As I rummaged through a pile of failed layouts trying to identify components that still had potential to be consolidated into a better plan, my wife happened to walk by and observe my distress. Being the loving, caring, thoughtful woman she is, she asked what was bothering me. I explained to her what each controller was designed for, how much it would cost, and why I was having trouble plugging them into relational space next to each other. i think the problems I was having are pretty common. The individual gamer's space would be cramped. Access to the trackball and flight yoke without twenty buttons and/or sticks in the way would be sketchy at best. The different varieties of control types needed tiered spacing but would have to sacrifice comfort in order to utilize them. There was a general lack of common deck height which would certainly prevent all players from enjoying the games in a unified way. Basically, I was trying to do too much with too little room.
Luckily my wife is smarter and more sarcastic then I. She called me stupid and told me that it was retarded to waste money on controls that I would only use once or twice over the course of the deck's life. She stomped away, grumbling something about worthless money pits and juvenile hobbies. The resulting awkward silence provided me a better environment to figure out what I was doing wrong. After my feelings stopped throbbing, I realized that she was right and that I needed to take a more realistic look at what types of gameplay was important to me. I needed to prioritize.
As it happens, the most obvious problem with my plans was the flight yoke. The flight yoke was a cool idea (the example I was using came from the Supercade cabinet), but pretty impractical given the fact that I never actually had a strong desire to finish any flight sim game I've ever started. It was also taller, wider, and would sit deeper in the control panel than the other components. Not to mention that I most certainly would have to hack a desktop USB controller to accomplish a visual appearance that remained copacetic with the rest of the cabinet's design. In the end, with all the problems the flight yoke was creating, it metaphorically fell off the design table. The flight games that retain their place in my game database will simply have to be played with an 8-way Ball Top Sanwa JLF joystick. I doubt my gameplay experience will suffer much when the project is realized.
Once that space was cleared the remaining components all collectively sighed a breath of relief and became much more compliant in settling into their respective positions. My focus then centered on separating priorities for each control panel and sorting out which games would be played on them.
- For multiplayer games with greater then two players, Platformers, Fighting, Beat 'em Ups, and Shooters I would use a 4P Modern Layout Panel
- Retro classics and anything that required a unique input type for gameplay would play on the 2P Special Input Panel
- Console and PC games would use the Keyboard/PC Peripheral Panel which also contains a USB Gamepad Controller/Mouse Hatch
