I know there is a tradition in MAME machines to do the "button matrix" for each player — so much so I cannot think of the last MAME machine I see that didn't have it.
I grew up in the arcade but bailed when the Street-Fighter-type games arrived.
I have no use for the button matrix because I never play those style games. To add all those buttons means for other games players are left wondering which of the dozen buttons is "jump" and which one is "fire".
If you're into the fighting games, then what can you do. It seems often that people try to design a machine to do everything and end up with a bad UX.
I've built perhaps 8 or so MAME machines over the past 15 years or so and have experimented with different layouts on them. I move more and more away from trying to be all games in one cabinet.
Not to piss on this particular cabinet at all. I love it when anyone builds something for themselves. I love it doubley when they share their experiences. Congratulations on both.
It had never occurred to me to use GitHub to document such a thing. I do see it more and more though veering from code-only. Your write-up is so much better than anything I have seen on that Instructables car-crash of a site. ;-)
One should not underestimate the power of plain Markdown ;) I also think it works well when you want to share the CAD-files and other utils/scrips in your DIY-projects.
It totally makes sense to limit the number of buttons. In my case it's the first cabinet I built, so I didn't really know what games I would play on it. But if I'm building another one I will definitely think more about the UX.
I swore off MDF in my shop a long time ago though. I know it paints well but I just can't abide by the dust it makes. Baltic Birch plywood has become the lowest of woods that I will now use — preferring a multi-ply Europly for the nicer projects.
It costs a fortune but as I have moved up to better woods I find I cannot go back to Big Box construction lumber or, you know, MDF or similar.
That's interesting, I've never reflected about the dust it makes. Maybe when you're using an electric sander on large pieces, but doesn't that happen to all materials?
Super neat! How much was the total cost (I guess there's a steep equipment cost too)? Do you know if there's something similar for light guns? I've been wanting to play Time Crisis but surprisingly, there's nothing on the market nowadays (due to the TV technology change).
I think the total cost ended up at around $600, but I really tried to cut down the costs, bought a second hand screen, arcade buttons/joysticks from Aliexpress etc. I also have access to a really nice workshop which of course helped a lot.
Ohh, I don't know, but that sounds like a really interesting project! Mount IR sensors in the cabinet and connect them to the RPi. But I'm not sure about the integration with RetroPie or similar softwares.
I grew up in the arcade but bailed when the Street-Fighter-type games arrived.
I have no use for the button matrix because I never play those style games. To add all those buttons means for other games players are left wondering which of the dozen buttons is "jump" and which one is "fire".
If you're into the fighting games, then what can you do. It seems often that people try to design a machine to do everything and end up with a bad UX.
I've built perhaps 8 or so MAME machines over the past 15 years or so and have experimented with different layouts on them. I move more and more away from trying to be all games in one cabinet.
Not to piss on this particular cabinet at all. I love it when anyone builds something for themselves. I love it doubley when they share their experiences. Congratulations on both.
It had never occurred to me to use GitHub to document such a thing. I do see it more and more though veering from code-only. Your write-up is so much better than anything I have seen on that Instructables car-crash of a site. ;-)