I'm really obsessed with these issues, and you're not?

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: : The problem with this lies in the fact that people are trying to make panels which are totally unrealistic, excessive or whatever you may call them, and this ends up in panels that are unergonomic and uncomfortable to use (just an impression), apart from the problems of size. : I hope you're not implying that MY panels are unrealistic, excessive, unergonomic and/or uncomfortable. Expensive, yes, but if I'm going to play these games right, I want to make sure I've planned ahead. In fact, although I will never render my diagrams in Photoshop, I KNOW I put more thought into my dream panel design than you did. : : : I don't intend to use my control panel in a cabinet, at least for the moment. I just want to use it as a desktop panel, and the size of my desktop is limited, specially the place I have in front of my monitor. Thus, my control panel can be more or less wide, but not very tall (no more than 40 cm or so). I have some of the games you mention on your posts, and I've noticed the problems of control with some of these when you don't have the appropriate controls. What it's impossible to achive is to offer specific controls for every arcade game all together in the same panel without problems of size and ergonomics. : Which is why: : 1) I was not planning for a desktop control panel (although my A, B and D panels would do fine on a desk) : 2) I was not planning for only a SINGLE control panel, since that would ultimately be very frustrating : : : And this is worse when you mention the problem of two players game. Then you need to double all the controls: two sticks, two rotary sticks, two trackballs, two spinners, a hundred buttons... : This is only determined by your restraint and bank account. :-) Sometimes one must simply decide what games are most worthwhile to enjoy repeatedly and which can be ignored (or in your case undoubtedly, which can be enjoyed with the panel and which will make to with a pad and mouse). : : : It's madness, apart from a lot of money, and more and more complexity to encode and to build that thing. Somebody said that no matter that you don't ever play a game, but the important thing is to be happy to have the appropriate control to play it. I don't agree. I'm not going to spend my money in two trackballs, simply because someday I had the desire to play marble madness with a friend. Definitelly I could live without it. The point is that most of the problematic games are games from the 70s and 80s. Call me a betrayer of the old spirit of arcades, but I rarely play them. I have some of these games in my Mame collection because they're classics and it's interesting to know how games were in the past. Frankly, when I invite a friend for 2 player games we prefer modern beatemp ups, shootemups, etc. Anyway, I'll download those game you mention which are not in my collection, just to check out if they're any good. Spinners are atractive, but just to play breakouts, blasteroids etc? I can play these games with my mouse. It's not the same as the original but it's quite confortable, and these games aren't among my top ten favourite list either. : You don't have to justify your choices to me or anyone else on this board. Everybody who has built an arcade cab showcased at this website or Arcade@Home has made conscious choices that they will either live with permanently, now, or expand upon later. These choices may or may not have been influenced by other people's projects. I certainly have not imposed any rules or minimum standards on anybody; if anything, I've only shown a few people what they might be missing out on if they don't allow certain options. : The only sacrifice I've made to date is to set the deadline for completion of my project in ten years' time. : : : Rotary sticks is an option which seems much more interesting to me. Although the games that support this kind of control are not many, Forgotten worlds alone can justify installing one rotary stick (or 2?). How would you install these sticks? I mean, if you have a 2 player panel, with 8 way joysticks, and you intended install other 2 sticks (rotary).. wouldn't it be a nice idead to put them side by side to the 8 way sticks, so that you can use the pushbuttons you already have without mounting new specific buttons for the rotary sticks? Get the idea? : If you had examined my panels closely (you probably can't right now, since the picture links at FortuneCity's webpages are currently shot !@#$#$%@), you would see that my Swap Panel B matches exactly what you are describing. : : : Also, this would mean a wider stick : By how much? A mere 0.02" and 0.05"! (dimensions taken from the Happ Controls USA website) : : : but not taller. Oh.. btw, do you know how expensive are these sticks? And do they need any special method for enconding (can I use a keyb hack?). : $39.65 US for the plain 12-way rotary and $44.05 US for the optical version. (prices obtained from the Happ Controls USA website) The rotary axes are analog spinner-type outputs. I would be sending those signals to Opti-Pac...

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