So, I am building a MAME cabinet for my next Rabbitcon, which means I have exactly four weeks. Since there's just a ton of old, outdated, and not very good stuff out there on this kind of project, and a few choice links, I thought I'd use this thread to document where I'm at.
My first order of business was to put some boundaries around the project. Jumping into the whacked out world of MAME led me into 100 ratholes of people who spent WAY to much money and time building monstrosities.
My core concept here is to play all those games which simply suck on the couch, for a variety of reasons. The top of my list:
Tempest
Discs of Tron
Smups (Love Galaga in all its crazy knockoff brethren)
Marble Madness
Defender
Spy Hunter
Star Castle
Omega Race
4-player Gauntlet
Smash TV
I could come up with another dozen I'm sure, but I only got this far before I realized I was in some trouble. Marble Madness means having TWO trackballs. I definitely need a spinner, and half these games are vertical. Plus, 4-player gauntlet means having a big control panel.
Taking a deep breath and backing up, I decided to make sure I got the software working first. My plan is to use the machine which is currently my house server as the cabinet machine -- I figure it's on all the time anyway. It's an old P4, with integrated sound and graphics. I installed the latest mame from Mamedev.org, and bittorrented 8000 roms overnight. Surprisingly, it just worked on the old windows XP machine. I just ran the Mame executable and poof, a giant list of games, most of which seem to run fine.
Poking around for front ends, I stumbled across http://www.maximusarcade.com/, which you can set to just replace the windows shell on bootup.
For hardware, a friend is giving me a 19 inch LCD monitor. While I like the idea of a giant 27 inch arcade screen, there a few hundred bucks, and would necessitate me deciding on a monitor orientation permanently (although some folks have made enormous wheels to turn their monitors). With the LCD, I can just mount it on a rotating mount, is my idea, and eventually rig up a switch to drive a lego-motor or something and turn it from vertical to horizontal.
As far as cabinet design, I'm looking at something simple like the stuff at arcadecab.com. I'm also getting a TON of ideas and advice from the forum at http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/.
So far, all I've ordered is a spinner setup and a keyboard encoder from ultimarc.com, and 20 buttons and 2 joysticks from xgaming.com (the guys who make the x-arcade console fighter sticks).
This week, I need to figure out what else I need (at least one trackball, I know, but I do love 2-player marble madness... decisions, decisions).
Anway, anyone who's been down this journey and has ideas, let me know.
I'm excited by this ambitious project and eager to see your results. 
I have thought of building a MAME cabinet on and off over the years but I think it'll have to wait until I'm a homeowner. I would hate to have to dismantle it every time I move or even house one in a small apartment. Still, I do consider it from time to time.
Robotron uses aa different style of joystick as well. If you use a typical 8 way it will not control optimally.
Awesome project, I'll be following with interest.
One thing, though, didn't Discs of Tron require a joystick with triggers? Or could that be facilitated by buttons on the side?
Discs of Tron
Just as a warning, that's a really tough one. Its spinner also has a height control, for later in the game. I think there was a solution when I was last looking at this, six or seven years ago, but I think it was awkward and expensive. I wish I could remember what it was.
My parents want me to help build them one of these.
What they really want is Atari Football. Which goes into that "need two trackballs" requirement.
Hope you go down that road and find me a solution to follow.
Yeah, I did the research on DOT. Joystick with buttons, and a push-pull spinner, which nobody makes and was aparrently notorious for always breaking. I think you could hack it with just using up and down buttons, but I was never good enough to spend more than a few minutes at those levels (like level 20+ or 40+?)
I'm pretty much putting off worrying about DOT.
So, I'm in love with this guy's control panel:
http://www.beersmith.com/mame/
Entirely modular. So you can just swap in what you need. 4 Player is really the only problem, but then, I think he figured that out too:
Instead of building up the panel for those rare 4er games, he just has two controllers hanging off the side for the occasion. I just tried playing gauntlet and some random fighting game with it, and it's totally functional. Not ideal, but a HUGE space saver.
I think the modular thing is going to be the way to go.
That's way cheaper than building all four stations into it, for sure. You could get clever and leave attachment points on both sides for an expansion.... if it proves wildly popular and you're doing lots of 4-ways, you can go ahead and build out the cabinet with the additional stations. If it's just an occasional gig, controllers should be just fine.
AWESOME! Seriously. I have mine just about finished up. Showing it off for the first time to anyone is always a great feeling. Then telling them you made it is even cooler.
You can read about my build over here...
http://zubazpants.com/forum/viewtopi... (Apparently some of the final pictures are down. Will have to find them... )
My first thought is maximus arcade... I beleive that costs $25? I just went with Mala. It's highly customizable, and doesn't take much time to get up and running.
Vertical vs Horizontal. I just ended up throwing an old 27" TV in mine. I was mostly going for a generation of older games (SF2, TMNT, X-men, etc...) so my concern was the horizontal games, but the vertical games look fine with such a large TV.
I went with one trackball, they're like 100 bucks in general. I would recommend with going with the same guy you got your Ipac from. Just plugs right in with USB, very east to setup, and also to mount to your control panel.
Looking forward to watching your build. Post pictures! And I'm sure the guys over at arcadecontrols.com will be a great help. They have an IRC channel as well if you need help during the build. Helped me make a few decisions during it.
Just a side note that beersmith is an awesome homebrewing software. Apparently some hobbies do cross over...
Cool. I just ordered two trackballs from Ultimarc, now that I've decided to go with a modular 2-player panel design, with gamepads for players 3 and 4. I have one decent gamepad, need to find another. Not sure how reliable using X-box wireless controllers would actually be, and I like the idea of it all being self contained.
Thinking two player and modular frees the mind a lot, from a construction perspective. While I'll have 4 joysticks, I just need to worry about mounting each in a modular panel, and then figuring out the per-game mapping and what-plugs-in-when later.
At the moment, I think my module pieces will be:
4 joystick panels, each with one button.
2 6-button panels.
1 spinner panel (maybe with buttons? maybe not.)
2 Trackball panels (again, not sure if they'll have buttons mapped)
Beyond that, I'm thinking a set of "control" buttons under the bezel.
On the vertical games -- my experience is they look like crap on TVs, generally, which is part of why i'm thinking im ok on the LCD.
I'm too late it seems but I've always seen these and thought they looked solid. http://www.xgaming.com/
I'm too late it seems but I've always seen these and thought they looked solid. http://www.xgaming.com/
I don't get why X-Arcade has yet to come up with a dual trackball setup.
I'm actually using parts from those guys. I just want it to do more than fighting games, so I'm scratch building.
Kacz: going to check out mala today.
I've been gathering research for a couple years now and the most useful resource I've found is the book Project Arcade.
http://www.projectarcade.com/
I don't know that it has anything you can't find anywhere else, but from a project management perspective it's been very useful (or will be...I'm kind of afraid to actually start work).
I have an X-Arcade stick as well and can vouch for their quality.
OK, some new thinking. I've been worried that 19 inches is going to seem really small, especially doing anything 4 player. I've managed to arrange some swaps so that I end up with a 32 inch LCD TV, which is a nice 1080p screen that takes VGA well.
My thinking is I moutn THAT on a swivel (30 bucks at sears). This puts the 4:3 portion of the screen at 26 inches, which is a more normal arcade size.
The complication is that the cab itself now has ot be able to contain this beat at is widest, mid rotation, which means I think the cab is going ot be 36 inches wide (!). So much for EVER moving this thing from the basement without reconstruction!!!
On that note, I'm thinking I will need a 2X4 internal frame of some sort to hold the torque of the screen -- the mount would normall be going in a stud. But, I figure by making a solid frame inside, I could maybe not glue things together, making it deconstruct-able if needed someday.
The plus side of a 26 inch wide cab is that there will be lots of room for control panels, especially dual trackball layouts. Might EVEN be able to gram players 3 and 4 in, if their panels just have 4 buttons.
Edit: Or, alternatively, I leave it in virtual 26 inch screen mode, avoid all the mounting headache of rotation, and live with less than fantastic vertical screen size.
I move into my house at the end of this month. I then start a giant remodeling project that will hopefully be done in August. I plan on then building my own MAME cab as well once these giant projects are finished. I thank you Rabbit, for being yet another guinea pig that will tests things out for me before I try and do something similar.
I believe mine is 28" wide. And then my control panel is 48" wide and modular so it can be moved. I'm not sure how handy you are but I would think the vertical games would look fine with the monitor being fixed.
Some pics of my build...
Edit: Or, alternatively, I leave it in virtual 26 inch screen mode, avoid all the mounting headache of rotation, and live with less than fantastic vertical screen size.
The screen will be what you spend most of your time looking at, don't compromise there!
I spent an hour playing a few vert games, both vector and not. I can firm the 32 inch screen, playing tempest, non rotated, looks awesome. As a long time Tempest owner, I can say that the screen size is nearly the same, and other vector games (omega race, star castle) are WAY bigger. Centipede and Ms. PacMan also pass my feel-test of being the "right size." So in the interest of cabinet size and complexity, I think I'm going to run the system without a rotation option, using the big screen.
I'll put a removable bezel over it, so it looks like a regular 26 inch 4:3 screen though.
The next phase of decision making before I order lumber -- how far away from the screen do I want to be standing? How deep should the control panel pieces be? Im thinking a bit further away than an old tempest machine. And then theres the screen angle question -- how high? More straight on? Or more down. Curse the decision making process!!!
Instead of building up the panel for those rare 4er games, he just has two controllers hanging off the side for the occasion. I just tried playing gauntlet and some random fighting game with it, and it's totally functional. Not ideal, but a HUGE space saver.
I think the modular thing is going to be the way to go.
Speaking from the experience of building a 4 player panel, it's massive and if you try to shrink it, you really are going to be shoulder to shoulder and uncomfortable if the people are anything more than really narrow. This is the only picture I have of it online right now, but it's pretty telling of how it went together.
What you can see is that the whole thing uses the panels for the main structute, with 1x2's for supports, and we painted the monitor (lower left). Also, we didn't paint the edges because we did in fact add t-molding to the end product. The controll panel is probably off somewhere being wired or the plexiglass top hasn't been finished (by me) since I still had to wet sand and flame kiss (which is really hard to do your first time) the exposed edges.
I remember just ordering all the buttons / sticks from Happ (what the x-gaming stuff is based off of) when we did ours. Is there a reason to do one or the other?
Kazc I can't really tell from your pictures, but it looks like you skipped adding t-molding to yours. How do the edges look for you as mdf edges tend to be a bit funny.
I love the idea of swappable panels for controls, maybe it'd be easier to just make 2 though, one with trackballs and one without.
It'd be good to avoid the all in one problem. There's no way this thing is ever moving beyond a single door.
I love the idea of swappable panels for controls, maybe it'd be easier to just make 2 though, one with trackballs and one without.
It'd be good to avoid the all in one problem. There's no way this thing is ever moving beyond a single door.
Why is the player 4 joystick on the wrong side? And since when is 8 buttons per player on the 1/2 slot required? I can't think of a game that uses more than 6. Also, 4 more buttons to the left of player 1&2? Man, this has all got to be for some games I've never had a chance to play.
jonnypolite wrote:I love the idea of swappable panels for controls, maybe it'd be easier to just make 2 though, one with trackballs and one without.
It'd be good to avoid the all in one problem. There's no way this thing is ever moving beyond a single door.
Why is the player 4 joystick on the wrong side? And since when is 8 buttons per player on the 1/2 slot required? I can't think of a game that uses more than 6. Also, 4 more buttons to the left of player 1&2? Man, this has all got to be for some games I've never had a chance to play.
Stupidity is my guess.
Modular is definately the way to go. That way, for a mere 10 bucks in parts, you can create a dedicated set of buttons for the Stargate layout, for instance, and don't have to jam up the control panel with random stuff you only use for one game.
I figure I wire each joystick into a panel (4 inches wide), four 4-button panels (4 inches wide) that puts you at 32 inches. COMPLETELY CRAMMED together, but 4 players nonetheless. Hrmm. Maybe I should be rethinkin' that. Only one way to REALLY know, and that's to try it and see. I need to run 4 joysticks anyway for those games that use 2 sticks for two players, and wood is cheap, as is RJ45 wire and jacks.
I also ordered a Saitek ST90 joystik. It breaks down into a very small base that you can epoxy in easy to a panel.
Modular is definately the way to go. That way, for a mere 10 bucks in parts, you can create a dedicated set of buttons for the Stargate layout, for instance, and don't have to jam up the control panel with random stuff you only use for one game.
I figure I wire each joystick into a panel (4 inches wide), four 4-button panels (4 inches wide) that puts you at 32 inches. COMPLETELY CRAMMED together, but 4 players nonetheless. Hrmm. Maybe I should be rethinkin' that. Only one way to REALLY know, and that's to try it and see. I need to run 4 joysticks anyway for those games that use 2 sticks for two players, and wood is cheap, as is RJ45 wire and jacks.
I wouldn't even bother trying to make a 4-player CP at 32" wide. I'll try and dig up my old design which even with the player 3/4 angled off, was still slightly crammed (but still very playable) with even somewhat small college guys around it. Now, how well do you have the thing angled? You should be posting plans of what you're trying to do, with dims. I want to be able to tell you that you are wrong (maybe that's why you aren't...)- I mean help you with constructive criticism.
Just remember 18" min. shoulder to shoulder.
Actually, I've been toying with a pipe dream of an idea about having slide in side expansion panels for player 3/4 in a future build, hooking up the wires / locking it in place would be an issue.
I also ordered a Saitek ST90 joystik. It breaks down into a very small base that you can epoxy in easy to a panel.
Also, if I could get a working copy of The Grid, I would make a CP with that and a track ball, stat.
I wouldn't even bother trying to make a 4-player CP at 32" wide. I'll try and dig up my old design which even with the player 3/4 angled off, was still slightly crammed (but still very playable) with even somewhat small college guys around it. Now, how well do you have the thing angled? You should be posting plans of what you're trying to do, with dims. I want to be able to tell you that you are wrong (maybe that's why you aren't...)- I mean help you with constructive criticism.
Just remember 18" min. shoulder to shoulder.
Actually, I've been toying with a pipe dream of an idea about having slide in side expansion panels for player 3/4 in a future build, hooking up the wires / locking it in place would be an issue.
I'm definitely not delusional about making it really work 4 player on 32 inches.
One thing im still wrestling with is whether my control panel is a "box" that essentially attaches to a shelf, (which means I can kind of make it however big I want) or if I make it more literally like Docs, where the panels are locking under the bezel, and the panel is entirely inside the sides. I'm kind of thinking box, because I need a little distance off the screen as it is (and thus, the whole cab might be a bit smaller.
Ill try and draw some stuff up tonight.
I hear you about "18 inches" but the implication is that any 4 player panel has to be SIX FEET wide, which simply not true. I can't think of a game with a 6 foot wide control panel.
My control panel is 4" with 4 players. It's comfortable with 4 fairly big guys playing. So you could get away with it.
I did use T-molding, I just ended up going with black. And I highly recommend it. MDF looks like crap on the edges.
I also went with 8 buttons. My thoughts were for PS2 and dreamcast games. Now that it's all working it was stupid. I don't think I've ever used them and it just adds confusion to other players. Don't do it.
Rabbit, I've got about a 12 deg tilt to my monitor. Although that was basically defined by the big ass CRT monitor and my cabinet growing to massive proportions. I'm more than happy with it though.
I also went with the "box" sitting on a shelf idea for my control panel. A couple if 5/16 bolts with nuts holding it together so it can be easily taken off and moved seperately from the rest of the cabinet. I'm still going apartment to apartment though so I knew this thing needed to be modular. Top also separates from the bottom as well.
Well, would you look at that. I had a jpeg all ready to go. 3'-4" wide total.
Sadly, I think I lost my old pictures of the actual process / finished product.
It's funny. In the last week I've gone from not seeing the appeal of a MAME cabinet to wanting to make one myself and mentally planning it out.
It's not happening anytime soon, but my thinking is making separate 2 player and 4 player console 'boxes' that can easily be swapped out making up some kind of wiring harness to make connecting and disconnecting the controls easier. I'm not sure if this is standard practice, as I say I only started even thinking about this in the last couple of days.
I wouldn't give 4 players too much space, it will be such a rarity that it shouldn't be more of an issue than it needs to be.
I would also consider drop in panels for trackballs and Tempest, rather than trying to get everything in one panel.
Obviously all a bit redundant in this thread, just thinking aloud.
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