Hey guys,
I am all new to the forum, been reading around here and there for several months, but never properly introduced myself. Thats what I want to do now.
Before i describe my current project let me give you some background information:
I grew up in a small city in western Austria. As a little child, me and my family used to go to italy for summer vacation every year. Thats where i got infected with the arcade virus at a very young age. I remember saving up all my pocket money for those three weeks when i finally could play all the games, i longed for during the year. The arcades in italy were a lot bigger than at home (just the occasional machine in a shopping mall) and so these 'sala di giochi' as they were called, were a very special and magical place for little 6 year old Ben.
As i grew up, these trips to italy discontinued but i stayed true to playing videogames and a few years back i rediscovered MAME and all the games i loved so much as a child.
Then i read an article about the iCade and i realized that i had to have a full fledged arcade machine at home as soon as possible
1st build - Getting startedMy first attempt at building an arcade machine were pretty low profile as it was my first try at woodworking in general and i didn't manage to wrap my head around configuring a control panel. So i decided to use my ipad as screen and computer all in one and built a little arcade machine around it. Actually it's only a housing with speakers and a lit marquee. I printed some decals at a local copyshop and painted the whole thing black. The controls work by pairing a WiiRemote via Bluetooth and plugging in a common Wii Arcade Stick. The Mame4all App is installed on the ipad and wroks like a charm. That's how I got my first arcade fix and I was happy for a while.
2nd build - sizing upAfter a year or so I realized, that i hardly ever used the little bartop and decided to go for the real thing. As I had moved into a new (and far bigger) appartement in the meantime, space was not so much an issue any more. While reseraching the net I stumbled over this site, got hooked immediately and spent a lot of my spare time reading and planning everything out. I dont have to say this, as everybody already knows, but this community is so awesome! I got answers to all the questions that popped into my head and even to those, I did't even think of.
I decided I want to have a CRT monitor and as Scart-TVs are readily availible here in europe for literally no money i went that route with an 21' TV i had at home.
I got myself an ArcadeVGA video card from ultimarc, configuring was a bit of a hassle but as always during this project, I learned so much while reading on this forum and figuring things out.
The actual build was a bit tedious, I was very eager to finish and get the machine up and running so I hardly made any pictures.
Woodworking is not a thing I'm really good at so I made a few mistakes. Cutting the side panels and working with a router for the first time were some of the issues. But in the end I managed to get everything done.
For the heart of the system I used an cheap AMD processor, a gigabyte motherboard and a CF card as a hard drive via an adapter. The arcade VGA is connected to the TV by a modded VGA cable (tried to solder my own but ended up beeing too clumsy with the soldering iron and so i bought one from wolfsoft.de). Sanwa sticks and buttons are connected to an iPac.
The measurements of the cabinet are inspired by Defender, for the control panel and marquee I took Moon Patrol as a base and tweaked it to look more personal. The pixel graphic is an actual portrait of me that I got by supporting a kickstarter campain and I think it fits perfectly. In hindsight I went a little bit over the top with all the different artwork-approaches (Moon Patrol, Space Invaders, Defender and Gyruss, it's all in there somewhere
but i still like it.
I got everything printed at gameongrafix.com. Buttons, Joysticks and the coindoor came from arcadeshop.de and after months of planing and building, my first real arcade machine was ready for playing
Since this machine sits in my living room, it has become the center of attention for lots of guests, regular Track and Field Tournaments are held and i enjoy the hell out of playing a quick round of all the games, i loved so much in my youth - in short: it's totally awesome
But there is one more thing: since a few months I'm totally addicted to everything that resembles a vertical shoot em up
I'm playing Dodonpachi for at least 15 minutes a day, I adore the whole Cave gamelibrary and im getting better and better at those bullet hell shooters every day. You can guess what's coming up
3rd build - DanmakuA dedicated vertical cabinet - that's exactly what's missing in my ever-growing mancave (girlfriend is slowly coping with my new hobby
)
Things i want to do similar to the last build:- ArcadeVGA setupalready worked that part out. I installed the card in an pentium core 2 business pc that got sorted out recently at my girlfriends office. Connection was done again with a modded VGA cable from wolfsoft to a 21' CRT TV and everything looks pixel-perfect
Finding a MAME build that works with recent Cave games was a bit trickier but I managed to do so. (To credit this awesome company and not feeling like stealing their awesome work, I bought every game they released for iOS platforms. Mushihimesama, Espgaluda and Dodonpachi are lots of fun on iPhone and iPad too, i have to say
Lots of classic vertical games didn't seem compatible with this build so i made a little batchfile to run 2 different versions of mame from one gamelist. Again, every question that came up was allready answered by the allmighty BYOAC Forum:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,68419.0.html - simple control setupon my first machine I have 2 admin buttons for every player; way too much for daily use and guests really keep pushing those and messing with my config.
So this time just 3 Buttons per player, Player 1 & 2 Start Buttons and 2 coin switches. That should be easily enough to implement some admin functions (to be honest i just need escape.) I'm using the KADE encoder this time, very curious how this works out!
Things i want to do different:- pimped control panel I decided to implement a third Stick as a designated 4 way stick for some classics, (especially one of my alltime favourites Ms Pacman), using a Sanwa JLW i had lying around. As the KADE only has 20 Inputs, my plan is to wire this one to the same inputs as the player 1 stick.
- LEDsfor japanese shooters everything has to sparkle and shine, so i shelled out and bought 8 Electric Ice 2 buttons with RGB-Drives and a LED WIZ from GGG.
The P1 & P2 Joysticks will be Sanwa JLFs (still waiting for this order to arrive) lit up with a JLF LED Kit from Paradise Arcade shop.
Currently i'm trying to understand everything concerning wiring LEDs and configuring LED Blinky, but again, the BYOAC community has been very helpful:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,130635
- more attention to detailthat goes especially for cutting and routing the side panels. Last week i bought a flush trim router bit (which is pretty hard to come by in vienna). I also want to put more effort in painting and sanding the cabinet. Last time i could not wait to finish and ended up with just one coat of primer and one coat of paint. The result is not very impressive upon closer inspection…..
Also my wiring and general tidiness inside the cabinet has room for improvement!
- Design and ArtworkI am a big fan of Xevious, and since its kind of the first top down shooter and I really like the shape of the cabinet, thats going to be my template. I searched the net for measurements, didn't find any and ended up measuring everything from a picture of the cab, and tweaking it for my size. The cabinet is going to be a bit taller than the original.
I want to use the original sidearts, I just reworked the marquee and control panel graphics, T-molding color is going to be light blue.
Your feedback is very much welcome
Things i still dont know how to do:- I plan to recreate the original xevious lit graphic strip on top of the control panel, but i dont know about the monitor angle… Maybe change the screen angle to a more vertical one and implement some nice looking LED car speakers on the panel above, instead of the artwork panel from the original xevious?
- bezel: use the original one or maybe try and incorporate some more modern shooter elements into the original artwork? hard to decide….
Im really looking forward to this build and i will try to document all the steps! Maybe it can be a little help for someone facing similar problems as i do.
Thanks for really inspiring reads here on the board and for knowing everything i want to ask
Cheers,
Ben
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Topic: Vertical Scratch Build - dedicated shooter cabinet - FINISHED :)) (Read 11417 times)
