Comments on: Codename: TIGRAC

By: miguel

miguel — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:33:49 +0000

Here’s a nice sized arcade style trackball for mame cabinets:
http://www.xgaming.com/arcade_trackball_part.shtml

It’s around $60, I don’t know if we have budget for something like that but if we don’t I’d be up for throwing in half the cash for it if someone else can cover the other half.

By: queasy

queasy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:07:00 +0000

i think companies still make trackballs so depending on cost, that might work better than an inverted mouse. they may not be arcade style, but they’re still trackballs.

-j

By: CraigB

CraigB — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:38:29 +0000

So am I, Miguel.

And I agree on the trackball, it makes perfect sense. It’s a good tool for action-oriented games, and it’s a nice stand-in for a mouse- considering that mice really don’t work as an arcade input device.

(And who didn’t love playing Marble Madness or Blades of Steel at the arcade?)

Is there possibly a way of hacking together a “trackball” that works with an inverted embedded mouse, like your keyboard/joystick setup? You’d need to figure out how to reverse the input, but until you get an honest-to-goodness arcade trackball, that might be a workable hack.

By: miguel

miguel — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:44:08 +0000

The dumb monkey’s issue is a good point especially if it ends up in a bar.

Knowing that the keyboard is being used to hook up a joystick makes a lot more sense now.

While I understand the idea behind people making games specifically for the machine I think it would be a pity if the machine couldn’t also be used to host some of the best existing games from TOjam and the like.

Personally I’d be much more likely to tweak an existing game for the cabinet (eg. remapping buttons to the one’s on the cabinet) then to build something from scratch for it. But that only works if there are a sufficient number of buttons (two or three would cover most ToJam/AGI games I think) and in many cases a trackball.

I’ve seen a few mame cabinets online which have trackball setups that look reasonably difficult to break so it seems feasible from that standpoint. Still the money/skill required may make it unfeasible for the first cabinet.

Anyway I love that this is actually happening and look forward to playing games on it!

By: jph

jph — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:20:47 +0000

Miguel- I like your thoughts on controles,. it depends on WHERE you are going to put the machine as people are dumb monkeys, and will destroy things,(pull out wires say) it may be best to go with the method of the old machines and make them as ruged and monkey-proof as possible. The retro cabinets I have been looking at come with the old arcade controles (and coin slots) so we will be just haking the switches to an old keyboard. There are also machines we can get for future ver. of this project that have more interesting controles,. they had a bunch of old golf games with a single trackball and no buttons.,(we can add some) that could be used to good effect,. or some driving/space shooting ones with cool wheel/flight-stick type thingys,. personaly I think we should have ppl make tha games specific to the machine.

Jon- cool, our machines guts will have an interesting pedigree!

By: queasy

queasy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:57:37 +0000

so i have this laptop that might be perfect however, the power plug pin is broken off. in the right hands though, it may be an easy fix under ten dollars. i just don’t know much about electronics and soldering. if someone knows how to fix it i’ll totally donate it for this.

i don’t remember the specific specs, but it’s faster than the machine i used to make ES, so that should be way beyond P2. it has 512mb ram and a pretty decent video card, not those cheapo integrated ones. no hard drive though.

it also has an s-video hookup which might be useful for HEY social projector stuff.

By: Jim Munroe

Jim Munroe — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:39:41 +0000

Me and Jph have chatted a bit about this — there’s different cabinet designs with different inputs. We’re probably going to go with the simplest inputs for the first one, joystick and one or two buttons, even though this may limit the games we can use.

Once we get this one done, then we can look at what other controls systems the other cabinets have — Jph saw one with four joysticks (a la Gauntlet), and I’m imagining people making games specifically for that hardware… but yeah, I think simple’s best for this one.

By: miguel

miguel — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:07:31 +0000

I’m not sure how feasible it would be but it would be nice to have support for other common input devices. At the very least a trackball for mouse input.

Two joysticks or game pads (in holsters when not in use?) would also be good, or does the cabinet include built in joysticks?