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.
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