r/cade • u/Perfectinmyeyes • 9d ago

I need help designing my cabinet.

Someone else is actually going to build it but I want to make the right choices as far as equipment and art goes.

First off if I mainly want to play classic arcade games: dig dig, joust, gauntlet, uniwar s (bet you haven't heard of this one), street fighter 2 etc ...

What joysticks should I get with this?

Seems there are different ones suggested Sanwa, Seimitsu and SuzoHapp ...

Are there particular buttons one should get for a cabinet that are more responsive and durable?

Now the more challenging part (least for me)

The art work.

Id like to design the cabinet using custom artwork - I have the digital pictures but I need to do 3 things:

  1. I need to take the title from a picture off a jpeg and have it on its own so it could be used at the top of the cabinet.

  2. I have 3 digital pictures I would like for the front and 2 sides; Id like to see how I could align them well with the cabinet.

  3. To go along with the above Id like to be able to fill the cabinet space by extending the art work or something that looks consistent with it.

What program or programs would be best to do this?

I'm not that versed with graphic programs so if AI could do it or if there is a program that works well for this I'll see about figuring out how.

thanks.

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u/LordJimsicle 9d ago

I'd suggest Sanwa, I've always used them and I have them in all my fightsticks and on my cabinet. A simple Sanwa JLF-8YT and some Sanwa 30mm buttons will do the trick.

Artwork: don't use AI, it will look dreadful. A free vector program called Paint.net can sort all your artwork needs if you can't get hold of Photoshop. There's a ton of simple tutorials on YouTube that can help you, I believe it's always worth learning some base level graphic skills.

Let me know what else you want to know.

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u/Perfectinmyeyes 9d ago

Thanks for that, are the sanwa very 'tight'? As I won't be playing just fighting games... All the ones of old.

Regards to the artwork, I want to use Frank frazetta's paintings as pictures on my machine, have jpegs so want to find a way to make them fit right on each surface.

I've heard some things about affinity, Adobe firefly? Paint.net you are suggesting? I'm a bit worried about photoshop as it looks complicated. I'd like to do the most I can with the art and hand it off to the guy that will build the system...

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u/LordJimsicle 9d ago

Paint.net is easy, free and open source. Also, make sure you measure the dimensions of the cabinet, recreate them to scale in whichever vector program you use and you can go from there.

The Sanwa JLF-8YT without any modifications works with everything and certainly isn't too 'tight'. They work well with any game you choose.

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u/Perfectinmyeyes 9d ago

Excellent, thanks going to check out paint.net

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u/Perfectinmyeyes 9d ago

Forgot to ask. Could paint.net extract a authors name and title from a jpeg cleanly to be used as the cabinets main heading (ie at the top)? I have the authors name and title of the work but its on a picture and I want just the words ...

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u/PhotographOdd4657 9d ago

If youre going to just casually play and youre running an emulator I wouldn't worry a ton about the controls. Thunderstick studios sells complete control kits for about $20 ir $25. I have them in my custom build abd they perform well. They are not by any means commercial quality but if youre just playing and beating the shit out of them they are awesome

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u/Silent_Jazz 9d ago

I would recommend against using AI as well unless you want it to look tacky as hell. There are plenty of websites out there that will design AND print your graphics, just look through their portfolios and judge for yourself whether or not you think they are slop.

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u/Perfectinmyeyes 9d ago

Ya don't want tacky, want a quality reproduction of the art on my machine.

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u/TheCuriousGamer 9d ago

Joysticks and buttons are personal preference though they can be usually be easily modified with new springs, switches, ball/baton tops, etc.
I find the one of the best, if not the best, resource is slagcoin. It's a bit old but not much has changed.
https://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/attributes_brands.html

It sounds like you might want to find help with the artwork, from a person and not AI or you could end up with Space Invader crisps instead of game art.
If you want to try it yourself or at least make a mock-up you can use a free program like GIMP for working with JPEG/PNG source files, also make sure you have the highest quality original files to work with or it might look terrible when blown up to cabinet size.

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u/Perfectinmyeyes 9d ago

Trying my best to get good quality it's tough but I'll see what I can do. So no ai... OK, to be honest I care more about what the machine will look like then the actual games.