Project : Arcade - Control Panel

As I write this, I don't have my cabinet in hands just yet. That's my biggest problem to keep going with the project, obviously. I need measures and an idea of what kind of work I need to do on the cabinet itself, such as paint or marquee. Someone on the BYAOC Forums mentions that I'll probably bet some flak for destroying a classic cabinet, but main sisue right now is that I have little to no idea what I'll be getting.

The sole picture didn't say much, it was rather small. The guy himself doesn't seem sure if it's an Asteroid cabinet. When I'll get it, I'll post pictures to see what's to do. Then I'll see if I'll repaint it or just leave it as it is.

I'm also stumped for measures, as even if I have a rough idea of the control panel style, having the actual measures will help plan things out better. But here's the basic of what I intend to do.

-4 Player, 8 buttons. I already mentioned why. A standard NeoGeo 7 button layout, with one more next to the bototm one. That's mostly so I can thumb it, replacing the shoulder buttons for PS1 games for example.

-I'll be connecting the panel to an IPAC4 (I already have it) inside of the cabinet.

-Planning to have the control panel slide out of the cabinet, and be set on my lap as wanted to play on the big screen TV, hooking it up to PS3 and XBOX360. I don't want to downgrade the quality by having games run in the cabinet, I'd rather keep the cabinet for arcade and emulation only, but still want to be able to use the control panel outside of it.

To make this, I'm planning on using DB15 connectors. On the control panel, there'll be 4 of them. Inside of the cabinet, 4 as well, so I only need to slide the panel into place, and possibly lock it somehow, still gonna see how I can do that without having it looking bad.

When slid out, I'll use small boxes (that I call matrixes) that holds the innards of controllers from the consoles. I already have 2 MadCatz controllers for the 360, wired USB ones. Also have some old PS1-2 Controllers that I can undo, and use the PS2-to-PS3 USB adaptors.

With matrixes, I can literally hook it up to any game system as a result, as long as I can get some controllers to rewire. For example, I could rewire some Classic Controllers for the Wii, and simply hook it to a normal Wiimote. But right now there's no Wii games that would really make use of a control panel layout.

-Trackball. This one is still debatable. My first idea is to have one wired to a mouse controller, so it can be a dual purpose, as a mouse for administrative stuff (Frontend won't normally need a mouse anyway), and a trackball for games. The position of it is still up to thinking as well.

-For the looks, I was thinking of using the dual-layered model of Supercade. I wanted to put the trackball, a keyboard slotted in, and some adaptors to hook up N64 controllers. But thing is, the keyboard would kinda be bad esthetic wise. The trackball would also be more or less useless in games if it's high up there, even layered up, behind the control sticks. Yes I have nothing else to put there, so I might just make it into a similar, but single-layered. That also depends on the size of the cabinet I'll get of course.

-Ah yes, you might wonder 'n64 controllers?'. Main problem with the machine, as I noted before, is that you get no analog. So I got some USB adaptors that will allow m e to plug N64 controllers up, since I have N64 games emulated, it would give better results. I've seen other machines that did similar things, but I'm limiting it to N64.

I could slot in some Playstation controllers too, but then again I'm not putting PS games that wouldn't work without analog in the first place, due to the control panel (and if you're going to play with a controller, may as well play sitting).

And slotting in older controllers wouldn't be useful since the arcade layout has more than enough buttons already, unless the games really presses you to use the shoulder buttons. I don't remember any SNES games really needing them, or that couldn't work remapped. PS1 games though, more likely thanks to 4 shoulder buttons.

So all of those are on the planning table right now. I'm still gathering parts and waiting on the cabinet. Hopefully I'll get it before the weekend.

Project : Arcade - Extra Links

Most of the stuff I wrote about is not very detailed in links and such. That's because there's already many guides on how to go about making your own machine. I mostly googled up all of my data, but there's a few good links that shone through :

MAMEworld : Latest news for releases of MAME, but also links to just about everything you need to run frontends, from screenshots to marquees to various artworks, not forgetting INI and DAT files to make everything even better.

CPViewer : For those that like the extra detail, this program is nifty. It allows you to have a visual 'control panel' while navigating or even playing games. What is it good for? Well, most emulators and roms don't come with instruction manuals for what buttons does what. This is basically the replacement of the reminders drawn on actual machines panels. It shows on screen the use of each buttons, and you can customize it so it looks like your control panel.

BYOAC @ Arcade Controls : The entire website is dedicated to projects like mine, wether it's modding a cabinet or building your own. It has instructions or links to instructions, tips and tricks, and other stuff that will help you making your own. Among others, articles about monitor choice and setup, interfaces, control panels, sound, wiring and much more. Plus it has links to other projects so you can see what other people made, it can help getting ideas for your own.

Ultimarc and Happs Controls : Two of the best to order up the various hardware needed, such as joysticks, buttons and controller boards (keyboard encoders). Buttons and joysticks are obvious, but what about linking those to the computer? Or to the monitor? Ultimarc has made such controllers. There's two main controllers to consider :

Keyboard Encoder : They have a line called the IPac, which are controllers that allow you to remap what would normally be keyboard keys to the joystick. Normally a keyboard will have a limit of 4 keys pressed at the same time, and ghosting (pressing certain keys will result in a completely different letter appearing). Encoders allow you to avoid those. IPac2 and IPac4, for 2 and 4 players, along with a program to draw and map out your control panel visually.

Monitor adapter : Depending on your project, you may end up using either a TV, a monitor, or the original screen that was in the arcade cabinet (for the more authentic feel). TVs can be hooked with S-Video or adapters from VGA/DVI. Computer monitors are the 'duh' choice, but have higher resolution, so some people feel it doesn't look authentic. The arcade monitor is the obvious choice for that purpose, but you need some special connectors to hook it to the TV. For that Ultimarc has a graphic card that can hook directly the arcade monitor, or other adapters if you want to keep your own card.

They also have adaptors to took up newer consoles (PS2/PS3/XBOX, Wii) to your arcade monitor, or controller setup depending (i.e. to an IPac).

CrapMAME : Quite literally the opposite of the other links, this website is a Hall of Shame of various cabinet designs. It's a good laugh, but also a good guide at 'what to NOT do' when building your own. Some of them I might not agree entirely with the author though, but some points are valid. And some button layouts are simply horrid. Symmetrical button layouts for left and right players? Random button layouts?

More to come!

Project : Arcade - Setting up the PC

This part was the easy part of it really. I already ordered various parts for the actual arcade machine, but once my new computer parts arrived I was ready to work on the PC side of things.

The first thing was to clean install Windows. I could have used Linux and such, but I'm more used with Windows. The main problem is Windows likes to slow itself down with various crap, using up ressources. Alot of those, I wanted to turn off since I'm not even putting that machine on the net. Well not now anyway, I might consider it later for Kaillera use. Not that I play much online anyway, and I can always use other machines for that.

So for the purpose, I used NLite. It's basically a self-created installer that you can setup as you want to. For it you need your WinXP install disc, that's what the program starts it, and then strips the parts off that you don't want.

The wizard runs you through all parts that windows would normally ask later (like the CD-Key), so it becomes an automated process rather than asked along the way. Once done, you burn the result to a CD, and there you go, stripped-down WinXP. You can even give it drivers to be installed automatically (say, audio drivers, USB hub and what not). Plus you can add to the CD image before burning other stuff like NVdia drivers (that didn't want to auto-install like the audio drivers for some reason) or other programs.

Through the process, they put in red stuff you shouldn't take off (unless you know you don't need it), the rest you can pretty much check off. When I first booted, it was barely using 90mb of memory resources, that's not bad at all. Plus the CD itself was around 400 mb, pretty light. Otherwise, the process to install is exactly like WinXP.

Once installed, I changed the "Windows is currently loading" screen to a new one using Bootskin_Free. You can make your own and load it through that program (import your picture into it, then select it), or you can pic one made on this website. It seems safe to use, I didn't have torubles with it either way.

The next part was choosing the front end for MAME. It had to be flexible so I could load all of my emulators through it using the joysticks, and that I could skin to personalize the looks. The first one I tried was MameWah. It allowed all of that, but I found it hard a bit to understand with the config files, yet it was pretty nice to skin.

The one I stopped my choice on was MaLa (MAme LAuncher). It's a nifty front end that does everything MameWah does, and then some. It was easier to configure thanks to windows dialogs with alot of tabs to go through to set everything up. It might be a little confusing at first, but it's alot more intuitive than MameWah's config files.

Then I added to it a screensaver that is very nifty. The TB Screensaver actually picks random MAME games from your list (that you can configure), and runs them as a demo. You can pick if you want the volume or not (if it bothers you), and how long it stays on every game. And you can even have it start the game it's on by adding coins if you feel like it. Personally I just want it to stop whenever I press a button, so that works fine.

Sadly I only have like 6 working games right now, so it kinda gets old when you've done the entire list in about 20 minutes. Plus it doesn't play console emus, but that's not too much of a problem at least. There should be enough arcade to go around.

The last part left will be to replace the shell booting by Mala on startup. There's a way to make it skip loading explorer completely, so it looks like the OS is Mala once done booting. But it loads pretty fast right now, so it doesn't bother me. I still need to access explorer right now to set things up. Also Mala can be configured to quit Windows on exit, that's something I'll use later once I'm done setting up everything.

More tomorrow~ Tomorrow I'll tackle the actual games and all the stuff that goes with them. Alot of work there!

Project : Arcade - An introduction

So here's the first post of the project. As I write this, I already am well started on it, but no hand-work yet. It's mostly just PC stuff, so I'll put up various steps and stuff that I did along the way up to now.

So here's the first post : Why I wanted to do this.

I had ordered some new computer parts recently to replace those in my gaming computer. They were not bad parts, but I thought it was time to upgrade. But comes the question, what to do with the older parts. I already have too many computers at home. Here's a picture of my setup.

Leftmost :
Laptop : Runs IM/Chat/WEB/Email, whatever could slow down a gaming PC pretty much.

Left/Back :
Gaming computer. It's hooked to the two screens beside it (left and center) as a dual monitor setup. Leftmost is a 17in CRT. The center one is the main monitor for the games of course, 22in LCD. The keyboard is in front of it (G15)


Rightmost : Server computer, it runs a small HTTP server to upload pictures (like the ones in this blog), nothing too fancy, but it did get some upgrades when I did that private WOW server thingie (PHP scripting FTW). The monitor is right next to it to the left, 19in LCD. Wireless keyboard and mouse (Logitech).

As you can see, adding a fourth computer would be useless and messy. I recently changed the third monitor for the 19in LCD, before that it was a huge 21in CRT. Guess what? That's going in the project now.

So with the older parts leftover, I decided to turn it into a dedicated arcade machine. What's better for a gamer than having the authentic feeling, while having the ways to make it into more by adding more games and options than a simple machine would? Not to mention original machines cost some 1000-2000$ easily (look on ebay).

So that's it, the start of my project. That was roughly 3 weeks ago. After the decision, I've been scouting the web for people that did the same thing, and fortunately there's tons of those too, so I'm not alone!

For those wanting to do the same, this is probably the best place to start : Arcade Controls BYOAC.

Tune in next time for more about my project!