Posted by Havelok on 30, 2000 at 9:42 AM:
Hello, I'm already designing my arcade joystick for PC. Up to now I have not assembled or bought anything, only designed my project in Coreldraw. Here you can see the pic of the actual progress of the design my joystick (http://perso.wanadoo.es/havelok/megastick.jpg). My idea is to hack a PSX pad and use it together with my LPT adapter and Direct Pad Pro. Since I always play against the computer I only need one stick, and 10 buttons are more than enough. A keyboard hack is more complex and do I really need it? Moreover, I would have to deal with those problems of ghosting and blocking and manage to switch my key-joystick and my keyboard to my computer. Dpad pro works so fine with my computer that I think it's not a mistake for me to chose it as my first option (any suggestion on this issue would be appreciated). I intend to buy a Happ Super or something alike, if I find it here in Europe. I use Mame32 and Windows games, so direct input is perfect as it is fully programmable. I've used 6 fire buttons and the other 4 remaining for basic operation functions in Mame32: insert coin, start, reset and pause. These buttons are placed on the left of the stick, thus allowing me to build a joystick with the proportions and the size of a big keyboard, which fits perfectly on my desktop. Moreover, this way the area of the game buttons is clear and there's not any chance to accidentally push any operation buttons during gameplay. Even though, I have enough surface to rest my hands on the front of the stick and buttons. The layout of the buttons follows the scheme of my Namco Arcade Stick. The sizes are not exact, as I still have not my controls. I think this layout is much better than the tradition alignment of 6 buttons, because your right had is always a little rotated. I think this layout is quite comfortable because I never push buttons with the middle finger (I don't know about you), and most games only use two buttons, which must be easily accessible. The materials that I would use for the joystick is something that I'll decide in the future. I suppose I would chose hard wood, and some kind of paint, or maybe contact paper, to avoid the wooden look. The PSX pad hack is something that I would worry about when I get the controls, but I would like to start assembling the box. I've decided to give it some front inclination, which makes the assembly more difficult. By the way, what's the minimum height of the box to be able to assemble the stick? And the thickness of the wood for installing the buttons? And, what face of the box should I leave opened or with an easier access to the guts of my joystick?. Hey.. and what do you think of the project? Looks beautiful, doesn't it?