Posted by Krusty on 20, 2001 at 12:49 PM:
In Reply to: Excellent Krusty! posted by bernard on 20, 2001 at 3:13 AM:
When I get home, I can send you a Word Document I made that outlines my button assignments. Please note, everything listed is a plan, as I am still in construction phase (although I do have the panel finished). The NOT function is a safety net for the most part. I have it set up so that, for example, if you press button 1 + FUNCTION, it will go to the CONFIG MENU, but will NOT act as a Player 1 button push. For the most part, most games wouldn't be an issue. However, if I wanted to go into a menu to change something, I wouldn't want to press FUNCTION and the player button and have it drop my last smart bomb or something similar. Therefore, doing the NOT assignment makes sure that when I press a button, and am NOT pressing the function button, it activates the game button function...otherwise, it doesn't.
The main features I have are the CONFIG MENU, the VOLUME/BRIGHTNESS/ETC menu (default mapping is to the ~ key), THROTTLE, SHOW FRAME RATE, INCREASE FRAME SKIP, DECREASE FRAME SKIP, RESET GAME, ESCAPE GAME, and a few others I can't remember. Also, I mapped the screen moving features to the player 1 joystick (using FUNCTION, of course). Again, I'll send you my document outlining my peliminary plan...
As for the test switch (usually F2), I'm going to wire it inside the coin door. The Williams games require the test button be pushed on the first run only, so you could just run them and press it to continue. Basically, I want the functionality of an actual arcade machine. In other words, I want to be able to set the machine so that people can't get to any of the internal functions, whether it be the CONFIG MENU, the test mode of the game, etc. Therefore, I am going to wire the ground for my FUNCTION key to a SPST toggle switch so that I can enable or disable it. I'm also putting two black pushbuttons into the front of the cabinet above the coin door to act as coin inputs (although the coin switches in the door will also work). However, I'm going to wire these pushbuttons to the same ground on the disable switch, so that flipping it will disable the 'free credit' buttons as well. The only functions I will let the users normally activate will be the pause buttons and game escape. Game escape is performed either by FUNCTION+some button OR by P1 START + P1 PAUSE + P2 START +P2 PAUSE. This way, a user will be able to get out of the game and go back to the ARCADEOS menu. On the main screen of ARCADEOS, I have a background that displays the basic instructions to the user.
If you need anything else explained in more (or less) detail, please let me know...
: Krusty thanks, I think your solution is just about excatly what I need. Adding such a FUNCTION button easily doubles the use of every button on the control panel. Each button as themselves can work as a GAME-PLAY button, but each combined with the FUNCTION button can serve as an OPERATION (like reset, snapshot, display fps, etc.) What's more this will give the owner of the machine the ability to have his/her operation buttons in plain sight and accessible, but not have to LABEL the buttons which will change options, and therefore allow people to MESS with all the settings etc, so you don't have to HIDE your operational buttons.
: I think I'll do just that...I'll add a FUNCTION button and a PAUSE button (I knew I wanted a pause feature on the panel) and you really want PAUSE to be it's own button, easy to hit. I knew you COULD assign 2-key combinations to an operation, and that you could assign multiple keys to the SAME operation but didn't know how. It will be tedious to go through each game and set up it's button assignments (whatever the default ALL-GAME settings don't solve), but I was planning to do that anyways. I don't understand the purpose of having the NOT for key assignments (A NOT B).
: Thanks for the help Krusty, your solution is just what I need. -bernard
: By the way...can you LIST some of the most important operations I'll want. Of course I'll want : options menu, game reset, exit, enter. Maybe also : show fps, snapshot. What about SERVICE MODE? I know a lot of Williams games (like Defender, start up in Service Mode, so you'd need to get out of that). Anways...thanks again.