Opera Widget Arcade

Most of the other parts of the arcade machine were done, so on Monday it was time to work on the gaming controls. Huib and Adam designed the layout of the controller board in Google SketchUp, a 3D editor available free of charge for Mac and Windows. You can download our design in this editor's own format, but we've also converted it for you to a bunch of popular 3D (3DS Max, DXF, VRML) and 2D (PDF, JPEG) formats.

We decided that our controller board would have a trackball in the middle (it's a modern arcade that can browse the web, too!) and two joysticks, one for each player. On each player's side, there would be a set of buttons:

• Four general purpose gaming buttons
• A Start button
• One of the mouse buttons that work together with the trackball
• Pause button on the left side and exit button on the right

There would also be an extra gaming button on each of the sides of the cabinet for pinball games.

The top view of the controller board layout has been printed out to guide us when making the board. Adam drilled the holes for buttons and joysticks and cut the big hole for the trackball with the hole saw.

Also, Arjan and Adam made some parts of the cabinet really smooth with the help of sanding paper.

Note: All hyperlinks in this post take you to more pictures. You can also view all the pictures from this event.