Arcade Machines

[jman]

I dunno how, but a few months ago I convinced my work to buy an arcade machine for the office - it arrived on Wednesday.. its a 750 all-in-one jobby.. think it cost around £1600.. embossed with the company logos etc.  Well it broke down within 10 minutes and keeps blue screening randomly, lol.. think we've got an engineer coming out today to replace the console (Game Elf)... but I've opened the cabinet up and had a look around inside and been inspired.. my missus already said I can't buy an arcade machine outright.. but I'm sure if I built my own one.. it would cost less than half the price of that, so she can go suck on one!

So just been looking around..
2 Player DIY Flat Pack Kit - £150-£200
Jamma Kit - I'd probably want to buy an all-in-one kit, rather than a raspberry pi/retropie.. etc.  Pandoras Box/Game Elf seem to be the most popular - probably set you back between £80-£180 depending on what you want.. I've no problem downloading roms myself and will want to customize what games are on there anyway.
PSU - £30
2 Joysticks - £25
8 Buttons - £30
Speakers & Amp - £30

And that would be most of it done and should only cost between £350-£500 - there will be other optional bits like LED lighting and Vinyls.. but nothing major - but a nice addition to the man-cave!

Anyway, watch this space.. I'm seriously thinking about buying the cabinet either this week or next and then go from there.

[harv]

Nice! I'll certainly be keeping my eye on this, very cool!

[jman]

I told the missus last night and she just shrugged, so that's a good sign.

I've picked out the cabinet I'm going to buy, bit pricier than my estimate but the wood is thicker and this looks the best quality I've seen.

I'm ordering this and some chrome t-moulding next week!

[jman]

Bought the cabinet this morning - its the one in the link before - I used BitcadeUK instead of arcadeworld because there was no shipping cost - it still cost £299.99 though.

Also bought 11 different T-Molding snippets - as I'm really unsure what I want - T-Molding is the trim round the outside of the machine.  I've got 2 greens, purple, red, orange, yellow, 2 blues, chrome, polished brass and leather lol.  Should be enough to make up my mind.  I think either green, blue, polished brass or chrome will win - but we'll see!

Hopefully should get it next week, probably Tuesday I reckon and will take a few pictures - shouldn't take too long to build.

At the moment, I'm slightly leaning towards shoving a retropie inside it - unsure how complicated it would be to set it up with joystick and buttons though - but you should get better emulation on the games compared to the game elfs/pandoras box - we've had our unit fixed at work so I've given a few games a go now - I was playing Double Dragon last week with a mate and it was so laggy and slow as soon as one or two enemies were on screen - it sucked!

Cabinet supports a 27" monitor - I'll have to swap out one of my PC monitors with my spare 20" - but at least that cost is completely negated.

[harv]

I used to LOVE Double Dragon in the 80s. The first video game in the arcade where you could pick up weapons as far as I remember.

[jman]

Got the cabinet delivered today!!! All looks good, but no assembly info, so I'll probably look at getting it built on Saturday but it might take a while lol

[jman]

So I've been doing a bit of research into what I want to act as the gubbins for the machine, as previously said - I think I'm going down the retropie route.

I think firstly, I'm going to have to build a shelf inside the machine - I've got some offcuts I can use for that - shouldn't be a massive problem to put something inside the machine for everything to sit on.

I can get a raspberry pi 3 b+ starter kit for £50 - and then stick retropie on that.

What was concerning me is how easy it would be to hook up a joystick and buttons to that - and configuring them - I've found out what I need - as I want illuminated buttons - I've got to buy a usb encoder with the correct slots for the led power - something like this joystick kit would do the job and actually works out much cheaper than buying the components seperately.  I've got to check the sizing of those button holes, apparently they can be two different sizes - you can see the encoders on that page though - they are like £18 each if I buy them from arcadeworld - so much cheaper to buy one of these kits - and they aren't shipped from China/Hong Kong either.. at the end of the day, if I want to buy more buttons, which I might want to, then I can and they should be easy to swap out.

I'm now wondering how much of the cabinet I should attempt to put together this weekend though - I might do the base, the sides and the front of the cabinet - so I can still work within it.  I'll have to somehow make some holders for the raspberry pi case and usb encoders to sit on as I don't want them sliding around if I move the cabinet - probably need to get some spacers too.  Missed the delivery of my T-Molding on Monday, so they will be redelivered on Saturday - so can decide on what I want then and get that ordered too.

After I've done that though - it should just be a case of getting some speakers sorted and it should be up and running!!  Probably want to get some paint work done for the machine.. I was thinking that would be cheap as chips - but if I'm looking for a professional covered design - we're talking about £250ish!!!

[harv]

Fucking hell, that's an expensive Raspberry Pie. You should have gone to Asda or Tesco. I'm more partial to a Cherry Pie myself though.

*Grabs coat and runs*

All sounding good so far!

I haven't been doing too bad on my little project either. I can't remember if I posted a picture of my first corridor yesterday or not cos I tend to get my forums mixed up. I'll post it in the main video games thread if I haven't already.

The only minor problem I have at the moment is with the Drexel density. I want to put vents, handles and text on my corner piece but the Drexel density is too low and everything is pixelated.

Not a big deal because I'm not planning on having my facehuggers jumping out at players in corner sections, just the others like straights, t-junctions etc. And for those I have the engineering panels as separate models so they'll have VERY high texel density. A texel is a texture pixel or texture element. I could increase the size of my engineering panels to increase the texel density but my UV map is pretty jam packed so I'd have to lower the texel density of other parts of my model (by making them smaller).

Really annoying but that's texturing for you lol

[jman]

Put most of the cabinet together, fuck me, it wasn't as easy as it sounded, ended up having to trim a bit of wood on one of the front connectors as it just didn't fit the slot... But happy with how it turned out.



Got my raspberry pi today too... Probably get retropie on there next week and order my joystick and buttons.

Think I'm going to get the polished brass trim, it looks boss

[jman]

Retropie loaded.. fired it up and played Super Mario Kart (SNES) on the keyboard this morning - great stuff! 

Ordered my joysticks and buttons yesterday - got my T-Molding ordered, also scoped out what I'm going to do about sound - this should do - although I'll want external volume controls - so I've also scoped that out and I think a PAC LC1 should do the jobby.

Made a shelf for the cabinet at the weekend, just need to make some holders for the pi, the amp and I'll need to get an extension cable in there too

Couple of things I'm unsure about at the moment - whether I have a spare HDMI cable for the monitor/pi, also whether I need to buy a vesa mount for the monitor - I think I do, but just need to check.  Also thinking about how I'm going to black out the plexiglass surrounding the monitor - just use cardboard or what?

[harv]

Depends on how much money you want to spend I guess. Cardboard should do the job or you could maybe get some sort of vinyl stuff to cover it if you want to go posh. Nobody's going to see it so I'd go for cardboard.

[jman]

Well I think its going to be cardboard or acrylic paint, might buy both to see what they look like.. the cardboard would give it more of a 3d effect, but the paint would be a lot easier!

Should get my T-Molding today, my joysticks/buttons tomorrow, my speaker kit on Friday/Saturday along with the external volume control and an extra pair of RCA cables - apparently I don't need a VESA mount - but I do need the screws - so I'll have a proper look at that on Saturday, I've got a spare HDMI cable so I should have 95-100% of everything I need to build it now.. which I'll do on Saturday!!

So far:

Cabinet: £300
T-Molding: £42
Joysticks/Button Kit: £50
Speaker Kit with Ext. Volume Control: £25
Raspberry Pi Kit + Faster SD Card: £60
Total £477

[jman]

Started banging my T-molding in last night - its tougher than it looks - think I'm going to have to get some gorilla glue to treat some of the corners where its impossible for it to sit flush.
Also put in my buttons, although not wired up them up just yet - one of the wires to the buttons is missing a cable aswell.. so might have to complain about that.  Bloody joysticks don't come with any bolts though - so can't mount the joysticks properly until I get some M4 carriage bolts - its impossible to find them in black though which is cheesing me off.

Found a promising site that does artwork for a reasonable price - https://rockstarprint.co.uk/index.html

Just in talks with the chap who runs it to see if he can make it for my arcade machine as the marquee is not a standard size - gone for this one:


Think I'll get the marquee done first to see the quality and then work out what I actually want... could create some custom artwork for no extra cost although it would take me time

Also noticed they sell Carbon Fibre Wrap - oh yes, I'm definitely going to get myself some of that!

[jman]

Decided to go with the card option for the bezel in the end.. bought an A1 black mounting board from Hobbycraft... its not too thick.. it should be perfect... buuuutttt its too small.. doesn't quite cover the entire plexiglass - which is a bit annoying... unsure what to do, other than to order some A0 which would be online only... I guess I need to see how much of the plexiglass the monitor takes up.. but I can't mount the monitor because I don't have the right screws as it has to go through an 18mm piece of wood which is supposed to act as the vesa mount.. the company I bought it from said all I'd need is screws... but I just don't get how that works....

Actually.. I just worked it out.. the fucking monitor I had planned to use isn't VESA compliant - lol.. luckily I do have another 27" that is VESA compliant.. so I can see what I need to buy now.. just the bolts, washers and nuts I guess.

Thoroughly pissed off with the amp though.. its come with a shitty PSU cable that runs off into some kind of fork ending.. presumably the usage of these amps are mainly for modding car systems??  No fucking idea, but it looks like it should be connecting to a battery or something.. I've got to go and buy a fucking plug to test that out now.  Also I was told to buy 29 foot of T-Molding - I bought 30 foot.. and I don't have enough (you'll see the front bit below the control panel is not done yet as I ran out), probably needed about 32 foot.. so I've got to order some more of that FFS.

Anyway, I built out the shelf inside the cabinet today though and got some Velcro to stick the usb encoders and raspberry pi down.. need some cable tidies at some point I think, its going to get pretty messy in there when I start hooking up the buttons and joysticks... this build is far harder and certainly more frustrating than I first imagined... don't build yourself an arcade cabinet.. lol.. it does look pretty though...

[harv]

Looks great so far!