Street Fighter History - The Cabinet

[Jdurg]

Hey everyone.  I'm making this post to act as a placeholder for the project that will be worked on slowly over the summer.  About 7 years ago, when I bought my house, the first thing on my mind was building an "Everything" arcade cabinet with a Family Guy theme.  I had bought a beat-up coin door on E-Bay for $10 and fully restored it to perfect condition, and I also bought a ton of buttons, a few joysticks, a spinner, a trackball, etc. and began building the cab.  I got as far as building the control panel and getting the artwork printed out when a realization came to me.  My plans on using a CRT monitor would result in having a cabinet WAAAAAAAAY too big to fit into my house or through any doors.  As LCDs at the time looked pretty crappy for proper emulation, I had to terminate that idea and put it to rest.  Since then, I've been using the coin-door as a really fun piggy bank for quarters, and kept the buttons and joysticks etc. in a closet. 

A few years back, I saw the parts and whatnot lying around and got the urge to build.  I built a simple joystick with a Street Fighter IV theme to it and it looks and works amazing.  I was able to play the emulated games on my laptops quite readily and it sparked the interest in me again.  Still, with LCDs not looking good in a large size I decided that it wasn't going to work through.

Last year, I was at the gym and hurt my left shoulder pretty badly using poor form and too heavy a weight when doing shoulder presses.  Turned out I tore the labrum in my shoulder and had some heavy impingement in the rotator cuff area.  The pain built up through the past year, so I had to stop going to the gym while I got the shoulder problem investigated.  One night, while looking into what was going on with MAME, I saw something about this HLSL feature.  I gave it a try, and after much tweaking I was able to get my laptop LCD screen to look pretty much spot on to a CRT monitor.  I was stunned!  I then came upon the true, arcade dumps of Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV:Arcade Edition and was able to get them playing perfectly on my laptop.  With this possible, and the HLSL effects in MAME, I thought that I'd be able to go ahead and actually build a cabinet that would be sized to fit through doors and in my house, but use an LCD monitor.  This way, I'd have the full, crisp graphics for playing SF4/SSF4:AE, but also get the nice CRT look of the old games.

On March 4th, I underwent surgery to repair the damage in my shoulder.  They repaired the torn labrum, the fraying all over my rotator cuff, and removed a section of my clavicle to release the impingment of the shoulder joint.  Let's just say I was in HORRIFIC pain while recovering, and mentally messed up from the medication.  I've had the past two weeks off of work and each day things are getting better.  (Start physical therapy next week).  While I've had this time to think about future plans, I was able to get more thoughts about my cabinet.

This will be an upright cabinet for two players.  Each player will have a start button, joystick, and 6 buttons laid out in the Street Fighter arrangement.  I already purchased a 27", 1080p LCD monitor with a resolution almost the same as my laptop, but with much better brightness, contrast, etc.  Modifying my existing HLSL .ini files to work on my in-progress computer build and the new monitor won't be that tough.  The image looks INCREDIBLE!  Underneath the monitor on the front bezel, I'll have three small pushbuttons (basically the same ones you see inside the coin-door for service and test credits); Exit, to take me back to the front-end which will likely be HyperSpin; Pause, to pause the game; Cheat, to bring up the cheat menu and with a combo of buttons turn all cheats on or off immediately.  I'll be customizing some code in MAME to let me do this readily without having to go through the full series of menus.

For the cab measurements, I plan on having a cab that is 75.25" tall, 28" wide, and 22" deep at the base.  (The control panel will jut out about 8" from the front).  I'm still working on calculating all of the angles, lengths of angled boards, etc.  LOTS of scrap paper on the ground right now.  Heh.  This size will allow me to get the cabinet around and through doors in the case I decide that I need to move it to a different room, or if I ever move out of the house as I'll be taking it with me. 

The them of the cabinet, as you can tell by the title, is Street Fighter.  The artwork, which I am still looking to procure or may need to slowly create by myself, will have an image of Ryu performing a Shoryuken on the 1p side of the cab, and Ken performing a Shoryuken on the 2p side of the cab.  The marquee will have the words "Street Fighter History" on it with the lettering seeming to morph from that used in SF1 to the ink style used in SF4.  The CP art I haven't looked into yet, but want to keep it simple.  The color of the cabinet will be a beige/tan color as I believe Martin (If I'm remembering the user correctly) used that color scheme on the cab he built and I really liked the look of it.  The artwork will take some time, and if things really get difficult with regards to finding the Shoryuken images I'm seeking, I may even think about paying for that to be done.  (It all depends on how much money is spent on other things in the build as I know that custom artwork is not a cheap thing due to all the work involved).

For the build, sadly I do not have the equipment or space needed to actually cut the sides or many of the large pieces.  Things like the control panel I can build as I've done that before in my first failed attempt at a cab, and have the needed tools.  I hate having to do it, but for the sides I'm likely going to need to look for a business that will custom cut boards to specific measurements and outsource it to them.  Aside from the computer, that will likely be the most expensive part of this build.  For the computer, I'm going to put together a system based on the Intel i7 k-series of processors as those are pretty damned affordable (<$500) and can also be readily overclocked to higher speeds which is critical for MAME.  I'm going to use a Corsair closed-loop watercooler for the CPU since I don't have to worry about it fitting in a case (The computer will be mounted to a board and not inside a case), and am still looking into what graphics card to use.  The graphics card is critical since HLSL needs a good graphics card to work properly and not cause stuttering.  I still need to look into this to ensure that I don't overspend on a card, but also don't get one that will struggle after a long session of playing.  The OS will be Windows 7.1 as it is very stable, very good, and very compatible.  Plus, it's relatively cheap to get a 64-bit Professional OEM copy.

Now for the games.    This cabinet will only be used to play games which have the 6 button layout of Street Fighter, or that only use a few buttons.  (I might go and get a switchable 4/8-way stick so that I can easily switch to 4-way to play older games like Donkey Kong, Pacman, Ladybug, etc.).  Mortal Kombat, as much as I LOVE that series, will not be on the cab since the button lay-out is too different from the SF layout, and I'm not fond of using the middle punch/kick buttons as block or block/run.  I will have Street Fighter, Street Fighter 2:WW/CE/HF, Super Street Fighter 2, Super Street Fighter 2:Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 1/2/3/Zero-2-Alpha, Hyper Street Fighter 2:The Anniversary Edition, Street Fighter EX/Plus, Street Fighter EX2/Plus, Street Fighter 3:New Generation/Double Impact/Third Strike, Street Fighter IV-1p version(Customized to have the US copyright screen and also have the English voices), SSF4:AE (1p AND 2p versions), as well as games like Darkstalkers, Marvel Vs. Capcom 1/2, etc. etc.  All of the SF style games that use the 6 button layout.  I will also include a section of other games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, NFL Blitz, NBA Jam, etc. that can still be played perfectly fine with the CP layout I will be using.

For the front end, I'm thinking of using HyperSpin as I think it looks great and also have references for basically having the software hide Windows entirely.  Still, I am looking at other options since for some of the games, I want to have the ability to have a "sub-menu" of sorts to house all the different ROM revisions of the game but not have to scroll through all of them.  E.g. have it so that if I click on the Street Fighter 2:The World Warrior game it will launch the newest revision of the game, but have an option to load older revisions if there is a desire to do so instead.

So this long post will come to an end now.    As I won't be able to do any heavy lifting for a few months due to the shoulder surgery, the things I can tackle now like artwork and the PC build will be underway.  I am hoping to get the PC built soon so that I can start loading the software, tweaking it, setting up the HLSL settings, and get the monitor calibrated to look like how I want it.  I'll make posts here infrequently when I have updates or questions about the build thus far.  I'm really hoping to get this completed by my birthday in August as a kind of "birthday present" for me. 

[Jdurg]

Alright, a tiny bit of progress made.    The monitor I purchased (a 27" 1980x1020, I believe, LCD panel) arrived much earlier than expected and I tested it out by hooking it up to my laptop.  No dead pixels, and the SF games from MAME looked amazing, and SF4/SSF4:AE were stunning.  This is going to be great.

I haven't made any build progress yet (though I am now out of the sling fully and started physical therapy), but I did some rough mock-ups in Google Sketchup.  The program takes some getting used to, and I'm sure later on I'll go and make a more detailed model with full use of objects to give an accurate representation.  Still, what I've done so far is pretty good and gives me a general idea on how this will look.  Let me know what you think.

[jongunz]

The top looks huge.  Big marquee.

[Vigo]

The top looks huge.  Big marquee.

It don't mean butt if it aint got that jut.

[yotsuya]

The top looks huge.  Big marquee.

Agreed. Take it back a bit - it doesn't have to be flush with the control panel.

[Malenko]

seems inspired by Dynamos, I'd say look em up and sort out the top area.

[Jdurg]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Yeah, this is somewhat dynamo inspired.  However, the plans for the cab were built off of a Mortal Kombat cabinet plan that was on jakobud's website.  Amazingly, there are ZERO plans available on the internet for the mass-produced Dynamo cabinets.  I also must say that the perspective of the images makes the marquee seem a lot bigger than it really is.  By the measurements, the marquee itself is 26.5" wide by 8.25" tall.  (And this is the actual marquee area, not the borders).  Underneath the marquee, I want to ensure there is enough room for speakers and the marquee lighting.  I'm getting better and better with using Google Sketchup, so will be making some further modifications to my 3D image once I get more familiar with the software.

I just wish there was software out there that would allow you to draw items on a 2D plane, then expand them to the proper 3D thickness, then completely and totally lock down the endpoints for each line so that you won't accidentally screw things up.  Then, the software would allow you to lock the edges of items together so that you can perfectly line up items.  Some limitations in Sketchup are that you can't assign angles with which to draw lines.  E.g. if I want the monitor to recess from the bottom point by x-degrees and be x-inches in length.  Sketchup does not allow for that.

Over the next few days, I'll fiddle around in Sketchup some more and at least try and get the sides completed as individual groups and lock them down.  I'll also be getting a whole bunch of cardboard sheets in order to mock-up in real dimensions in real life what the machine will look like.  My father, amazingly enough, seems pretty into this idea of building a cab and is willing to come with me to get the large MDF boards I'll need to use for the sides and cut them at my parents' house, then bring them down to my place in his truck.  Kind of stunning, and once my shoulder is back to normal use (Physical Therapy is FAR WORSE PAIN THAN I COULD EVER IMAGINE), I'll be able to really get going on this.  I think next week, I'll finalize my decisions on the computer components and at least get that all set-up and the HLSL specifications in MAME modified for the exact setup I'll be using in the cab.

[SORHP]

Just a few tips... Gozer in google sketchup has hundreds of arcade cabs already ready to go if you are planning on building your own ...
Having myself build 3 cabs from scratch, I'm glad to say I did it, but never again from complete scratch! My advise on saving some time and coin... Look around your area and find a fighting cabinet that you only have to refurbish a little and that will accommodate your LCD , sell the guts in it to get your money back if you can't find an empty one.  If you get lucky and find a cabinet with a tri sync monitor, you can ditch the LCD and buy a newer ati video card and get emu drivers for it that will allow you to play sfiv ae on a real arcade monitor (google the info, it's all out there) and be able to play the classics and classic fighting games without having to deal with mame slowing down trying to process hlsl.

If I were in your shoes with your shoulder, I would not build, it's too strenuous when you are injured, I would go search out a cabinet you like, there are a lot more out there in people's garages than you think, and even if you have to spend 500 on a cabinet, the nicer the better, every time I build from scratch, it always costs more of everything (think about the time and thought the cabinet builders put into making the cabinets , they had to be comfortable to stand at, have the correct button and joystick pitch and spacing) plus all of the hardware that comes with a complete cab.  It's a huge project to take on especially with pain lurking around. 

Hope everything goes well!! I can't wait to see what you come up with!

[Jdurg]

Thanks everybody for the feedback.  Taking a look at the model in Sketchup, yeah, that marquee item was angled way too high up, and was way too large.  Now that I have fiddled around with Sketchup a bit, I am more adept and drawing items so I made some modifications to my cab.  I've attached the images below.  Overall, they look SOOOOOOOO much better.

Also, with regards to the purchasing of an already existing cabinet, that is something that I took a look into a long while back.  The main problem with that is the depth of standard arcade cabinets.  Due to the use of CRT monitors, they are just way too big to fit through the doorways and passages in my house.  In order to bring a cabinet into the house, I would need to disassemble it outside, then reassemble it once in the house.  In addition, SF4/SSF4:AE really need to have a good, high resolution widescreen monitor in order to look right.  The availability, cost, and inability to easily repair/replace a funky CRT monitor just puts it completely out of the question. 

For the slowdown caused by HLSL in MAME, at the moment I have a laptop with a 2.5 GHz Intel CPU and an nVidia GeForce 8700M GT graphics card.  It handles HLSL perfectly fine, except for when I've been playing for some time and the heat build-up in the GPU causes the chip to throttle down.  This is a problem only because it's a laptop and cooling is horrifically inefficient in comparison to a desktop system.  With the cabinet build, the cooling will not be a problem. 

Another reason why I cannot go with a pre-built cabinet is that the monitor is already purchased.  Therefore, the cab design MUST be built around the size of the monitor which is 25.25" wide and 15" tall.  I also already have the standard HAPP coin door in my possession (leftover from my first, failed cabinet attempt many years ago), so that is another thing that the design of the cabinet is based around.  With all the effort needed to take apart a standard cab before bringing it in the house, then muck around with the build in order to get my monitor to fit in properly, it would be just as much effort to modify an existing cab than it would be to proceed with a build from scratch.  Plus, in my scratch build, the design for assembly will allow the sides and whatnot to be bolted together so IF I ever had to take the cab apart, it could easily be done and then reassembled in a different location.  So these are all thoughts that have been well thought out for quite some time.

My shoulder is killing me at the moment.  Physical Therapy has brought me back to the level of pain that I had when I first awoke from the anesthesia.  Shoulder surgery is called the most painful surgery to undergo for a very good reason.  Even myself, with a huge tolerance for pain, vastly underestimated how much this hurts.  (During PT the other day, while they were yanking my arm around, the pain got so bad that I actually passed out from it).  So with the custom build, I am able to slowly put this together over the next few months.  I would love to have this completed by early August, but am also fine with it taking a bit more time if needed.  Things like the base of the cabinet and some internal structure, made by using standard lumber, can readily be completed until I get the time to work with my father to cut out the large side panels and some back panels.  (I'd like to be able to have Home Depot cut the standard, square shapes for me, but they don't give a rat's ass about accurate measurements when they cut, so that's a no-no).

Anyway, please see some updated images below.  I still plan on fleshing out my model in Sketchup, but think that this is a good approximation for right now.

[EMDB]

If your PC can not handle HLSL you could try a hardware solution. The mini SLG from one of our forum members (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,128970.0.html) works great in my CAB

 



Looking at your new design I think it is much improved. Only the angle of the monitor seems too steep to me. You must be really small to face it frontal.

[Jdurg]

Yeah, I'm not worried about the PC I'll be using being able to handle HLSL.  Power won't be an issue.  My laptop struggles after a little while because the GPU throttles down due to the high temperature, not because it doesn't have the "oomph" to handle it.  The card in the PC I'm putting together will NOT have any cooling issues whatsoever.  The SLG looks good, but for the image of Donkey Kong you have on there it is completely wrong.  Scanlines on DK should be vertical as the game uses a vertical monitor.  The SLG can't emulate that correctly, but HLSL does just fine.

The updated design does look much better.  Mucking around with the angle of the monitor is one of the things I'm looking at.  Based on the current model, the angle the monitor sits at is 8.10 degrees which does seem a bit steep.  I'd like to push that back to only around 5 degrees as that will one, reduce any issues with viewing angle, and two, allow the monitor to be back a bit more so that players aren't too close to it when standing at the control panel.  I'll have a better idea of the proper angle and whatnot once I get the PC built, the software put together, and the monitor angled properly at the mock-up height so I can see it first hand.

[Jdurg]

Just had a little bit of fun messing around in SketchUp.    I did modify the angle of the monitor so it now angles back at 4.10 degrees instead of 8.10 degrees.  This appears to be much better, and is so minimal that it won't impact the viewing angle of the LCD.  I also started screwing around with the artwork on the cab.  In the images below, the only "yes, definitely going to be in the artwork" are the images of Ken and Ryu.  I plan to use those, but just don't know what to do for a background yet.  So I quickly threw something together.  Frankly, I think it's just a bit too bright.  Would like to have a somewhat darker, or "Earthier" style to it and not so bright blue.  Still, was just fun poking around in Sketchup with it. 

[yotsuya]

I want to commend you for not going the "collage of 100 Street Fighter characters standing around in a big unlikely group looking tough" route. It's nice to see some originality.

[Jdurg]

I want to commend you for not going the "collage of 100 Street Fighter characters standing around in a big unlikely group looking tough" route. It's nice to see some originality.

Haha.  Thank you.  I am not a fan of the clip-art copy/past stuff that I see a lot of, nor am I a fan of cramming so many characters into there that it just becomes way too busy.  From the start, I figured a simple Ryu on the P1 side, and Ken on the P2 side was the best way to go.  I initially planned to have an image of each of them doing a Shoryuken on each side, but no matter how much time I've spent trying to search through images on Google, I couldn't come up with satisfactory images of each of them.  I'd either find one with them facing the camera, then the other would have his back to the camera, or vice-versa.  So these images I found are from the HD remix of 3rd Strike, and I think it looks pretty good.  It's just the background that they are placed in which is causing me some creative block.  I don't want to just plop them on there with no background, as that looks like the ugly clip-art design that so many people use. 

I'm thinking I could take the draft images I made, and perhaps instead of having a blue sky up above, turn it into a night scene with clouds and lightning.  This way the electricity could wrap around into the marquee, and it would reduce the overall brightness.

Another idea I might use is having just the images of Ken and Ryu, but instead of being full images one half of the cab side would be random lines of ink and whatnot which on the side closes to the player would have combined to form the image of Ken for P2, and Ryu for P1.  I can mess around in Photoshop and see what pops up.  Eventually, something will pop up.  I still have time as eventually I'll have this printed on some vinyl and apply it to the cab sides when the build is underway.

[Jdurg]

Alright, did some more fooling around with applying art to the cab, and I think I might have something I'll be good with.  I think it still needs something up near the top, perhaps "Street Fighter" or something to that effect, but I like this dark, empty grass field type image invoked from the SFA2 game.  It will be hell vectorizing this, but in the end it will be worth it.  I'm liking this dark look to the cab.

[DarakuTenshi]

I see a lot of white around Ryu... Are you going to remove that? My assumption is that Ken also has that same thing. That is a simple fix and will make the end product look so much better.

[markc74]

Liking the graphics on this - are you going to lower the front panel graphics so the fence lines up with the sides?

[Jdurg]

Yes, the artwork is definitely going to be cleaned up.  These are just rough drafts.  For the front, the image will be adjusted so that the fence rope lines up around the cab.  I was just throwing this together pretty quickly in order to get a mock-up together.  I'm not spending too much time on the art at the moment, because eventually I will need to convert these from a raster image into a vector one so it can be printed out in a large size without a loss of quality.  But I do like the look of the darkness and solitary image of Ken and Ryu in a grass field at night.  I still think something is needed at the top of the cab, but I'll work on that once I finish up work on the marquee so that I ensure it doesn't look bad.

Just happy that the art has kind of kicked into my head, and I think this will look pretty good once I get it all cleaned up and finalized. 

[Jdurg]

Alright, I'm definitely having too much fun with SketchUp.  :p  Below are some updated images where I have the ropes/fence aligned better, and I also included a Street Fighter logo pulled from a Street Fighter IV image.  The only issue I have is that due to the angle of the text, the logo looks PERFECT on the P1 side, but is either going to be cut-off, or downscaled a bit too much on the P2 side.  I'll have to figure this out before heading to Illustrator to do the painstaking task of vectorizing everything.

[yamatetsu]

You could vectorize and change the angle of the logo like this .
Looks like Street Fighter is going down, but at least it would follow the shape of the cab 

[Jdurg]

Small update here.  I started mucking around in Adobe Illustrator and actually kind of like how the art turns out when I auto-trace it.  It's just that when I enlarge it, it doesn't look as "nice".  So I think when it would be enlarged to full scale it wouldn't look so great.  But, I could always enlarge it to the proper size and then clean up that larger size.  The auto-trace kind of makes the art I put together in Photoshop looks like a Dali-type "splotchy" design.  Really gives it a neat look.

Just to get practice in Illustrator, I'll be fully vectorizing each letter in the Street Fighter IV logo so that I can readjust them for use on the P2 side of the cabinet.

For the build of the PC, I did make some progress.  I went and picked up a 60 GB SSD drive to install the OS on and perhaps the front-end as well.  I then saw that I have an SATA capable laptop sized mechanical drive that is 200 GB lying around.  I can use that for the holding of the games and artwork, etc., and perhaps even store some 1980's music on there for use as a jukebox if needed.  I have a set of computer speakers that I will use for the cab.  I need to measure the dimensions of the speakers and the subwoofer to ensure the cab design will fit them.  I picked up a highly rated 750 Watt power supply as that should EASILY handle all the components inside the case, as well as the lights for the coin reject buttons and counter in the coin door.  Finally, I picked up the OEM edition of Windows 7 Professional 64 bit for use in the cab.

I'm holding off on buying the videocard/CPU/RAM/motherboard until I'm fully ready to put the PC together since waiting longer on those aspects only means that the prices could drop.

[Malenko]

the Street Fighter 4 font is all over the internets. Its also pretty easy to copy the "look", this took about a minute to do.

[Jdurg]

Yeah, that's a good point.  When I was building a joystick in the style of SF4 a few years back, I went and found the actual font that the guys at Capcom used and use that for designing the artwork on the stick.  Still, getting to know how to use Adobe Illustrator can't be a bad thing.  I've really begun to learn how the trace feature works in the software and may be able to create some great tracings once I fully clean-up the raster image in Photoshop.

In other news, I've got all the parts for the computer now.  Couldn't wait any longer, and with my financial savings plan having proven that it works, and getting paid on Monday, I could easily afford to put together a system that could perhaps be overkill.  Heh.  The specs for my system are as follows:

--CPU - Intel Core i7-4820k CPU running at 3.9 GHz with TurboBoost, but is very capable of some better overclocking which I will be giving a try.

--Corsair Hydro Series H100i water cooler for the CPU.  This will allow for some good overclocking without the need of a massive heatsink/fan combo.  Plus, since the computer won't be confined to a case I'll be able to have the radiator out of the way.

--Four 4GB 1600 DDR3 RAM at 1.5V 9-9-9-24 timing SDRAM.

--MSI X79A-GD45 Plus LGA 2011 Intel X79 Motherboard.

-- MSI Gaming N760 TF 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 760 2GB 256-bit videocard.  My current videocard in the laptop is plenty powerful enough to use HLSL, and this card will definitely be able to without any issues.  I chose this one because of the good cooling it has, and numerous great reviews.

--Corsair HX750 750W CPU with modular cables. 

--Corsair 60 GB SSD for installing the OS on for quick booting.

--Western Digital 10,000 rpm 250 GB Mechanical HDD for game storage, music storage, etc.  Had this lying around the house.

--Windows 7 professional, 647-bit OEM.


Around the house I have speakers and a mouse/keyboard, as well as an optical drive I'll use for the installation of the OS.  Just wanted to get enough of the system to build it, ensure it works, overclock it a bit, ensure it's stable, then begin working on the software I'll use all within the return timeframe in case something is wrong with one of the parts.  I actually have an empty case I can use to mount everything in, but will likely need to do some modification to the case for some of the parts.  Since this will all be inside the cabinet, it doesn't really matter how it looks as long as it is stable, secure, and functional.  The CPU cooler radiator will not fit into the case so that will go on the outside and be secured in some manner.

The previous stuff I ordered from NewEgg got here in less than 24 hours (their shipper is only in New Jersey and I'm in CT, so it gets here AMAZINGLY fast).  Can't wait to put this together this weekend and really break it in and push me even further towards the physical build. 

[Malenko]

Welp if you need any help with the art, let me know.

[Jdurg]

Welp if you need any help with the art, let me know.

Thanks Malenko.  I've seen your work here and appreciate your offer for help.  Looking forward to getting this thing built and heavily used. 

[Jdurg]

Alright.  Computer is all built, and as I type this Windows Update is installing the bevy of updates.  Beast runs REALLY cool and will be fun to mess around with.

I also did some work in Illustrator and came up with a marquee that I think I will use.  The one seen in the images below is just an example.  I think instead of using the SF4 style text, I'll go with the old school SF text as I have that all set up in Illustrator already.  I've gotten pretty good at using illustrator.  I need to work on the lightning/electricity around the "HISTORY" text in the background, as well as the gradient in place.  So just use the images below as an example.  Along with the other art, I'll be doing some major clean-up here to get a good tracing in illustrator so that I can scale it to any size without any loss of quality.

[EMDB]

Alright.  Computer is all built, and as I type this Windows Update is installing the bevy of updates.  Beast runs REALLY cool and will be fun to mess around with.

I also did some work in Illustrator and came up with a marquee that I think I will use.  The one seen in the images below is just an example.  I think instead of using the SF4 style text, I'll go with the old school SF text as I have that all set up in Illustrator already.  I've gotten pretty good at using illustrator.  I need to work on the lightning/electricity around the "HISTORY" text in the background, as well as the gradient in place.  So just use the images below as an example.  Along with the other art, I'll be doing some major clean-up here to get a good tracing in illustrator so that I can scale it to any size without any loss of quality.

Try adding the grass from your base as background for the marquee. It looks too clean and black now. It should pop out attraction people to throw in coins 

[Malenko]

Id lose the SF logos on the sides too.

[Jdurg]

Yeah, the logo on the sides does seem out of place, plus, it's not possible to have it properly placed on there due to the way the lettering slants.  Still, I need something on there in order to fill up the space otherwise it just looks too empty.

I do want to use Ken and Ryu on the different sides of the cab, but I'm also thinking about going in a different direction and perhaps not having any character on there. 

For the marquee, I definitely want to go with the "HISTORY" in the background with the Street Fighter text in the front as that looks good to me.  I'll see about working on other art directions for it so that there can be some stuff in the background.  Maybe a brick pattern reminiscent of the SF1 title, and then perhaps the sides of the cab can be a skyscraper type thing like in the SF2 intros.  Of course, the Ken and Ryu would have to disappear as it would look out of place.  I would then go about using some type of ink-pattern styling for the control panel to represent SF4.  This would give some styling from 3 of the 4 main games in the series, and could also easily be designed in illustrator so I wouldn't have to worry about loss of quality when scaling.

Hmmm...........

[Malenko]

I think Sagat and Dan Hibiki would be better on the sides. Yattaze.....oyaji!

[Jdurg]

Alright, some more artwork possibilities.  Seeing as how SF2 is the most iconic iteration in the series, and the intro is so widely known, I went and got some screen caps from the intro and turned it into some art.  This, of course, is a rough draft of it and the final product will be fully drawn in Illustrator, but the design involves a lot of concepts that are easier to draw in illustrator than my previous art thoughts.  I completely omit all characters from the game, though I think for the "Street Fighter" on the side I should move the "sign" up a bit more so it's closer to marquee area.  Man, I have so many ideas and can't seem to settle on one.  Lol.  Perhaps the next one will be super simple and not contain any type of difficult to illustrate art.  Heh.

(BTW, haven't touched the Marquee on this one, so it still has the old design.)

[Malenko]

step backwards.

[leapinlew]

With that side art, you can use the Crazy Climber guy and the cast from Rampage too!

How about Ryu on one side throwing a Hadokun and Ken on the other side throwing a fireball and the middle of the arcade is the splash when they hit.

[Jdurg]

With that side art, you can use the Crazy Climber guy and the cast from Rampage too!

How about Ryu on one side throwing a Hadokun and Ken on the other side throwing a fireball and the middle of the arcade is the splash when they hit.

That's a good idea too.  I initially hoped to find images of each of them performing a Shoryuken, but there is no art available through Google images that I could find.  I'll take a look at the Hadouken images as well, since that too sounds like a good idea.

[leapinlew]

This was one of my favorite street fighter cabs: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=84649.0

[Jdurg]

Right now, this is probably the longest thread out there with no actual build progress.  Lol.  Blame that on shoulder surgery and it being winter. 

Anyway, I spent some time on artwork, and I found a setup that I REALLY like.  It's something that is also easily traced into a vector file so that re-sizing won't ruin the detail.  I am definitely going to be going with this one, though further tweaks to the marquee to use the new background and make better use of the lightning effects is in order.  I also need to create the CP top artwork as well.  One final thing, which I know people here have said they aren't really a fan of, is the text "Street Fighter" on the side.  Without it, the sides look a bit too barren and clip-art like.  With it, however, it still seems to be out of place.  Perhaps if I work on the letter sizing, spacing, and background for the text I can make something that works better.  For now, it is sitting here until I figure out a better way to handle it.

I still don't have the CP top created as I haven't wanted to focus on the effort to get that generated until I finalize the background and sides.  With that now done, I should be able to work on that a bit.  I have a feeling the artwork on this cab will cost me a fortune due to the fact that every facet will have art on it.  I will likely create everything in vector format, then once the final size of the cab is set in stone, scale up the illustrator file to that size and turn it into raster so that I can put more detail and effects into there.  Will likely have to ship a DVD to the place I decide on to print the artwork due to the file sizes.  lol.  Anyway, below is the updated cab with art in sketchup.

[swaffar]

I have to admit, I prefer your SFA2 theme.

[yotsuya]

I'm going to have to agree with Swaffar. To be honest, I feel like you've taken a step backwards. This one seems too abstract and nebulous, whereas your original design was rooted in the history of the game. I enjoyed it's simplicity, the two central characters onthe sides, ready to do battle, using realistic looking characters and not the later 'roided out specimens. I'd love to see you get back to that.

Obviously it's your design and you should do what you want, but I feel that your first draft was the best. Good luck!

[Jdurg]

Yeah, art is the tough part.  I need to keep in mind that a complex art choice made in Photoshop won't exactly look perfect scaled up to the actual size of the cabinet.  Especially if the images I pulled from the web are low resolution.  Just for kicks, I took the SFA2 themed art I put together and scaled it up to what the real life size would be in photoshop.  (My laptop nearly died due to the file size being humongous).  When I looked at the image at full size, it was pretty much unrecognizable.  That meant that unless I vectorized it in Illustrator it would not be usable.  With all the blades of grass in the image, it wasn't going to be done anytime in the next decade.  Lol. 

I've gotten better and better at using Illustrator and finally got the image of Ryu from my latest art try vectorized.  It looks AMAZING.  I am really happy with it.  Granted, it did take me two full days to do that this weekend, but I'm now starting on the Ken image.  Using Illustrator, I'll be able to remove a lot of the excessive musculature from him, and get his image to look like Ryus.  By getting all this done in Illustrator, I'll be able to see what the full art will look like when fully expanded.  I see that Illustrator also has some raster effects which I think I'll need to clean everything up once it's full size, but I haven't yet delved into that yet. 

Thankfully, with the weather getting nicer and nicer here in New England, I may be able to get some very basic construction done such as the base of the cabinet and the control panel area so I can at least work on the location of the actual buttons and joysticks more.  I've got the computer I built refined, but still need to work on the HLSL settings to get everything finalized, and also figure out the front-end I'll use.  Sadly, my shoulder is not progressing as well as myself and my doctor thought it would.  I'm hoping right now that I won't require a second surgical procedure to clean things up. 

[eds1275]

But couldn't you vectorize one piece of grass, copy paste rotate ever so slightly? I did that with grass on a project and the results looked great.