- Joined
- Mar 19, 2011
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Well my friend had brought up an excellent idea for creating a custom game cabinet one day and now I intend on making it. I want to use a generic pre-built cabinet like maybe a Taito cab I have lying around or maybe pickup a older pac-man/galaga, but this isn't the custom part. What I'm really doing is designing artwork and a control panel for a PC game to be played on a 19" open frame CRT used like on 60in1 boards. The curious part is how to layout the controls for making it easy to play and navigate, but not so much of where they are placed but what they would use to navigate.
An example as used in many first and third person PC games is where the player moves via the WASD keys, that can be easily done by using an 8-way Joystick with micro switches. Of course thats the easy part, but what I need is to determine an easy option to navigate the player's vision like a mouse. The first thing I thought of was a trackball assembly linked via USB, they aren't cheap but it would be better than just having a mouse laid out on the control panel overlay. Problem is would it be easy to still use buttons like on the mouse for left and right clicks while still using the trackball...OR would it be easier to have like an analog joystick or something with trigger buttons?
Really I'm open to ideas at the moment as I'm currently just lining up designs, artwork, parts, and etc. for this whole idea for turning a PC game into an arcade like setup. Really going to devote some time to this to make it look real nice as opposed to some of those generic MAME cabinets people are always making.
**The idea isn't for practical use nor coin operated use**
It's purely for aesthetic purposes and does not require a player to insert a coin to play.
An example as used in many first and third person PC games is where the player moves via the WASD keys, that can be easily done by using an 8-way Joystick with micro switches. Of course thats the easy part, but what I need is to determine an easy option to navigate the player's vision like a mouse. The first thing I thought of was a trackball assembly linked via USB, they aren't cheap but it would be better than just having a mouse laid out on the control panel overlay. Problem is would it be easy to still use buttons like on the mouse for left and right clicks while still using the trackball...OR would it be easier to have like an analog joystick or something with trigger buttons?
Really I'm open to ideas at the moment as I'm currently just lining up designs, artwork, parts, and etc. for this whole idea for turning a PC game into an arcade like setup. Really going to devote some time to this to make it look real nice as opposed to some of those generic MAME cabinets people are always making.
**The idea isn't for practical use nor coin operated use**
It's purely for aesthetic purposes and does not require a player to insert a coin to play.
