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I Just Registered GameEX :) / Idea For Sweet Arcade Cabinet Prop

Griffen

By Griffen
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Griffen Member

Griffen

Posted
Posted

I just committed to using GameEx as my cabinet's font end :) I am looking forward to fashioning a spiffy front end with it!

I am really new to this software and community, but you guys have been a great help already. I look forward to working with you guys :)

Idea For Arcade Cabinet Prop:

Spinning bicycle wheels on top of the Cabinet with LEDs making moving pictures.

Check this out: pacanim.gif

Its a kit from this site called Spoke POV: http://www.ladyada.net/make/spokepov/

Maybe a GameEx plugin could be made to control what images are displayed?

Too huge and ungainly? Maybe... :blink:

Super Cool? Definitely! :lol:

bkenobi GameEx God (Top Rank)

bkenobi

Posted
Posted

Interesting idea. I have concerns about the design though.

1) The circuit board is attached to the spokes, so it is exposed to the elements (no riding your bike in the rain)

2) The batteries don't look well attached so you might end up with a set of projectiles if you hit a bump

3) As far as GameEx, since it uses batteries, you may have to mess with it quite often to keep it running.

However, it does look cool albeit VERY large!

headkaze GameEx God (Top Rank)

headkaze

Posted
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Interesting idea. I have concerns about the design though.

1) The circuit board is attached to the spokes, so it is exposed to the elements (no riding your bike in the rain)

2) The batteries don't look well attached so you might end up with a set of projectiles if you hit a bump

3) As far as GameEx, since it uses batteries, you may have to mess with it quite often to keep it running.

However, it does look cool albeit VERY large!

LOL! You must have missed this part

Spinning bicycle wheels on top of the Cabinet with LEDs making moving pictures.

I don't think he intends on riding his bike with these attached ;)

Griffen: It would be quite easy to write a plugin to change what is displayed. I can help you with that when the time comes. Personally I think a huge wheel on my cab would be a bit unsightly. I would go for something more "inconspicuous" like funky plasma plate side art or something.

Here are some examples I found on BYOAC

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=42742.0

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=47707.0

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=76327.0

Tempest GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tempest

Posted
Posted
LOL! You must have missed this part

I don't think he intends on riding his bike with these attached ;)

Griffen: It would be quite easy to write a plugin to change what is displayed. I can help you with that when the time comes. Personally I think a huge wheel on my cab would be a bit unsightly. I would go for something more "inconspicuous" like funky plasma plate side art or something.

Here are some examples I found on BYOAC

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=42742.0

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=47707.0

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=76327.0

I mentioned this before in another thread, but I thought it would be cool to use a widescreen monitor for a marquee, and have the appropriate marquee displayed for each game. If you're willing to write a plugin, I will build a cabinet with that feature. As usual I have no ideas about details... Dual monitor video card?....

headkaze GameEx God (Top Rank)

headkaze

Posted
Posted
I mentioned this before in another thread, but I thought it would be cool to use a widescreen monitor for a marquee, and have the appropriate marquee displayed for each game. If you're willing to write a plugin, I will build a cabainet with that feature. As usual I have no ideas about details... Dual monitor video card?....

It's been done, you can read more about it here. Most video cards have two outputs, one VGA and the other digital out. So you can easily have dual monitor setup with most video cards. The only problem is hiding half the monitor. But as for writing a plugin to display the marquee for each game, VERY easy to do I could write a plugin to do it in a few minutes.

Griffen Member

Griffen

Posted
  • Author
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Headkaze you are the man when it comes to these sweet plugins, I will have to hit you up when I decide to try to implement one of these crazy Ideas. I really like the idea of a changing marquee on top! I will have to try and track down a monitor that will fit in the marquee spot :)

bkenobi GameEx God (Top Rank)

bkenobi

Posted
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I saw what he was intending on doing with it, I was just commenting on the idea in general. It's definitely a "cool, look what I can do" thing. I just don't know if it's worth the "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING AND WHERE IS MY BIKE?" from my wife. :P

Tempest GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tempest

Posted
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It's been done, you can read more about it here. Most video cards have two outputs, one VGA and the other digital out. So you can easily have dual monitor setup with most video cards. The only problem is hiding half the monitor. But as for writing a plugin to display the marquee for each game, VERY easy to do I could write a plugin to do it in a few minutes.

That's is cool.... Well, being a person of my word, I guess now I have to include it in my cabinet :P .

I was actually thinking of a smaller monitor. The one on my laptop is 151/2" diagonal, about 8" high, and 13"wide. I thought about centering something like that in the marquee, with MAME/Gameex logos on the sides. If the logos were backlit on plexiglass, it could look interesting.

I hadn't thought of leaving half of the display outside of the cabinet....

Any more interesting ideas along these lines?

Maybe CPWizard display in the top half?

Get creative here......

headkaze GameEx God (Top Rank)

headkaze

Posted
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CPWizard can display on a secondary monitor. I just haven't done a hell of alot of testing with it. Ideally since you have a second monitor you would want CPWizard to display info all the time. Right now it doesn't do that.

BTW GameEx has a feature called the "Game Extender" which displays artwork for the selected game on a secondary monitor.

So there are definately things that can be done with this idea. If you do end up using CPWizard on the secondary I will probably need to do some updating for it to run in some sort of perminant mode where it can scroll through artwork and things. I guess it would need to allow input as well somehow so you can scroll through history and such if need be.

Griffen Member

Griffen

Posted
  • Author
Posted
I saw what he was intending on doing with it, I was just commenting on the idea in general. It's definitely a "cool, look what I can do" thing. I just don't know if it's worth the "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING AND WHERE IS MY BIKE?" from my wife. :P

Hahahaha. I dig it.

bkenobi GameEx God (Top Rank)

bkenobi

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If you were going to put a laptop monitor on the cabinet as a second monitor, you could use a laptop in the first place and use the arcade display as the secondary monitor. That would save a LOT of space, but probably be cost prohibitive...

Tempest GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tempest

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If you were going to put a laptop monitor on the cabinet as a second monitor, you could use a laptop in the first place and use the arcade display as the secondary monitor. That would save a LOT of space, but probably be cost prohibitive...

I've totally lost it :( I was repling to this, and I thought I clicked on reply, but nothing.....

If I double posted, I'll actually be happy because that means I was only wrong about being wrong.

I was just using my laptop as an example, because it is 8" high, which I thought would work well in a marquee. Did you see the one that HK had that link too? Like everyone else, I thought "what the hell is this guy thinking", but it turned out way cool...

I would buy a tv, or monitor as needed...

So far as your wife and the bike goes, just tell her you traded it for some shoes! :P

Brian Hoffman GameEx God (Top Rank)

Brian Hoffman

Posted
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I've totally lost it :( I was repling to this, and I thought I clicked on reply, but nothing.....

If I double posted, I'll actually be happy because that means I was only wrong about being wrong.

I was just using my laptop as an example, because it is 8" high, which I thought would work well in a marquee. Did you see the one that HK had that link too? Like everyone else, I thought "what the hell is this guy thinking", but it turned out way cool...

I would buy a tv, or monitor as needed...

So far as your wife and the bike goes, just tell her you traded it for some shoes! :P

Well What I would like is the scrolling signs.. You see them in stores usually a marquee of a bunch of red lights that display text scrolling from left to right.. If those could be hacked to display gamename it would be cool.. They are also close to the correct orentation for a marquee. :)

Tempest GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tempest

Posted
Posted
Well What I would like is the scrolling signs.. You see them in stores usually a marquee of a bunch of red lights that display text scrolling from left to right.. If those could be hacked to display gamename it would be cool.. They are also coles to the correct orentation for a marquee. :)

Ok. I know your just testing me, doesn't HK's plugin work with the betabrites?

I'm sure I saw a cabinet somewhere utilizing them. (well... I'm not sure!)

Brian Hoffman GameEx God (Top Rank)

Brian Hoffman

Posted
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Ok. I know your just testing me, doesn't HK's plugin work with the betabrites?

I'm sure I saw a cabinet somewhere utilizing them. (well... I'm not sure!)

Acutally I was being serious... I never seen betabrite... Believe it or not.

:)

Perhaps Ill check it out.

Thanks :)

bkenobi GameEx God (Top Rank)

bkenobi

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I've seen GameEx based cabinets using a scrolling LED display like you are talking about. I assume it's using the LED/LCD plugin, but since I don't have a fancy display like that, I don't know for sure.

Btw, anyone ever consider using a regular marquee with a strip cut out so that a relatively small LED panel could be mounted in the center bottom? I'm thinking of something like the matrix display pinball machines. Something like this:

image-14.jpg

image-8.jpg

Tempest GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tempest

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Actually I think this guy posted here, he was on a radio show, or some kind of a radio cast or something....ring any bells anybody?

Edit: When I google this: Mame cabinet +betabrite

I get this: This is a more detailed video of my MAME cabinet running Gameex. ... and Betabrite sign driven by the awesome GameEX and Headkaze's PluginLCD. ...

Brian Hoffman GameEx God (Top Rank)

Brian Hoffman

Posted
Posted
Actually I think this guy posted here, he was on a radio show, or some kind of a radio cast or something....ring any bells anybody?

Edit: When I google this: Mame cabinet +betabrite

I get this: This is a more detailed video of my MAME cabinet running Gameex. ... and Betabrite sign driven by the awesome GameEX and Headkaze's PluginLCD. ...

He is a member here.. I believe his username is alexdog or something. I saw the youtube video but not the betabrite.

I could have overlooked it tho... my attention span is not what it used to be :)

headkaze GameEx God (Top Rank)

headkaze

Posted
Posted

The parrot in that video cracks me up everytime! lol

FYI the PluginLCD supports the following hardware:

LEDWiz (LED controller)

PACDrive (LED controller)

BetaBrite (LED scrolling sign)

BPP-440 (LCD screen)

CrystalFontz (LCD screen)

PJRC (LCD screen)

ProLite (LED scrolling sign)

I do intend on adding support for custom hardware which will enable you to define the appropriate binary sequences required to send data to any device. I've also been meaning to add Parallel port support.

BTW GameEx supports more LCD devices via LCD Smartie.

Brian Hoffman GameEx God (Top Rank)

Brian Hoffman

Posted
Posted
The parrot in that video cracks me up everytime! lol

FYI the PluginLCD supports the following hardware:

LEDWiz (LED controller)

PACDrive (LED controller)

BetaBrite (LED scrolling sign)

BPP-440 (LCD screen)

CrystalFontz (LCD screen)

PJRC (LCD screen)

ProLite (LED scrolling sign)

I do intend on adding support for custom hardware which will enable you to define the appropriate binary sequences required to send data to any device. I've also been meaning to add Parallel port support.

BTW GameEx supports more LCD devices via LCD Smartie.

Thats great... Perhaps its time for me to get some new toys :)

headkaze GameEx God (Top Rank)

headkaze

Posted
Posted
Thats great... Perhaps its time for me to get some new toys :)

BetaBrite and LEDWiz are top on my list of cool devices for a cab. I've heard a few people have found BetaBrite's on EBay so it might be a good place to source them.

  • 2 months later...
Tempest GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tempest

Posted
Posted
That's is cool.... Well, being a person of my word, I guess now I have to include it in my cabinet :P .

I was actually thinking of a smaller monitor. The one on my laptop is 151/2" diagonal, about 8" high, and 13"wide. I thought about centering something like that in the marquee, with MAME/Gameex logos on the sides. If the logos were backlit on plexiglass, it could look interesting.

I hadn't thought of leaving half of the display outside of the cabinet....

Any more interesting ideas along these lines?

Maybe CPWizard display in the top half?

Get creative here......

You guys know that I'm getting close to building my new cab (I've been waiting for warmer weather, it's 46 out this morning...summers here! :P ) I really want to try this marquee idea. If I'm going to let the top half stick out of the cabinet as in the thread that HK mentioned :

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=70840.0

I would really like some idea's on what to display on it. Would it be possible to display three things on the monitor? (Marquee, CPWizard, History) It would really all be one picture, but is there a way to combine these (or some other three) items on the screen to display?

Does anybody have a different idea of what the top half of the display could be used for?

Tempest GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tempest

Posted
Posted
You guys know that I'm getting close to building my new cab (I've been waiting for warmer weather, it's 46 out this morning...summers here! :P ) I really want to try this marquee idea. If I'm going to let the top half stick out of the cabinet as in the thread that HK mentioned :

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=70840.0

I would really like some idea's on what to display on it. Would it be possible to display three things on the monitor? (Marquee, CPWizard, History) It would really all be one picture, but is there a way to combine these (or some other three) items on the screen to display?

Does anybody have a different idea of what the top half of the display could be used for?

Nobody?

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