Whoa

Well.. has it really been that long since I've done anything with my arcade plans... well (ashamedly) I say it has been.. I committed the cardinal sin by putting together a functioning control panel before getting my cab built..

Ahh but all is not lost, the bug has bitten me once again, and I've been doing some planning.. and prepping, and even a little work for my machine.

First, I've put together a nice little Visio diagram that really has the cabinet sides drawn out perfectly how I would like them. I took the plans from Jakobud for the Pac-Man cabinet and traced it in Visio, and scaled it to 80% of the actual full size. Now I am hoping I can find somebody (Kinkos I hope) that will be able to print out the Visio diagram so that I can use that as a template! Also the Visio diagram has been helpful to me because I've been able to model my monitor and then use the to place it to make sure it will all fit as I would hope it will..


Secondly, besides just playing on the machine (which I've done a lot of) I've gone through a few iterations of my Kymera front end skin.. I've reached a point where I like it well enough.. it's nothing too fancy or glossy, but it looks nice, and it incorporates the Pac-Man theme that I'm shooting for (and I can continue to refine it as I feel like). I've also played around with my game list, and included the other Pac-Man games that I had left out earlier, such as Pac-Man Plus, Super Pac-Man and Pac-Man Jr. I've also put on Moon Cresta, and I am planning on getting Space Invaders on there as well. And finally on the software front, I've put together a bootskin to replace the standard windows XP (this post on BYOAC gave me the idea). It's neat to see it boot up that way, and it's nice to have a bootscreen that is in proper orientation.. That helps keep the thing all looking "right".

I've also setup the machine with an ID with a password so that I can use Remote Desktop from my other computers to log into that machine to make any changes that I need.. that way I don't have to rotate my monitor and disconnect my control panel and plug in a keyboard when I want to control the machine to make changes.. it's been a nice thing to have set up on a few occasions.. and it will be key when the machine is in a cabinet (as I don't plan on having a keyboard/mouse tray on the cabinet).

Here is what my bootscreen looks like:


I can provide the bootskin file and/or the image if anybody cares to use it..
Ahh well.. that's an update for now. I'm going to look into getting my visio printed.. I still should get my test control panel re-built on some wood, with my panel overlay printed out so I can test it's setup as well..