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Opera Widget Arcade

A project by Opera Desktop Team

Posts tagged with "George"

Second Coat

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Painting the cabinet Almost the entire team gathered together on Friday to add the final strokes to the arcade machine. George, Anders, Adam, Arjan and Alexander all worked together to finish the surface of the cabinet with the second layer of paint.

Some parts, like the keyboard door, were painted separately and reattached to the cabinet the next day, when the paint dried off. The machine stands in the Desktop Team office now, it's finished, and it helps us have these nice litte breaks while our code is compiling. We also want to make it look even cooler by adding some artwork, but more about that later.

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

More Controller Board Contsruction

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Cutting the trackball slot We've made a great progress on Monday, but the holes for buttons and the trackball were too deep for them to sit nicely. We needed to make grooves in the wooden panel where the buttons and trackball would be mounted. To carve out the grooves, we used a wood router. It was easy with the button holes, but the large figured slot for the trackball took a lot of time and effort: George, Arjan, Adam and Per Arne took turns at cutting the wood. Finally, we had a nice controller panel where all the buttons and the trackball would fit perfectly.

Assembling the controller board The controller hardware we chose is X-Arcade, known for their indestructible buttons and joysticks. They offer a full range of products up to a complete arcade machine, but we're building our own, right? That's why we went for the Build Your Own Arcade Kit (two joysticks, a bunch of buttons, and a controller PCB that emulates a PS/2 or USB keyboard) and a 3" Arcade Trackball Mouse Assembly (a trackball unit and a few buttons). At last two links you'll find pictures, descriptions and PDF manuals for those who are interested in building their own arcade machine.

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

More Cabinet Assembly

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Attaching a latch for the keyboard door This Friday we have added a few more strokes to the arcade cabinet.

Video games are not supposed to have keyboards, but occasionally we would need one for system administration. We've decided to have a keyboard on a shelf with a door opening in front. The door was ready some time ago, but it happened to be so wide that we had to sand it down a bit from the sides so that can open and close without too much effort. Now the door was ready for installation, so Adam and George attached the hinges to the chassis with screws.

Attaching the keyboard door on the hinge We also needed something to hold the door in the closed position, so Adam and Espen installed pairs of spring latches on the left and right.

Another thing we did on Friday was installing a piece of plexiglas into the top part of the cabinet. It will be painted with some fancy artwork later, so as to be translucent but not transparent, and we'll have a light behind it.

I'll keep you informed on our further progress!

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

Assembling the Cabinet

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Drilling assembly holes This Monday, we have finished the assembly of the arcade cabinet!

Adam and George started by reassembling the cabinet that has been dismantled for transportation. Then Arjan, Petter and George drilled assembly holes in the parts such as the front keyboard door and the monitor frame. Adam put in four stop screws to hold the monitor in place.

Marking up the door sheet Most employees in Opera have switched to LCD screens a long time ago, and returned their old CRT monitors to the system administrators. For most part, nobody wants them, so we helped the environment a little by reusing one of these devices. Of course, an arcade has to feature a CRT screen to be truly authentic! We've used a white monitor for initial measurements, but decided to replace it with an otherwise identical black and silver one. Adam and Espen put the chosen monitor in place, and after the remaining parts were screwed to the chassis, the entire thing started looking really like a proper video game!

More reports on what we do next are coming.

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

Building the Arcade Cabinet

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Construction team at work So it happened! We've had our first arcade-building session at George's place.

First thing in the morning, Adam and George went shopping and brought a full car of materials. For the cabinet walls, we got three MDF sheets which we had to wipe dry first because they got wet outside.

As soon as everyone came, we did some planning, converted all sizes on the plans to millimeters (yes, we all think metric; measuring in inches for us is like measuring in TV screens), and decided what to cut and in what order. Then we went to the garage where all the actual building happened.

Cutting straight parts of the profile with a circular saw The most important part was to mark up the complex side wall shape on the MDF sheet; it's less spectacular than actual sawing but more crucial. For the curved parts of the shape, Anders and Per Arne used a piece of string as compasses. Adam and Arjan used a jigsaw to cut the curved parts of the profile and a circular saw for the straight lines. The other side of the cabinet was easier because we could use the first one as a template for our mark-up.

Meanwhile, George cut several wooden strips with a cross-cut saw and put them together to make the bottom frame for the cabinet. He drilled some holes in it for the screws and assembled a box-like structure with a shelf for the keyboard (you'll see later where it ends up in the assembly).

Partly assembled cabinet with the monitor installed After that, we cut the remaining MDF sheet to make all the other parts. We've finished the edges of the parts with a sander to correct the unevenness of cuts. Then we put everything together to see how it fits, and for the very first time we were looking at something that resembles an arcade!

Finally, the cabinet was disassembled and brought into the Opera Oslo office where the game will stay. Bear with us, more reports on our construction efforts are coming!

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

Off we go!

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Hi, this is Desktop Team in Opera Software! Every day we work to make the web browser that (we hope) you're using faster, safer, and handier for use. But that is, of course, not the only thing we do. We have fun, too! Other departments have Wii game consoles and whatnot in their sections of the office, but hey, you can buy a Wii in a shop near you, so we decided to make something unique: the Opera Widget Arcade!

The idea is essentially to build an old-style video game machine that you might remember from the eighties: tall fancy-painted cabinet, a computer screen deep inside, joystick controls, and games with low-res graphics but thrilling gameplay. Of course, we wouldn't have one of those authentic game boards inside, but hey, in Opera we have our own platform that's quite good for games: Opera Widgets! So be it Opera Widget Arcade, an entertainment machine with 180-in-1 games and counting. Maybe we'll also run some of the video game oldies in an emulator.

Galaga video game For the cabinet, we decided to go for the design of the famous Galaga series and replicate the original Midway's design as closely as possible (however, the artwork will be our own). Luckily, we've found a collection of original cabinet plans of many popular video games to choose from.

Front view

Inside the cabinet, we'll have a modern computer running Opera with tons of widgets, and a special shell allowing selection of games without a keyboard. The controls will also be fancier than the ones used in the original arcade, so that we can run a wider range of games. We have some cool ideas, but you'll read about it in the oncoming posts. When the machine is ready, we'll put it in the Desktop Team lounge and have other departments buy us beer in exchange for playing! :-)

For our team, this is a teambuilding activity, so everyone is involved on some part of the project. Here we go:
I'll be telling you about everything we do on this project, and many pictures will follow. Stay with us!