More Artwork!

Ok, the kickplate has been finished and the marquee is nearly there, just need to add a few more characters.

This was again designed using Adobe Illustrator CS2.

Next on the list is finishing the marquee, producing a keyboard panel and possibly some sideart.

Control Panel Artwork

So some progress has been made.

The theme has been thought through and the CP art has come along quite nicely.

This has been designed using Adobe Illustrator CS2 (a vector based design program).

I wanted to try and capture the look a feel of a comic but without taking away from the fact that this is an arcade machine. I also wanted it to be easy for people to use so having dedicated buttons to perform different tasks was a must.

The top section will represent the admin side of things. In the centre are the main admin buttons which will be pause, exit, volume and a toggle button. In between the pause/exit buttons and volume/toggle buttons will be a spinner (dead centre at the the top).

As you may see there are some button labels on the CP already, but there will be more to come. Just needs some tweeks.

On the each side at the top will be the player start button (P1 and P2), the coin buttons (Coin 1 and Coin 2) and the the dedictaed mouse buttons for the trackball and spinner (right click and left click).

Below all that will be a 6 button layout for each player. I have opted to go with red ball tops with chrome shafts (Mag-Stik Plus available from Ultimarc) for the joysticks as I already had these although I would recommend using the Ultra-stick 360's as these are awesome.

In the centre will be a Happ 3" trackball in translucent red and will be illuminated using LED Clusters. These just run of the PC power using 4-pin connector and will light up the trackball. The benefit of this is that the LED's will only be on when the PC is running.

More images and art to come soon!

The Adventure Begins...

Today is the day that this blog and journey begins!

The title of this project is Marvel Arcade.

As a kid I always enjoyed watching cartoons like X-Men and Spider man. Even more so I loved reading the Marvel comics. However, I was deprived of games as a kid. The console was replaced for a book and education was a main priority. My only saving grace was the arcade. A young lads haven of gaming genius with awesome games such as Bubble Bobble, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and of course Marvel vs Capcom (I loved that game!). But that was all about to change...

It was at uni that I first discovered MAME.

But what is MAME?

Well, MAME is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade games systems in software, with the intent of preserving gaming history and preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten. The name is an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.
taken from the MAME wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAME/MAME_arcade

Once my friends had seen what I had discovered all hell broke loose! We were gaming until 4 in the morning! But it wasn't the same. Then I thought "hang on, why don't we build an arcade machine?" This was followed by a large laugh. Determined I powered on and here I am today about to start my second project.

Now, for help completing this project I regularly use the Build Your Own Arcade Controls (BYOAC) forum (hello to everyone over there!). This is a great source for help and (when you become an expert ;-) give help! There is a real sense of community over at the forum, so head over and sign up!
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php

Another great source of help is the BYOAC wiki which can be accessed here:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Main_Page

Tasks:

1. PLAN - This IS the MOST important part!
2. Design Artwork
3. Configure PC
4. Build the cabinet
5. Paint the cabinet
6. Wire everything up
7. Play until I can't feel my hands anymore!

This will try to provide some insight to people who were in my position 3 years ago.