Raiden Cab Project - New Pics with coin door. 98% finished (for now)

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Hey. I've been looking at this forum for a few days and some of these projects have blown my mind. In particular the viewlix slim cab, bender foldable mini bartop, and especially the futuristic one made by the Australian guy (sorry I don't remember your name). Anyways, I just recently finished my own cabinet which I built with the help of this book : http://www.amazon.com/Project-Arcade-Build-Your-Machine/dp/0764556169/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254715706&sr=8-1. I want to show it off a little and see what you guys think about it. Also I want some opinions on what to do with the control panel artwork. Right now it is plain black, but I'm a little bored with it and want to add sth. I didn't originally have a direction for the art, I just decided to go with Raiden since i found an original marquee and I happen to like shmups.

-In the pic of the full cab the sideart is just done in photoshop for now. Right now the only actual art on the cab is the marquee.

-The other two pics are just ideas I did in photoshop.

I want to keep a blue color scheme going to tie in with the controls and the marquee. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. and if anyone gets inspired to create sth that would be awesome!  

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Oh. also, before anyone nominates me for crapmame , I know there are some issues with the bezel that I haven't worked out yet. They stick out like a sore thumb on the control panel shots. Oh, also I forgot to mention that the monitor rotates. I made the rotation setup by mounting the monitor to a lazy susan. However, because of where the power cords come out of the back I wasn't able to mount the monitor in the exact center (it is a little low). As a result, when the monitor is in the rotated (counter clockwise) to the vertical position it is a little off center towards the right. It looks ok though in the horizontal position.

[bradx]

the control panel is enormous for such a simple setup.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

There is a lot of empty real estate, but I wanted to be able to comfortably play 2 player fighting games without bumping elbows.

[syph007]

I've never seen a 6 button group at that extreme of an angle.  Does that really work well for fighters?

[BurgerKingDiamond]

It's the most comfortable way for me to play, although I will admit though that I'm not very good at fighters (I do like to play them though). I haven't seen any others like it either but It feels good to me. When I rest my hand on the panel it is the most natural way for my fingers to go. It allows me to have my elbow out at more of an angle. (I'll take a pic with my hand on the panel to illustrate.)It also works well for the shmups I play like Dodonpachi. the far right button on the top row for bombs and the one to the left of it for shot.

[emphatic]

If you're gonna play fighters, don't you have the wrong Raiden pictured? 



Also, don't you use full auto on C in DoDonpachi?

[BurgerKingDiamond]

well I actually like shmups more, but I wanted to have to option to play fighters as well. So thats why I did a 6 button layout. You bring up a good point about the auto fire in dodonpachi. I assign a button to it the normal way but it doesn't work when I play the game. So I just got used to playing it without. It would be nice though to not have to constantly mash the fire button the whole time.

[Franco B]

I like the graphics but unless for some reason you (and all of your friends) forearms have been broken and reset at the wrong angle that will be the most uncomfortable layout ever.

Unless you are a mutant I recommend taking a look [here] Unusually the site seems to be down right but I'm sure it will be back up soon.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Maybe my mom lied to me about my father or sth, and I have some mutant blood,but it feels comfortable to me.

[Franco B]

Fair enough if it works for you, it works for you. Good luck with it 

[BurgerKingDiamond]

 Thanks Franco.

[shponglefan]

I like the second CP artwork.  The button angle does seem extreme, but if it works, it works!

[BurgerKingDiamond]

thanks shponglefan. I was leaning towards the second one too. One concern of mine is having the raiden logo too much. It's already on the marquee, which isn't going anywhere,and I really like it on the sideart. So my question is whether I should take it off the control panel. Your thoughts?

[emphatic]

You bring up a good point about the auto fire in dodonpachi. I assign a button to it the normal way but it doesn't work when I play the game. So I just got used to playing it without. It would be nice though to not have to constantly mash the fire button the whole time.

The game has built in auto fire for button 3 (C), but you have to enable it in the "dip switch" settings. This way, you can hold C and then press and hold A when you wanna use the Laser. Sorry for the off topic, but it is important! 

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Emphatic, that is great news! I'm gonna try it out as soon as I get home. BTW, what is your high score? Mine is 19.... million. I'm so close to 20 million and an extra ship but I keep blowing it. The problem is that my combos aren't that good. On a good run I can make it to the level 5 boss. However,a good ddp player would have a much better score by the time they got that far.

[shponglefan]

thanks shponglefan. I was leaning towards the second one too. One concern of mine is having the raiden logo too much. It's already on the marquee, which isn't going anywhere,and I really like it on the sideart. So my question is whether I should take it off the control panel. Your thoughts?

I don't think it looks bad on the CP.  You could always shrink it down a bit so it's less prominent.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

I think the only way to settle it is to make a cheap print and place it and see.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Hey emphatic, I booted up dodonpachi and tried to find the dip switch settings you were talking about, but I don't see any. Can you help me out? Now that I know that it's possible to have autofire I want to play with it! Oh btw, after seeing your website I realize that your DDP high score is probably much better than my 19M

[emphatic]

Hey emphatic, I booted up dodonpachi and tried to find the dip switch settings you were talking about, but I don't see any. Can you help me out? Now that I know that it's possible to have autofire I want to play with it! Oh btw, after seeing your website I realize that your DDP high score is probably much better than my 19M

Sorry for the misinformation, you have to go into the game's service menu. Press F2 on your keyboard. And no, I don't think my score is higher, but somewhere in that ball park. I've played E.S.P. Ra.De. plenty more (I have the PCB). Look at this site for more info about the best shmups: http://www.world-of-arcades.net

Now that PS2 emulation is getting faster, you can play DoDonpachi Dai Ou Jou (even though it'll feel like a kick in the balls compared to the much friendlier DoDonPachi) and ESPGALUDA. ESPGALUDA is probably my favorite CAVE shmup.

[Shortbus]

Thats a clean looking cabinet, the artwork looks great with the black.....and if the layout suits you, cool....nice job....

[Kman-Sweden]

The CP overlay is really cool. 

[BurgerKingDiamond]

@ Kman thanks, I'm gonna clean it up in photoshop and do a test print. I'll post a pic whenever I actually get around to that (The fact that the cabinet is playable makes procrastinating way to0 easy.)

@Short bus thanks, I'm glad someone had sth to say other than how strange my button layout is. Whatever though, I know this thread would be more interesting if I had progress shots, but I built it before I had ever hear of this forum and didn't see any need to document it at the time. Too bad though, it probably would have turned out even better with all the inspiration on this site. Hopefully I'll do another one in the not too distant future.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Emphatic thanks! I'm using auto-fire now w/DDP. It's hard to get used to but my fingers are getting a much deserved rest. And as far as ps2 emulators go, my computer would never be able to run one of those. WHY doesn't CAVE release any of it's shmups outside of Japan? Ahhhhh.

[emphatic]

Emphatic thanks! I'm using auto-fire now w/DDP. It's hard to get used to but my fingers are getting a much deserved rest. And as far as ps2 emulators go, my computer would never be able to run one of those. WHY doesn't CAVE release any of it's shmups outside of Japan? Ahhhhh.

Mushihime Futari will be region free at least for the 360. 

[BurgerKingDiamond]

So I just installed the control panel overlay and plexi glass last weekend. I did the design in photoshop and illustrator(for the logo). It is just a mix of 3 pics I got from a series of google image searches. A couple notes...
1) This cabinet is not meant to be a reproduction of an actual Raiden cab. I have no idea what an original Raiden cab looks like. I just like the game and when I found the marquee for sale I decided to use it and come up with the rest as I went along.
2) I know someone is bound to comment on the screws. I know the buttons would have been enough to hold down the plexi, but I didn't like that the plexi was able to be lifted up so much on the perimeter. It made me nervous so I decide to put in some screws. They are pretty small and I'm gonna paint them black when I get around to doing some other paint touch up. So I think it will still end up looking pretty clean .
3) Please try to ignore the ugly bezel for now. My next move is to redo the monitor rotation scheme and get the monitor centered better and then improve on the bezel.

[ammitz]

Why not paint the srews blue instead of black?

Btw I can understand why you would use screws, with that size of a CP and only a few centered buttons to hold it.

[emphatic]

I would keep them metal and also add some shiny, nice washers. Perhaps you can find some really cool bolts or something.

[SpaceHedgehog]

There are hex key bolts that you can buy that come with different finishes and have a nice rounded top. I'll see if I can find a link to them . Effectively they're the ones used on the MadCatz TE fightstick:

[BurgerKingDiamond]

thanks SpaceHedgeHog. Find that link if you can. I like the look of those bolts.

[SpaceHedgehog]

No problem! From what I've read, they are M5 size button head hex socket screws. You should be able to source these fairly easily. There's a link to some examples here:

http://www.instockfasteners.com/PRODUCTS/hexsocketscrews.asp

If you fancy something with a little more bling:

http://forums.gameaxis.com/showthread.php?t=1513682

[BurgerKingDiamond]

I got rid of my old 17" Rotating LCD and replace it with a 27" Sony CRT TV for $70 connected through S-Video. It fit's perfectly ( I guess I got lucky). The picture quality is awesome (except for reading text in windows, but I just use the laptop for stuff outside of MALA). To anyone who's using an LCD monitor I would really recommend just putting in the biggest CRT TV that will fit in your cab and connect it through S-Video. It makes a huge difference.

Coming up I plan on making the bezel, replacing the black T-Molding with blue, laminating the exterior and adding a coin door. I'll post pics/updates as they come.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Can someone explain to me how to insert picture in the middle of text instead of having all show up at the bottom of the post?

[Kurt]

You need to host them at www.photobucket.com or something along the lines.

It's free then you link an image to the img hosted address from photobucket etc etc.

[Hewskie]

or you can just post them in the sticky at the top of project announcements. make a blank post of your pictures, then open the post and copy paste the link locations to your project thread post with an img tag

[BurgerKingDiamond]

    I want to put my ps2 in my cabinet along with my PC so I can play Gradius V and Raiden III and a few other suitable arcade games (perhaps my 360 too for some Mushihimesama action..) . Right now I have my controls connected to my PC through a cthulhu board, which is similar to an ipac.

    What I want to do is connect all my grounds from the joystick and buttons to a grounding point, and then from there run one wire to the ground of the cthulhu and another wire to the ground of the hacked ps2 pad. Then for each button I just run two wires from the NO lead, one each to the corresponding lead on the cthulhu and ps2 controller.

This way I won't need to have a switch or anything. It will automatically work for whatever system is turned on at the time. Is there any reason why this won't work, or is a bad idea? I don't know much about electronics. Is it ok that the cthulhu and ps2 both share the same ground? That's the only thing I could see not working... If so I could just put a switch to have one or the other grounded to the joystick/buttons at a time.

Thanks for reading.
BKD

[BurgerKingDiamond]

Man... I wanted to laminate my cabinet but I just found out how expensive the laminate is. At $50 a sheet it's gonna cost me $150. There goes that Idea. Maybe in a year or something I can justify dropping that much money, but with all the other stuff I still have to do to this cab that's not gonna cut it right now. Even though I hate it I guess it's painting time again... Damn. I hate painting.

[Epyx]

Lol...ya good paint jobs require *time*...laminating is very straightforward and *quick*.  Time is the main reason I started using laminate.  For me it's time versus money...hours upon hours for a good paint job and sanding is worth the $150 for me personally. 

However, a nice paint job can't be touched. Good luck!

[saleem]

Man... I wanted to laminate my cabinet but I just found out how expensive the laminate is. At $50 a sheet it's gonna cost me $150. There goes that Idea. Maybe in a year or something I can justify dropping that much money, but with all the other stuff I still have to do to this cab that's not gonna cut it right now. Even though I hate it I guess it's painting time again... Damn. I hate painting.

you just dont get that nice finish that laminate gives.drawback is laminating takes time,instead of just cutting a piece and fitting it,its got to have laminate fixed to it,then dry,then route and then fix to cab.but,$50 is decent price if its new from a store,here in uk its too expensive,luckily there was an ebay seller who was selling laminate for £15 a sheet and i got 3 lovely blue sheets and with delivery it cost me £65,just convert that to $.

but,i would rather laminate now than paint.

i think if you look at a painted cab and a laminated one i think laminate will justify itself.
 

[Epyx]

you just dont get that nice finish that laminate gives.drawback is laminating takes time,instead of just cutting a piece and fitting it,its got to have laminate fixed to it,then dry,then route and then fix to cab.but,$50 is decent price if its new from a store,here in uk its too expensive,luckily there was an ebay seller who was selling laminate for £15 a sheet and i got 3 lovely blue sheets and with delivery it cost me £65,just convert that to $.

I would disagree only in that laminating is *much* quicker than a great paint job.  A side of a cab can be laminated and routed within 45 minutes:

-5 minutes to trace outline of side on laminate
-10 minutes to slop on glue
- 20 minutes to dry
- 5 minutes to press laminate on side
- 10 minutes to route it

The easiest way is to trace the side roughly on the laminate...glue the side and then the area within your tracing on the laminate...fit the piece glue down onto the laminate (also with glue) once dry and press together...then route flush trim...don't try to route it and then fit it...way too complicate and prone to error.

You can't say the same for a paint job...well you can...if you pour the paint on the side and call it done  

EDIT: Lamination Tutorial