brubakes Posted March 27, 2017 Share Posted March 27, 2017 For those of you who have or are building a full cabinet for your arcade I wanted to ask what provisions have you built into your control panel in addition to the standard joystick and button used to play. Meaning, do you have a specific button for pause? Volume control? Forward or back for controlling navigation within LaunchBox? Things like that. I want to make sure I don't miss something that will be really user friendly after the fact. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 27, 2017 Share Posted March 27, 2017 My Bartop has a start and coin button in addition to the gameplay buttons for both controllers and then there is 4 additional buttons along the front they are setup in various emulators to do buttons combos such as exit the emulator pull up the RetroArch and MAME UI pause the games additional buttons and button combos are a must IMO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thraxlol Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 I built my arcade a number of years ago (5 or 6...) and the way to do it then was keyboard emulator to arcade button/joysticks. I made a 4 player cabinet with 8 buttons + coin in + start per player. Add the joystick movements to that it's more than half a full keyboard in key mappings which was a nightmare! I also didn't provision anything for power on / off which is a little annoying (only turning on... turning off I just exit the software and it shuts down the PC). Given I've been through it before and now notice what I didn't do the way I wanted... I would suggest: Space for AimTrak censor bar (if you want light gun games) Space for a Spinner (if you want Missle Command type games) Space for a Trackball (if you want golf games etc) Power on (if you shell Launchbox then power off will take care of itself if you have keys configured to shut the software) Controller ports (something I found was I only did arcade controls, then emulated N64 and PS1 etc, which don't work well at all without analogue joysticks... so USB ports on the cabinet exterior would have been awesome) Volume I've never had an issue with as mine outputs to HDMI so TV remote is fine for volume control rather than building it into the cabinet. My cab also runs HyperSpin which has it's own hotkeys for exiting emulators and a menu to exit the software, as long as you have this equivalent in LaunchBox it should be fine. Note: I've only just started with configuring LB for the first time and haven't progressed to setting up BigBox yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wemr97dl Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 I have a 4 player setup w/6 buttons each start button for each player and a 4 slot coin door wired to the coin eject buttons for credits a trackball and spinner, 3 admin buttons select, pause and exit but you need real estate. That works great for most arcade games and older systems, also have 6 external USB ports 2 for light guns that I don't unplug and 4 for Xbox controls for the newer systemsSent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wemr97dl Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 (edited) One more thing I have volume controls and a headphone jack on the front if there's only one person playing and 2 mouse buttons https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCssqGCnDgDgoSatAGqKso9w Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Edited March 28, 2017 by wemr97dl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crush Posted March 28, 2017 Share Posted March 28, 2017 I replaced both joysticks in my X-Arcade Tankstick with Ultrasticks 360 and the 2nd player button with a spinner. Ultrasticks give you access to 16 buttons per joystick - the 8th button acts as a "shift" key so it doubles the actions of the normal 8 buttons. I use this "shift" ability for secondary actions: menu, pause, exit, etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sithel Posted March 29, 2017 Share Posted March 29, 2017 I have a servo stik joystick and 7 button layout for my controls. I also have a trackball with 4 mouse buttons, then player 1 and player 2 have coin and start buttons. I have 3 admin buttons in the middle of the control panel, Escape, Pause and Tab. Escape - Exits emulators and works as the back button in BigBox. Pause - Pauses emulators and works as quick play to launch a game from BigBox. Tab - mostly to get into the Mame menu. I use a IPAC so I use some shifted keys. Hold down player one start is shift, so.. (shift) player 1 button 7 is "Enter" (shift) joystick player 2 up and down are volume up/down. (shift) joystick player 1 up is servo stik 8-way and down is servo stik 4-way. (these are for just in case i get stuck in a mode and need to quickly switch it) 2 front USB ports for controllers. I feel I have plenty of buttons, and for my setup anything more would look to cluttered to me. I also use a lot of AHK scripts for button configs but those are mostly in Windows and Steam games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brubakes Posted March 29, 2017 Author Share Posted March 29, 2017 It seems use of arrow keys on the keyboard are very useful. Can a normal joystick be used in place of them for navigation? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wemr97dl Posted March 29, 2017 Share Posted March 29, 2017 Yes working fine for me Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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