Brainstorming Thread for AE Cab: Open Tuesday (01/11) through Thursday (01/20)

Regional Matchmaking Northwest
1

This thread will host a brainstorming session where people can post up their ideas about what they would like to see and what they feel is important in having the best cabinet for the NW. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to post up as many ideas as they can for improving and creating the best arcade cabinet possible for Arcade Edition.

If you have never been a part of a brainstorming session before, I’ve included a quick description below:

The goal of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas as possible, without judgment of their merits or practicality. Every idea and suggestion is open, and nothing is ever off the table no matter how outlandish or seemingly unrelated. If you think the best way to modify the cab is to put it in a Dance Dance Revolution Machine and have people play it with their feet, or to install a small fireplace at the bottom to keep your feet warm, you can feel free to post it up.

There is only one very important and stringent rule that comes with brainstorming, and that is NO CRITICISM. No idea ever gets criticized, no matter how impractical it may be, or how much you disagree with it. A off the wall idea may just help someone else to come up with a great one, and brainstorming is about getting ideas out of your head, getting past bad ones to find good ones, and building on other people’s ideas to come up with new ones. If you see an idea you disagree with, feel free to post an opposite idea, but refrain from criticizing. Criticism kills creativity, and creativity is what we are trying to generate.

The thread will be open for everyone’s suggestions until Friday, (01/21). A description of where we go from there, and how we will reach a decision is below.

Steps for Decision Making Process

[details=Spoiler]First Stage- Brainstorming: Tuesday to Thursday (01/11 - 01/20)
This thread will host a brainstorming session where people can post up their ideas about what they would like to see and what they feel is important in having the best cabinet for the NW. The one rule of brainstorming and for this thread is: No Criticism. Just ideas. As many of them as you can give with no limits. If you have ideas beyond the controls and the cab itself, you are free and encouraged to post them here.

Second Stage- Ranking of Ideas: Friday to Tuesday (01/21 - 01/25)
After going over everyone’s ideas, we will create a giant list and people will select their top eight choices, ranking them from 1-8 in matter of importance. The top 3 choices of everyone’s list will state their preference for control layout, button/stick type, and orientation on the cabinet to make sure we get everyone’s opinion on those topics.

Third Stage- Combining and Refining Ideas: Wednesday to Saturday (01/26 - 02/05)
Once everyone has listed there top 8 ideas and criteria, we will combine them together and count the number of times each comes up to get an idea of what is important to the community. Out of the list, we will start to combine similar ideas and refine vague ideas to reduce the number of suggestions, and come up with a final selection of the most important requirements to send to Bill.

List sent to Bill - Sunday (February 6th)
The parts list and control layout will be sent to Bill for ordering so he can have them shipped on time his techs can begin planning to modify the cab. Submitting at this time will also allow for Bill to give us feedback on our suggestions.

Threads will be closed on there listed deadlines, and we will move onto the next section. If we stay to long on one subject or go back and open them up again, we will not get anywhere. So be sure to participate in each section during the time it’s open and get your opinion stated. :tup: [/details]

List of Suggestions So Far: Updated 01/12/11

  • The same setup as before but with the buttons closer to the sticks.
  • Sanwa JLF sticks with sanwa buttons
  • Button layout matching the first 6 of a TE
  • Button Layout matching a vewlix cabinet
  • American joystick and American convex buttons
  • Cup holder that perfectly fits the glasses Acme uses
  • Cup holders below the controls where coin slots are
  • Ball top joystick
  • Bat top joystick
  • Coin Holders for your place in line
  • Placement and height of controls matching the vewlix cabinet
  • Cab opens for maintenance similar to VLX Premium
  • Quick Disconnects for buttons and a wiring harnesses
  • A port for HDMI, DVI or VGA output for hooking up to streaming
  • Cab modded to accommodate sitting down
  • A short chair/stool for each cabinet.
  • USB inputs for plugging in TE sticks
  • A single coin holder for both cabinets
  • A coin holder in a convenient place that does not disturb players
  • A coin holder with a slide-able arrow/marker to point to who is next
  • Multicolored and numbered slots on coin holder to keep track of your place
  • A plexiglass top designed to be easily removable to swap out art generated by the community
  • A place clearly designated for posting tournament fliers on the cabinet
  • A place clearly designated for posting tournament fliers in the arcade
  • A prominent spot in the arcade where spectators can clearly see and hype matches
  • Additional fighting games adjacent to the cabinets for people waiting through long rotations
  • Controls centered in the middle of the control panel for each display
  • A small discreet notch to hang a clipboard on when running tournaments so it doesn’t get misplaced
  • An available plug ideally nearby for charging cameras
  • Garbage can and recycling located in the arcade
  • Drink special arranged with bar for drinks/a specific drink for a specified night of the week
  • A prominent sign displaying the phone number for maintenance and instructions to call when maintenance is required
  • Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo as the side cabinet
  • Marvel Vs Capcom 2 as a side cabinet
  • Swappable joystick tops to accommodate player preference
  • Street Fighter II Hyper fighting as a side cabinet
  • Monthly tournaments
  • Leader-board rankings
  • Stripper pole
  • Sticks with square gates
2

So are we to assume that we’re only working with the Showcase cabinet that vanilla was in? Or are they thinking about making a cabinet by scratch or even buying something different? I guess my question would be, what are the constraints that we have to work with?

3

There are no constraints. Only a goal.

Come up with ideas and suggestions for creating the best Street Fighter arcade cabinet possible for the Northwest.

Regardless of plausability, regardless of merit, create and list every idea you feel is important or would like to see for making the the best possible arcade setup in Acme. If you would like to suggest arranging a deal with a local pizza shop to deliver pizza to the cabinet every day at 5 PM, it will go on the list.

We want to generate as many ideas as possible. We will refine them later, but don’t censor or limit yourself now. Sometimes you have to get past 100 bad ideas to get one good one, and that is what this process is for.

There is no such thing as a bad idea at this point.

4

I would like to suggest the same setup as before but with the buttons closer to the sticks.

5

Sanwa JLF sticks with sanwa buttons layed out in the first 6 of a TE is my suggestion. Had to put it out there.

6

I would like to suggest, for practicality’s sake, American joystick and American CONVEX buttons, but the stick closer to the buttons, as close to vewlix inner sixbutton layout as possible. Curved, I hate straight rows of buttons.

Wouldn’t mind this either.

7

Well, Acme does have beer so I would love to see some cupholder mechanism that perfectly fits the glasses Acme uses. Before I would have to put my beer on the ground or somewhere not very safe. I’m not sure where the cupholders would best be put, any input from others?

8

i saw a machine with cup holders below the controls where coin things are ::thumbs up::

9

stick - sanwa w/balltop
buttons - sanwa
style -viewlix 6 button
(basically mimic a TE stick)

also what about those neat coin things on the cabinet that u can put quarters on so you dont lose your place in line?

10

Brent, I love the way the editing is done for this thread. You all are going to have a much better idea of whats going on than I would, so I will post some blind ideas here.

As far as buttons and stick placement go, IMO they need to be the vewlix style. Its whats in right now, and its whats on all of the majority arcade sticks that people use.

That also goes for stick placement and height. For me, bat top or ball top doesn’t matter to me, I can use both. (If they made bubbletop battops…oh big business!)

As far as the wiring and everything of the cabs, make it as easy as possible, especially for buttons and what not. If you have seen the VLX Premium and how it opens and everything, make the cabs like that, use QD’s and wiring harnesses and make it easily accessible. Another option is to pick up a couple of these from LL

http://www.lizardlick.com/Lizard-Lick-Control-Panel-1L6B_p_116.html

And then maybe keep two on hand that are only used for tournaments. That would be pretty beast IMO

The Cab itself.
So you ALL knew I was going to bring this up, but if there was a port or something that made it easy to hook up a stream machine, please do. It’ll make things a hell of a lot easier, and I can stream off anything really. HDMI, DVI or VGA as long as theres an additional sound port.

11

I’ll second sanwa JLF stick and sanwa buttons.

Also, a sit down cabinet would be dope.

12

I second being able to sit down. I’m too tall to stand at the Showcase cab comfortably. If a sitdown cab is a possibility at all, then my vote goes to that.

13

I liked the cabinets that have been at acme and tacoma narrows. Many people have gripes about the control scheme though, specifically, “the buttons too far from stick”. So I propose the same setup, but with the buttons a few inches closer to the sticks.
I support the “viewlix” layout for the controls.
I also propose a short chair/stool for each cabinet.
I am in support of dkn29’s cup holder idea.

14

Ideally, for me - the layout would be the EXACT same thing as a stock TE stick layout (stick/button company, spacing, spring, etc). I think most of the people in the community would agree to that seeing as TE’s are used in like 95% of all tournaments.

Also, I don’t know if this is technically possible - but do the cabinets have USB inputs? I know that SFIV runs on a windows PC, but it would be awesome if you could be able to plug your stick in via USB and just go with it, overriding the controls on the cabinet itself.

I know there’s no button configuration in arcade games, but a stock TE would work by default.

15

A single coin holder for both cabinets
A coin holder in a convenient place that does not disturb players
A coin holder with a slide-able arrow/marker that can be shifted to show which quarter is next
A coin holder with alternating colors and numbered slots to help keep track of where your coin is
An plexi-glass top designed to be easily removable to swap out art generated by the community and approved by management. Could be rotated monthly or bi-montly to coincide with maintainence.
A place clearly designated for posting tournament flyers on the cabinet
A place clearly designated for posting tournament flyers in the arcade
A prominent spot in the arcade where spectators can clearly see matches
Additional fighting games adjacent to the cabinets for people waiting through long rotations
Stools of the correct height to accommodate players who need to sit down
Controls centered in the middle of the control panel for each display
A small discreet notch to hang a clipboard on when running tournaments so it doesn’t get misplaced
An available plug ideally nearby for charging cameras
Garbage can and recycling located in the arcade
Drink special arranged with bar for drinks/a specific drink for a specified night of the week.

16

how about a big sign that will display the phone number and also a message that states something like “please call for any and all required maintainance for sticks and buttons” The little silver and black sticker with mastermans logo and number is too small.

17

can i suggest super street fighter 2 turbo and marvel vs capcom 2 as the side cabinets?

18

I guess pricing should be involved in this discussion. I feel that at least the first month of operation, the cost should be 50 cents for 2/3 rounds. After the first month, maybe have 3/5 rounds M-Th to draw in more people and switch back to 2/3 for Fri-Sun because more people will be there in general.

19

Agreed! Yes please! :woot:

20

Never been to acme before but here are my suggestions…

*head 2 head sitdown setup…
*Sanwa button/stick
*Allow people to bring their bat top or have available as option who dont like balltop
*Have plenty of room so people can gather around to hype matches
*SSF2 Turbo & SF2 Hyper Fighting somewhere there
*Allow videotaping matches to stream
*Monthly tournament
*Leaderboard rankings - This will encourage people to show up
*Stripper pole would be nice too - Loser has to do a dance of shame!