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..

Control Panel testing

So, we've been playing on our test control box for a few days now, and I must say that I like the Omni-Stick Prodigy "retro edition" joystick very much. The ability to quickly change from a 4-way stick for Pac Man to an 8-way stick for 1942 is really un-beatable. AND the style of the Retro edition really will fit in nicely for my Pac Man style cabinet! The stick feels a little stiff, and the throws are a little short.. but I've quickly become used to the feel of the stick.

So now, I've been working with Photoshop to create the control panel overlay design for my control panel. I started with the classic Pac Man overlay, and I've been photoshop-ing to get the layout that I want. I've got what I think will be a good layout going.. So this weekend I think that I'm going to get out the power tools and build a Mock-up of the CP. I've got some 2x4's and a half sheet of OSB laying around, so I think I can cut them out and print out my Control Panel overlay and see how it feels. I figure that it's probably a good idea to atcually play on the CP to get a REAL feel for it before I cut it for real, or spend any money on a quality print job for the overlay..

Fun with wires!

Okay, so Jim was kind enough to let me "test drive" a joystick, encoder card and a handful of buttons... So this morning I got to work shredding cables and stripping wires..

I mounted the stuff inside an old cardboard box that we had laying around.

I put the stick in, with three game buttons on top.. On the left side I mounted 2 buttons to act as "Coin In" and "Player 1 start", and on the right side I mounted a button to be the "Escape" button to exit the game... I've got a microswitch wired up to be my "Shazaam" button but I haven't mounted the button for it yet.. I'll get on that tonight though..!
So here are a few pics of the box..! enjoy!

Here's a picture of the under-side of the control box.. the wires are a jumbled mess, but hey, it's only a temporary box, so I don't mind too much.

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top of the Control Panel

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Pacman is easier with a real Joystick!

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Jacob playing using the joystick on the control box

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First cut at customized Kymaera skin

I've got a first try at my customized skin. I framed the pictures and changed the font color to be a little more in my planned Pac Man theme. It's a decent start. I'm planning on adding some Pac-Man graphics to it, and re-arranging the position of the Marquee, Screen Shot, and Cabinet picture... But this took me 10 minutes to throw together, and I like the way it looks better than the standard skin.

pic of the customized FE with Donkey Kong selected

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Pics of the customized Front End

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Pictures #1

Here are a couple of quick pics..
Here is Jacob playing a little Frogger:



And here is a quick screen shot of the arcade interface in Kymaera. This is with the almost-standard interface.. I modified it to show the Cabinet pic and the Marquee (the default showed a larger image of the screenshot). I'm working on tweaking it and coming up with a more customized interface.

In the beginning

The arcade machine project is going.. I've been working on setting up the computer to run the arcade games. I've loaded MAME on to the machine along with Kymaera to use as the front-end user interface.

I've loaded most of the games that I want to run onto the machine as well.

The current game list is:
Pac Man
Ms. Pac Man
Frogger
Burger Time
Dig Dug
Mappy
Galaga
Galaxian
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Donkey Kong 3
1942
Time Pilot
Zaxxon
Burnin' Rubber
Commando
Gun Smoke
Mat Mania
Xevious

I think that that is a good list for now.. I may yet think of a few more games. But this list is pretty nice.