Day 34 - Art Done

This is the finished control panel and marquee. The silver stripes are just placeholders for where the retainers are - they are brushed aluminium. After comments I made the marquee lettering bigger to make it more noticeable. It can't really get any bigger.

Next job is to measure out exactly my control panel mock-up before drilling the holes and placing all the items. If they all fit ok then it's just a case of making sure the control panel placements match this and testing the controls work.

Hopefully by Saturday (it's Thursday now) I'll be making the control panel up and ordering the art.

Day 33 - Controls Bought

All the controls have been bought. I'd have been happier with the Sanwa (or Seimitsu) buttons but they only come in shallow depths for metal mounting really and I didn't want to risk routing too much wood to allow them to be mounted.

Once these arrive I can get the holes drilled, double check the control panel art fits and get them printed and the acrylic sheets ordered.

Picture	Qty	Details	More
	2	Seimitsu LS 32 Arcade Joystick	A good all round choice. Not too sensitive like the Sanwa joysticks but the quality is almost as good.
	6	Happ Competition Arcade Button	Player 1/2 upper three buttons. Convex
	6	Happ Competition Arcade Button	Player 1/2 lower three buttons. Convex
	2	Happ Standard Arcade Button	Concave for pinball at side of cabinet. I i figured the yellow strip around the cabinet seemed the best choice of colour for these. Was always going to choose black (might look like a bullet from the tank), but changed my mind.
	1	Black IL Concave Arcade Start Button Player 1
	1	Black IL Concave Arcade Start Button Player 2
	2	IL Concave Arcade Button	Coin buttons to go with Start buttons
	1	Mini PAC Keyboard Encoder Kit	USB Keyboard and trackball controller with wires and grounds
	1	UTrak Trackball	Trackball with mini-pac connections
	1	Pack Of 4 PCB Feet

Day 32 - Front-End Completed

The front-end is completed and working fully. I sorted out all the graphical issues, which were down to the front-end I'm using (MaLa) being pants with png files.

Here's a video. I recommend you don't view it here as it's too small. Click on the youtube link inside the video and select a medium or full screen view.

There are two navigation methods. The original is one page per emulator and you swap between emulators, then inside each emulator you move left/right to switch filters (e.g. fighting games, fps, etc). The other method uses a menu to select emulator and filters. This is the one I'm using as it's quicker/easier to get to an emulator and select a filter.

Screenshots as previous day. I'll be uploading a how-to video on mala and emulators (it took some time doing) at some point in the near future.

Day 31 Software Almost Built

So, the emulators I've got up and running are MAME (the arcade games, I had about 5000 but I'm almost finished downloading the full 26,000), 3DO, Atari 2600, Atari Jaguar, Nintendo 64, SNES, Sega Dreamcast, Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), Future Pinball, Visual Pinball. 3DO and Dreamcast are pushing it a bit to get fullscreen.

I'm using the mala front-end. There are two modes you can do. First is the original one which simply gives you the menu of an emulator (i.e. a picture and list of games) and you toggle between emulators and gamelists using the joypad. The other mode is a menu list of your emulators and you drill down the menu into gamelists, etc then select your game (called the tree view).

I've wrote a hefty document on setting up all the emulators and the front-end which I'll publish when I'm finished. It's not an easy task getting it all done and getting the emulators to quit nicely.

I had originally used the first method, but I think I've changed my mind as it's easier to switch to emulators (i.e. a few menu moves as opposed to switching between each emulator).

As far as design goes, I'm not exactly a graphic artist, so my first option was to pinch ones I could find on the internet and I ended up with an eclectic selection, each one unique to an emulator (either taken as is or  modified by my good self). Here is a selection of what I used to have:

But I changed my mind (especially with the tree view) and I'm using the same style for each, just changing slightly the graphics. This is a work in progress:

MAME rom download is at 95% so we'll seen soon enough whether the zip is valid (60Gb and it's taken a week so far).

Day 30 - No News is Good News

Well, it's been a while. I've been tinkering with the software and went on a two month course that stopped me from doing much.

Where I'm up to is the control panel artwork, after that I can order the side art, get the controls and upload some videos of the CP wiring, software build, vinyl sticking and the grand opening :)

I can't order the buttons or artwork though until I know what colours to buy and I can't figure out the colours until I get the control panel art done. Which I think I'm now going to have to do with my cack-hands, which I've done a few and they are not exactly great. Ah well. Unless somebody fancies volunteering ;)

This is the marquee, which was done by a proper artist so looks very nice. I've been toying with the idea of putting a few white sprites on the bottom right (e.g. like the kickplate pictures below) but I don't know.

Here are the sorry Control Panels I've started with, just trying to mix the cabinet colour scheme in (a kind of vermillion, yellowish, black, white, chrome). I have no idea what to do with the front section of the control panel yet. You can probably click to enlarge if you feel you must ;)

 As an explanation there are 6 buttons per player plus a joystick, a trackball beneath and the buttons to the top are the coin and player selects. The picture I added (metal slug) because it looked bare.

Day 29 - Final Build 1

I've decided not to varnish/lacquer the cabinet after the side art is completed so there was no need to wait and I put the cabinet together. Using my phone's camera for the first time I had higher hopes of image quality, sadly it wasn't the case. I'll do better pictures next time. As always, click on a picture to see the full sized image.

In case you want to see the final pictures and not read the details here it is.

There's pictures showing the speakers and glass further down.

What follows is the assembly of the cabinet.


This is the base (wheels below it), the first  step was to build a stand for the sub-woofer to go onto and keep it nice and secure.








Next the front kick-plate was glued and screwed. The hole is where the sub-woofer peaks through. Sorry, I know the pictures aren't great, but I like them.

From previous posts you may recall the cabinet has been built already (before it was painted). This means the holes are already in so it's a case of peeping a screw through and letting it drop into the hole without worrying about alignment.








Next, one side was placed on the workbenches (with cloth below to protect the paintwork) and the base/kick-plate glued and screwed in.

 The top section of the back-panel (the white dots is the grill I made - by drilling holes - to vent any heat from the bulb), the base of the marquee and the middle strut were screwed/glued in. The other side was then placed on top and screwed/glued. The rear section is not glued to provide access to the marquee if the bulb needs changing.

The middle section of the rear was glued/screwed then the cabinet was then stood up. Yes, before you ask I did it myself and thinking the cloth would protect the sides, I scratched one side a fair bit, but hopefully it'll get fixed.

The marquee light was fitted and there should be no light-bleed because it is in a separate compartment to the speakers and there are no gaps. If there are, it's a bit of grout to fix it.

I added the top of the marquee and the first section of the control panel surround.

 This is the back in all it's glory. The bottom section is a door with a little handle to give access to the PC. It needs a hold cutting and a vent cover fitting to allow air to escape from the PC. This will be done when I know where the PC is going.

To fit the speakers I attached some contact adhesive to the speakers and a couple of square brackets.

I then attached the speaker housing to the cabinet and when the adhesive was ready I bonded the brackets to the speakers then fitted the speakers to the rear of the speaking section, as shown below. The contrast isn't like this, I enhanced it so you can see where the speakers go.

Next the moment of truth, the T-molding :)

I figured laying it flat would be easier (you can see the sub-woofer attached, btw). I glued the slot just in case then added the T-molding.

Whenever a sharp curve appeared I slit the T-Molding in several places to let it go round a bit easier.

Bit by bit I pushed the T-Molding in firmly then placed a cloth on top and with the base of a hammer (rubber handle) banged it down.

Well, this was only for a small section as it was late and I was waking everyone up so I had to stop and just press it down firmly with the base of the hammer. This worked better anyway as it was a bit more controlled.

If you ever do it yourself, just remember to get the curves in tightly before proceeding otherwise it will have to all come out to fix as it won't stretch.
















Just to try it out, I put the light on, fitted the test control panel and turned on the light.

Next the side art and marquee art will be applied followed by the control panel.

Day 28 - The Writing's on the Wall

Today me and Bri used the vinyl cutter to cut out the lettering that the handsome Pierre had designed. Click to zoom. I decided to tarnish this excellent modern retro simplistic styling he's done and garnished the kickplate with some vinyl prints (it's a Space Invader, Blinky and Miner Willy if you didn't know.)

I know the words are upside down to each other, but it took a bit of thinking and looking before I believe Pierre that it was the right way to do it.

It's not all plain sailing though (forgetting whether I mentioned this or not in a previous entry). When spraying some black got onto the yellow when the paper blew off, so we masked the bit that was wrong (the top front corner of the sides - on both) and sprayed the yellow. Sadly, when peeling off the fine line tape it pulled the orange from the corner (we're sure it had dried fully) leaving a big mess and an orange peel effect.

I've touch it up best as can and from a slight distance you can't really see it. Hopefully if/when it's varnished you won't notice.