Posted by Ohso on 4, 2001 at 2:16 AM:
In Reply to: Ahhh, ambition... posted by Mojo2000 on 3, 2001 at 11:52 AM:
: Damn, you're such a newbie.
Nothing wrong with that. Everyone here was a newbie at some time. :)
I disagree about the ultimate/4-player control panel statement. My panel is a 4-player all-in-one panel and it works very nicely. It has removable sub-panels and combines the best of a big panel with the best of replaceable panels without the disadvantages. Replaceable panels have one big drawback...they duplicate controls needlessly which increases cost, and makes them rather space consuming. Sub-panels completely resolves this problem. I can swap out a single 8-way joy for a tron-style stick or steering wheel or anything I like. I can also replace a button panel to use a different layout, e.g. Defender, Street Fighter, Neo Geo, etc.
The basics of my control panel:
4 joy panels (any type)
2 button panels (various layouts)
2 trackballs (with three buttons each)
2 spinners
4 player start buttons
Also joy panels can be replaced with additional spinners or wheels.
There are some MAME function buttons in a recess below the front of the panel. I didn't actually need these for MAME but they made nice additional controls for games like Mechwarrior, etc. so I added them anyway. The whole panel fits together nicely and is not cluttered. Fully loaded it can have a lot of controls, but this is extremely nice for some PC games that involve many controls like the aforementioned Mechwarrior as well as any decent space combat sim.