PROJECTS

A few months ago I had the bright idea that I wanted to build something. And being a gamer, It had to have something to do with gaming. I only had two ideas, and I think I went with the worse one.

Which was that? I decided I wanted to go with D. Gee's instructions for building a DDRHOMEPAD. (No, the entire thing is not technically capitalized. Yes, I like it better that way.) The site had detailed instructions, photos, a parts list...a cinch, I thought last Tuesday, as I traveled to Home Depot to buy supplies. Unfortunately, parents were out of the house for the week, which means: no access to power tools. No table saw, no jigsaw, but I could use a hand saw. Cutting five squares of plywood could have taken 5 minutes, but due to my weak gamer arms, it took an hour.

No problems when I tried to cut the sheet metal that would cover the plywood, except that it ended up a little bit curved since it's not easy to cut a 12" piece of metal with inch-and-a-half tinsnips.

Then I tried to make the plates of clear plastic that would top off the buttons. In the interest of full disclosure, funny story. I had gone to the Home Depot in Nashua, NH to buy my materials. The plans called for lucite sheets. I asked the guy where I could find lucite, and he says: "What's a lucite?" In hindsight a perfectly reasonable response. He could have specialized in something else, like...bathroom fixtures. But it was funny at the time.

I went on to explain it was a clear glass substitute, like fiberglass, and he redirected me to Aisle 16. No lucite, but there were sheets of Lexan, the kind of material used in those Nalgene water bottles we see so often nowadays. Works for me.

I had not bothered to ask how the hell I was supposed to cut it. I checked the directions and they suggested repeatedly scoring the sheet of L[uciteexan] and then breaking it over a table. It seemed a bit crude. But, what the hell. I had forgotten, however, to remove the plastic wrap on both sides. <> Dammit.

Then I figured I could saw it if I used a light blade. Dumb move. I had not gotten an inch into the Lexan when it started to crack.

The real problem, I think, was that I was not breaking the Lexan evenly. By placing the Lexan between the table and what was left of my plywood, then applying pressure down with both hands while kneeling on the plywood, I could make a clean break. Unfortunately, by this time, I only had enough to make 4 panels -- this recipe used two per button, so I needed eight. And guess what? Out of all the items I had bought, the 2'x4' Lexan sheet I had bought was the most expensive.

It was at this point I decided to hold off until I could get some professional assistance. Besides, I needed to use Dad's drill press, and I couldn't figure out how to reconfigure that ShopSmith all-in-one thing he uses (it was set up as a table saw at the time).

I haven't even gotten to the interesting part, which involves soldering wires to a disassembled Playstation controller and to pieces of sheet metal which would act as the contacts.

The other project I was planning on building? A MAME cabinet. Get a cheap but relatively powerful computer, install MAME, then build an arcade-style cabinet to house it. Bit of a lofty undertaking, and probably harder than the DDR pad. But it wouldn't involve working with sheet metal or Lexan. Since I recently upgraded to a 19" flatscreen LCD, I now have a CRT lying around. Probably not as big as most arcade screens (27" on most 2-player standard cabinets) but a hell of a lot cheaper ($200 when I bought it, as compared to a Wells-Gardner K7300, which sells for $700--refurbished!-- from happcontrols.com.). Next, buy USB gamepads, take out the circuit board, solder the contacts to some arcade buttons and joysticks, insert the gamepads into the computer inside, and voila! You got yourself an arcade machine.

I thought this would actually be a better project than the DDRHOMEPAD, for various reasons:
* This would apply to many games. There are thousands of ROMS that I know exist, and probably more than that. Probably an infinite number. (It could be modified so the joysticks and various buttons applied to a PS2 or XBox controller instead of USB. Thus, console gaming in an arcade shell.) By contrast, the DDRHOMEPAD would work for but one game: Stepmania. (A game that arguably emulates around 15+ games, but games that are functionally indistinguishable.)
* Again, no sheet metal or Lexan. Maybe a sheet to cover the monitor. And the margins of error in measurement for the arcade cabinet are arguably larger than that for the DDRHOMEPAD.
* Even after I'd finished building the DDRHOMEPAD, I'd still go to the arcade to play DDR, because there is such a thing as being a Score Whore: It gives me pride to know that no one has beaten my only Machine Record #1 on the In The Groove machine at FunWorld in Nashua (Funk Factory, medium difficulty, 97.59%) for at least a few months.

As for the MAME cabinet, there aren't any arcades nearby that have the wide range of games I'd be able to emulate. All the fighters, shooters (with a USB light gun), and, if I decide to implement a racing wheel, drivers, designed between the rise of the age of arcade video games (late 70s, early 80s) and the point where everyone started switching to 3d systems with proprietary hardware (mid-90s or so). Just one example: At the Brunswick Zone in Lowell, there appeared one day a NeoGeo machine with a Double Dragon fighting game. My brother and I each played a few rounds, then we left the arcade. We never saw it or a similar machine again. I downloaded the ROM a while back, and found out just how much of a horrific piece of crap that game really was. But I'd still play it again once in a while. All arcade players have a game like this one. It's not very popular, but for some reason, you played it a lot and still will, for all the memories it brought back. For me, it's that Double Dragon game. And also Zero Point.

Why did I decide to build the DDRHOMEPAD, then? I was thinking that a DDRHOMEPAD might be an easier thing to bring for a LAN party than a MAME cabinet. (I've already begun thinking about some kind of wheel assembly involving a wooden base that can be removed when you need it to move, and put in place when it needs to be stationery, a base that can be folded up and placed in a small cabinet in the side...but I'm getting ahead of myself.) But I think bringing an arcade machine to a LAN party might be more fun. Which brings me to the topic of LAN parties, which I'll cover in my next post, probably later this week.