do anything. But on screen a ghost has just had Pac Man for lunch.
:cheers:
Chris John Hunter:
--- Quote from: Praxi on June 17, 2013, 11:35:32 pm ---I am wanting to make a mame cabinet, I want to support a lot of games! More specifically, I imagine playing a lot of Gauntlet with the family (so 4 player) and the occasional Donkey Kong (think I want joysticks that support 4 and 8 way). I have been doing a lot of reading, and want some sanity checking of my ideas so far. I'm going to use a Raspberry PI running pimame. I plan on running a pair of GP-Wiz40-Eco USB to support 2 OMNI2™ 4/8-way joysticks and 2 Roundhouse Arcade and Flight Sticks. I plan on 8 buttons for the OMNI2's and 4 buttons for the Roundhouse's. I planned on building a Control Panel similar to this one. http://www.ogredog.com/mame_cp_construction.htm
Any comments or suggestions people can make?
--- End quote ---
If money is tight and you want your kids to enjoy arcade games, Buy an old XBox with Coin Ops 5 from Ebay. And a Flat Pack Bartop kit. Plonk the Joysticks and buttons in the control panel. Assemble.
Praxi I think you might have seen another discussion some of us were having about R Pis. That only holds true for OLDER games. Its also quite a challenge. Easiest way is to get an old pc with win XP and 1mb ram and install Mame on it. Put it in a or build a four player cabinet. It will happily handle all the games you want.
There is no point putting a PI in a big cab. And you will need a big cab for 4 player so you might as well just put an old XP pc in there.
:cheers:
Chris John Hunter:
--- Quote from: Praxi on June 17, 2013, 11:35:32 pm ---I am wanting to make a mame cabinet, I want to support a lot of games! More specifically, I imagine playing a lot of Gauntlet with the family (so 4 player) and the occasional Donkey Kong (think I want joysticks that support 4 and 8 way). I have been doing a lot of reading, and want some sanity checking of my ideas so far. I'm going to use a Raspberry PI running pimame. I plan on running a pair of GP-Wiz40-Eco USB to support 2 OMNI2™ 4/8-way joysticks and 2 Roundhouse Arcade and Flight Sticks. I plan on 8 buttons for the OMNI2's and 4 buttons for the Roundhouse's. I planned on building a Control Panel similar to this one. http://www.ogredog.com/mame_cp_construction.htm
Any comments or suggestions people can make?
--- End quote ---
http://www.mameroom.com/Products_kits.asp
Check these guys out> You can design your panel with their software and they can do it for you. You can also buy kits made from them. I only say this because for a FIRST BUILD this seems quite ambitious.
shponglefan:
--- Quote from: Praxi on June 18, 2013, 02:03:55 am ---I thought some of the fighting games took 8 buttons? Think I got 8 stuck in my head on some tutorial I read, probably about console emulation. How many buttons should I go with then to meet the majority of the fighting games? 7?
--- End quote ---
IMHO, a general rule of thumb is:
8 buttons - console emulation
7 buttons - hybrid Neo-Geo/Capcom layout
6 buttons - Capcom fighting games (plus a few others)
5 buttons - Mortal Kombat games
4 buttons - Neo Geo games
Basically if you're not interested in fighting games, I would go with 4 buttons. If you are, I would go either a 6 or 7 button layout. Personally, I use a 7 button layout and find it extremely useful as I play a lot of Capcom and Neo-Geo games.
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