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Studio Mercato

How to Build an Indie Arcade Cabinet

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Jon Stokes

Back in July of last year, Studio Mercato was offered an opportunity to exhibit our game Crystal Brawl on an actual freaking arcade machine in a charming, tatted-up dive of a music venue in Brooklyn called Death By Audio. The one caveat: we had to build it ourselves. Obviously we jumped at the chance, and thanks to the excellent Mark Kleback of DBA, construction kicked off in August and was completed the following December.

On December 7, we held an opening party for the Crystal Brawl cabinet and another cabinet, built by Dylan McKenzie & Friends, for their awesome minimalist sports game Field-1. We dubbed the event Deathmatch by Audio, and there’s a heartwarming account of the event over at Indie Statik.

We’re planning a Deathmatch by Audio II on January 31st (be there!), but in any case, both games will be on display at Death By Audio until the end of January.

IMG_0907

The finished product. Purdy marquee and control board art by Chris Hernandez.

In this post, I want to share with you my process of designing and building our arcade machine. This is a how-to, but I won’t be going into a ton of detail on every aspect of the build. Instead, I’ll share the wealth of super valuable links I amassed while building the cabinet.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to drop me a line at jon[at]studio-mercato.com. Let’s get started!

Design

First off, let’s talk about the game. Crystal Brawl is a 2v2 local multiplayer action/sports capture-the-flag hybrid in the same-ish genre as Hokra and Slash Dash. We needed controls for four players, and I wanted to go with three buttons per player, even through Crystal Brawl only uses two. I told my teammates we should do this to make the cabinet reusable, but the truth is I just wanted to be able to emulate (and pay homage to) NFL Blitz ’99, the defining arcade machine of my youth.

The cabinet needed to be modular for ease of transport, as we didn’t want to have to rent a U-Haul every time we wanted to move it. To this end we split it into three parts: top, bottom and control board.

Making it modular like this allows it to fit easily in a small SUV, or even spread across two taxi trunks, and having a separate control board affords us the opportunity to bring it to meetups or game festivals. The control board connects via USB, so it will work on any ol’ computer.

Print

The modular arcade cabinet design in three pieces!

Having a general idea of what we wanted to create, I set out to look for similar cabinet builds. You can find a plethora of detailed build plans for popular arcade machines at Jakobud.com, including Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Q*Bert, and The Simpsons, the last of which I used as a reference for the four player control board.

Jakobud’s plans were helpful for general dimensions of many a cabinet, but eventually I found the even more useful LuSiD’s Arcade Plans.

LuSid’s was a step up because they showed the layout of each piece on 4’x8′ sheets of plywood, which made it easier to conceptualize every piece of the machine and how they would come together.

In the black and white diagram below, you can see the final profile mockup for our machine. Its depth from front-to-back is about 10″ less than similar cabinets that use CRT monitors. And, as you can see, it splits into top and bottom components. The rest of the pieces (not shown here) were kind of measured as I built, by constantly referencing LuSiD’s plans.

Materials

The total cost of the machine came out to $665 smackers, which was more than I expected, but a reasonable price for your very own arcade machine. The most expensive parts were the joysticks, I-PAC control board, computer and wood. Luckily we didn’t have to drop money on an LCD monitor or speakers since I already had those.

We also dodged a bullet with the plexiglass, which I used to cover the control board and the screen, and to hold the marquee in place. It would’ve cost around $100 for a 4’x4′ sheet, but I found one at Film Biz Recycling and there was no price marked on it. When I took it to the checkout to ask the cost, to my surprise, the nice lady quoted me only $3. Even after her colleague and I realized that she had originally thought it was a piece of cardboard, they didn’t want to go back on their word, so $3 I paid. Below is a list of everything that went into our cabinet.

CBCabinet-03

Diagram for the modular design.

The Electronics…

  • 4 Ultimarc Mag-Stick Joysticks
  • 14 Happ Classic Pushbuttons
  • I-PAC 2 USB PC interface, for joysticks and buttons
  • 20″ Dell 2000FP LCD Monitor
  • Dell Optiplex 580 desktop computer
  • Crappy old Insignia 2.1 computer speakers
  • LED Counter Light, for marquee
  • 18 gauge wire (I used speaker wire)
  • Crimp spade connectors, to wire up the buttons and joysticks
  • Keyboard, Mouse

The Wood & Hardware…

  • 2 4’x8′ sheets 3/4″ plywood or MDF
  • 4’x4′ sheet 3/8″ plexiglass
  • Wood glue, wood filler
  • 1 1/4″ wood screws
  • T-Nuts, to bolt top and bottom pieces together
  • Zip ties
  • Gallon of latex paint
  • Quart of Kilz primer

The Tools…

  • Jigsaw
  • Cordless drill
  • Standard spiral wood bits
  • Forstner or Masonry bits, for drilling plexiglass
  • 1 1/4″ wood spade bit, for drilling button holes
  • Carpenter Square
  • Measuring Tape
  • Wood clamps (Irwin quick grip style are the best)

Construction

I won’t go into a lot of detail about wood cutting and assembly, as there are good accounts of the process here and here. Don’t be afraid of the master wood-working techniques in that second link, like lots of router work and fancy joints. If you have a steady hand and you take careful measurements, you can get by with just a jigsaw and a drill.

Crystal Brawl arcade cabinet

The build begins. We turned Mark’s kitchen/living room into a woodshop for the evening.

Plexiglass is a very fickle mistress and you’ll quickly find she’s much less forgiving than wood. Regular drill bits won’t work because their angles are too aggressive – they’ll push right through just when you start to drill, and crack or chip the plexi.

You want to pick up some Forstner bits, or if you can’t find those, masonry bits. Drill slow and put a couple drops of lubricant on the tip of the bit before you begin. I used bike chain oil.

Also, remember to never take the protective covering off of plexiglass until you are finished cutting. It prevents scratches and reduces the likelihood of cracks during cutting and drilling.

For a simply grand article on how to wrangle plexiglass, the scrupulousness of which gives me goosebumps, see this.

Control Board

This was the most fun part of the project, maybe because I was able to awaken my long-dormant inner electrical engineer (I did plenty of custom car audio installations in college, so I missed playing with wires).

The brains of the control board is Ultimarc’s I-PAC2 USB interface, which lets you turn button and joystick signals into key presses on a keyboard.

The I-PAC2 is really meant for a two player control board, but because we have so few inputs per player, we were able to stretch it to work with four. Once it’s set up, you can plug it into any computer via USB and simulate a standard keyboard. You can use Ultimarc’s Interactive Panel Designer to lay out your control board and program key assignments for each of your inputs.

whatever

Crystal Brawl‘s layout in the Interactive Panel Designer.

Mounting the buttons and joysticks and wiring the control board will take way longer than you think, so pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of coffee or beer and clear your docket for the next four or five hours.

IMG_0861

Mounting the inputs.

All of the buttons come with plastic nuts that tighten from the back and make easy work of mounting. The joysticks are tougher. Each joystick has six mounting holes, and most people drill down through the top of the control board and run carriage bolts (the ones with a smooth rounded top) through and secure them from the bottom. This is definitely the most reliable mounting method. Your joysticks won’t budge.

In my case, I wasn’t completely sure of the angles I had chosen for the two outer players’ sticks, as they seemed a little aggressive to me despite keeping in line with other builds. I wanted to be able to rotate them later if I decided they didn’t play right.

So on each corner, I used a flat washer, a lock washer, and a 3/4″ #8 screw, coming in from the bottom, that I knew wouldn’t penetrate the top of the surface. It turned out to be very sturdy, and my fingers are crossed that it stands up to heavy use.

arcade cabinet controller

The I-PAC in action.

For wiring, there are three terminals on the microswitches used for the arcade buttons and joysticks. On the I-PAC, there is a terminal for each assigned key press. You’ll want to run the Normally Open (NO) terminal on your button or joystick’s microswitch to its corresponding input on the I-PAC. Then you just daisy-chain all of your grounds together and connect them to the ground input on the I-PAC. You’ll never use the NC terminal on your buttons, so you can effectively ignore it. For more info on wiring, bada bing.

 

Creating a Self-Sustaining Machine

Any computer that’s going to be used as part of an exhibition needs to be able to handle tasks like automatically restarting once a day and rebooting if the game or program crashes. In our case, there also needed to be macros for restarting the game and restarting the computer itself that are accessible by button presses on the control board, so you can reboot the game without having to reach around behind the machine and access the computer.

IMG_0855

The control board.

And so, on the Crystal Brawl cabinet, there are two super-user buttons hidden on the side of the control board. One is meant to restart the game, and one restarts the computer. Each one triggers a keyboard shortcut that activates a script to accomplish its task. I used AutoHotkey, an amazing piece of software for Windows that lets you automate all sorts of tasks like user input, opening and closing documents, file and folder manipulation etc.

Because Crystal Brawl is an HTML5 game, it runs in the browser. The script to restart the game also starts the game. In a nutshell, it closes Chrome, then reopens Chrome to a specified link where our game is publicly hosted, and then puts Chrome into full screen mode. This script is activated by pressing the restart game button on the control board.

Here’s what it looks like:

#SingleInstance Force
SetTitleMatchMode 2
WinClose Google Chrome

Run https://whereever-your-game-is-hosted-on-dropbox.com

WinWaitActive, Google Chrome
Send, {F11} 

A second script, which boots automatically when Windows starts, constantly checks to see if Chrome has crashed, and if it has, it runs the Restart script. Crystal Brawl crashes pretty infrequently, but when you have a game up and running 24/7, you need to have these kind of precautions to make sure it runs smoothly.

This script is a little hacky (in a fun way!) as I couldn’t access lower level info in Chrome via AutoHotkey to be notified when it crashed. It works by taking five color samples every three seconds. If they all match the background color of the famous “Aw, Snap” Chrome crash screen, it restarts the game.

Here’s a peek at the script:

#SingleInstance Force
CoordMode, Pixel, Screen

;;sample a few points on the screen to see if they match the color of the chrome crash screen
Loop {

	sleep, 3000

	Loop,5 {

		y := a_index * 100
		PixelGetColor, Color, 100, %y%
		;MsgBox Color: %color%.

		;;background color on chrome crash page - 0x403023
		if (Color != 0x403023) {
			break
		} 

		if (A_Index = 5) {
			sleep, 3000
			Run C:\Users\User\Desktop\restartCB.ahk
			sleep, 10000
			break
		}

	}

}

For more tips on how to keep your installation up and running around the clock, check out this guide for Windows, and this one for Mac.

And that’s about it! It took a lot of time, but the payoff was totally worth it.

If you are planning your own build and you want to have a chat, please shoot me an email at jon[at]studio-mercato.com or hit us up on Twitter at @StudioMercato!

Building the arcade

Me with my masterpiece!

Posted in Crystal Brawl, Development, Events | Tags: arcade, Brooklyn, cabinet, construction, electronics, hardware, New York | 1 Comment |

Voyage to MAGFest!

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Ben

MAGFest was amazing! We shoved the Crystal Brawl cabinet and a huge tablet for Nika in a minivan and trekked down to DC for a weekend of what can only be described as ABSOLUTE GAMING ANARCHMADNESS (but in a good way).

Cramming the Crystal Brawl cabinet into the van!

Cramming the Crystal Brawl cabinet into the van!

The free-play arcade floor, the console library with every game imaginable that you can check out on demand(!), the tournaments, the concerts, hanging-out-with-other-awesome-indie-devs – this was one of the most fun game events ever.

Crystal Brawl at MAGFest

Nika on the big screen!

Nika on the big screen!

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Final Stage concert!

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A small chunk of the massive console library – including some poor soul playing ET for Atari!

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After hours Nika Analog in the hotel room!

Posted in Crystal Brawl, Events, Nika | Tags: arcade, concert, magfest | Leave a comment |

MIGS 2013 Recap

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Ben

A few weeks ago, I went up to the Montreal International Game Summit to see what kind of secret Canadian game development know-how could be learned.

Spoiler: A lot!

MIGS-2013

Here are my notes and pics from a few standout sessions:


Character Flaws and Choices: How to Engage Players Emotionally Without Alarming Your Producer
Alex Epstein, Compulsion Games

– Games are the only medium that offer story choices

– The player emotionally owns the choices they make

Contrast: In games, the player chooses what happens and when. In traditional storytelling, the storyteller chooses what happens and when.

To communicate exposition, have character argue with each other instead of agree – more compelling to watch/engage with

Foreshadowing: Let the player do the foreshadowing for themselves through gameplay actions, not scripted sequences

Importance of setting up the ending: “The ending should be in the story’s bones”

Flaws: “Flaws are what make us care about characters”

However, NPCs often lack flaws and act like robots

“The intimate opponent” – setting up an NPC ally as someone close to you but an antagonist, traitor, or inconvenient love interest

Ways to use flaws to make for more interesting gameplay:

1. Make a character flaw a core gameplay mechanic. Ex: In Ico, the princess Yorda needs to be led by her hand through the environment by the player.

2. Reveal an NPC flaw to send the player on an unexpected adventure.

3. Use an NPC flaw to increase the gameplay challenge.

4. Balance NPC flaws with virtues.

5. Let the player choose from NPCs with flaws that best complement their play style (instead of making it more difficult or annoying)

Also: Consider using character flaws to close plotholes


Why Does Free Work?
Nicholas Lovell, Games Brief

Show of hands: Who in the audience has games they’ve bought on Steam but never played? Says it’s not that different from the underlying concept behind f2p – you want to express yourself through what you spend money on, at the core.

Free ebook – 10 Ways to Make Money in a FREE World

Says the $0.99 price point is the worst: it communicates that “the game isn’t good enough to be expensive or good enough to be free.”

The f2p first time user experience (FTUE) has 30 seconds to convince players to play. “Show them where fun lives.”

The handicap principle – intentionally doing unproductive things with your time and resources as if to say, “I’m so good, look at all the surplus time and effort I can afford to squander.”

Of high-spending supporters: “They spend to make other people feel happy”

IMG_1035

Do you value the physical artifact of the media? Or the experience it gives you?

IMG_1031

The three steps: 1. Find an audience 2. Be able to talk to them again 3. Enable Superfans.

IMG_1034

The main impetus behind Lovell’s adoption of the “free” ethos.

IMG_1030

The progression on how to convert free users to paying users.


A PR Playbook: Executing an Effective PR Program, with Real-World Insight from a PR Maven and Demiurge Studios

Albert Reed, Demiurge Studios
Elicia Basoli, Elicia Basoli Communications

Elicia:

When coming up with positioning for your game, brainstorm a list of adjectives that describe the game and the studio

Basic questions to ask yourself:

1. What is the game?

2. What makes it/you unique?

3. Why is it fun/entertaining?

4. Why should someone care?

Embargoes: Can be a great tool, the press appreciates embargoes on assets and news stories since it gives them more time to prepare and write stores.

-> However, only send embargos to select press you know, not 200 random ones – they might break the embargo and piss other press off

For bigger shows and conventions, send press invites early – bigger studios tend to book press quickly at events

Albert:

– Demiurge experimented with augmenting their userbase with paid acquisition. Their takeaway was that paid acquisition campaigns is not something to dabble in since you need lots of expertise to do it correctly. They ended up going with a firm to help with this.

IMG_1039

Coffee break – thanks Eidos!

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The importance of planning in your PR efforts.

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Lots of good info about preparing press kits.

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Positioning your game at a glance.

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Hooray for embargoes!


Romance Games: Unpopular Genre or Untapped Market?

Heidi McDonald, Schell Games

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A quick snapshot of romance games.

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McDonald posits that as the average age of romance novels decreases and the average gamer age rises, there could be a sweet spot of gamers eager for meaningful romance games.


Creating Candy Crush – King´s Recipe for Sweet Success

Tommy Palm, King.com

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King.com sees a portable gaming future.

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You could say that mobile has done pretty well for Candy Crush Saga.

sf

A rare look at the Candy Crush Saga level editor.

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The secret sauce!

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OK, the real secret sauce. Note how they always have an opportunity for the player to engage with the game on a new platform.


And to cap it off, here’s a slide from Ubisoft Creative Director Jason Vanderberg’s closing talk:

– Whenever you have an idea and someone tries to shoot it down, reply with this:

sf

You know, we have a game you might be interested in…

– Followed by “Can you imagine any version of this idea that wouldn’t suck?”

If they think for a second and say yes, reply with “Then that’s what I mean!”

Posted in Events | Tags: Candy Crush Saga, conference, f2p, monetization | Leave a comment |

Prototyping and Making Games with Construct 2

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Ben

On Monday, Studio Mercato’s own Chris Hernandez and Jon Stokes gave a Deep Dive talk on using Construct 2 for making games at Microsoft’s Midtown office. We’ve been using Construct 2 for games and prototypes for a while now, and are using it to develop Crystal Brawl – which has quickly become just as complex as a natively-coded project.

So why should you use Construct 2?

Studio Mercato's Chris Hernandez (standing) and Jon Stokes (action crouching) show off an example Construct 2 project.

Our own Chris Hernandez (standing) and Jon Stokes (action crouching) show off an example Construct 2 project.

Chris says:

It’s good for prototyping, and comes pre-loaded with modules to get the common stuff out of the way, like collision detection, physics, and controls. Once you get the hang of it you can get a basic game up and running in 30 minutes, which lets you spend more of your time on art, unique mechanics, and whatever else will make your game stand out.

Jon says:

Construct 2 has a lot of export options – you can get your game on almost anything, including browsers, mobile, desktop, and you can wrap it for native app stores too. Since it runs in the browser, it’s great for getting quick feedback from testers. Instead of with a native iOS build, where you have to convince your friends to sign up through testflight, upload new builds, and then pester them to download each update —  you can just throw your HTML5 game on dropbox and share the public link on Facebook.  One click to open the game and be playing is a very low barrier to entry.

You can download the example project they worked on at the talk here: http://studio-mercato.com/files/deepDiveLesson.capx

Posted in Crystal Brawl, Events | Tags: construct 2, talks, tools | Leave a comment |

Don’t F**k Up Gets Acquired!

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Ben

Holy f**k! Today, we’re proud to announce the sale of the Don’t F**k Up game and IP to an undisclosed buyer!

dont-fk-up-come-out-and-play-1

Created as an entry for the Grasshopper Round Table Game Jam in March of this year, Don’t F**k Up is a 2-6 player pub game of skill, reflexes, and a test of your ability to follow one simple instruction. After the 48-hour jam finished, we ended up taking home third prize!

We kept working on the game long after the jam ended, culminating in a showing at the Come Out and Play Festival and a profile on Kotaku.

kotaku don't fk up

While it’s always bittersweet sending one of our creations off into the world, we’re confident that DFU’s message of striving for excellence amid the temptation to err will continue to inspire people long after the last ball has bounced.

Posted in Business, Don't F**k Up | Tags: business, Don't F**k Up | Leave a comment |

Nika Wins the Tizen Hackathon

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Ben

We won! Nika took home the top prize at last week’s Intel/Tizen Hackathon. The hackathon was held alongside the HTML5 Developer Conference in San Francisco.

nika_logo

More details here: http://www.downloadtizenapps.com/2013/10/nika-digital-app-winner-in-tizen.html

Posted in Awards, Nika, Press | Tags: hackathon, intel, tizen | Leave a comment |

Boston FIG Press Mentions

Posted on October 1, 2013 by shu

Studio Mercato received some more press mentions at Boston FIG!
 

“Raab has been working on Nika for two years with artist Chris Hernandez. It is slated to be published by Eagle Games in early 2014, with a digital version for the iPad, Android, and Windows 8 tablets produced by New York-based Studio Mercato.”
– 90.9 WBUR Boston’s NPR News Station
 

“Crystal Brawl is, after playing only a few short rounds, the game I look forward to most.”
– Ari Notis, The G.A.M.E.S. Blog
 

“Josh talks to the G2B guys about Nika during the Boston Festival of Indie Games.”
– G2B, Guys Games and Beer

Posted in Crystal Brawl, Events, Nika, Press | Tags: Boston FIG, Crystal Brawl, nika, press | Leave a comment |

Boston FIG Postmortem

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Ben

Boston FIG was a success! The show ended up beating crowd estimates with 7,500 attendees total, and there was a constant flow of people around both the Crystal Brawl and Nika booths.

In terms of what we did right, bringing a big freakin’ TV for Crystal Brawl helped a lot in grabbing people’s attention. Most of the other games had laptops or monitors, and having a larger screen helped command more of a presence. The TV was so big that it dwarfed the display we made up, but that’s a pretty good problem to have.

On the downside, the ice rink where the digital games were held had spotty cell reception, so it was harder to push out social media updates and stay connected during the show. Next time, we’ll either ask for a wired connection (always nice to have), or make sure someone is on hand to run out of the building to post if anything super interesting comes up.

For next time, we all agreed having a sign-up sheet to get more information about either game would have been a good idea. We did have special business cards made up for Nika with information on how to follow the game’s development, but didn’t have any handouts for Crystal Brawl. We’ll make sure to have something on hand the next time we bring that (or any other) game to the public.

All told, it was a great event and a fun time, and we can’t wait for next year!

Posted in Events | Leave a comment |

We’re Going to Boston FIG

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Ben

Now in its second year, the Boston Festival of Indie Games is a weekend celebration of both digital and analog indie games of all kinds. Lucky for us, two of our games have been accepted to exhibit!

Next month, Crystal Brawl will be featured in BFIG’s Digital Games Showcase, while the tabletop version of Nika will be making an appearance in the Tabletop Games Showcase.

 
We’re pumped to get both games ready for the public, and have a slew of improvements planned for Crystal Brawl.

Both games will also be up for the Figgie Awards voted on by the community, so if you plan on attending, stop by and say hi!

Posted in Crystal Brawl, Events, Nika | Tags: Boston FIG, Crystal Brawl, development, nika | Leave a comment |

Crystal Brawl Playtesting

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Ben

Crystal Brawl is coming! We brought the game out to meet the public at a pair of playtest events this week, first to the NYC Gamers meetup group in Long Island City on Monday, and the IGDA NJ Demo Night Arcade on Tuesday.

 
Letting public testers get their hands on games during development is always a harrowing mix of emotions. What if they hate it? What if the gameplay is too confusing? What if I stub my toe setting up my laptop? Luckily, players were happy with the game overall, and we got a ton of great feedback on ways to improve it.
 

 
We’ll continue banging away at the ever-growing list of bugs, tasks and features before Crystal Brawl is ready for prime time. If you want to get in on future beta tests, give us a heads-up on Twitter at @StudioMercato!

Posted in Crystal Brawl, Development, Events | Tags: Crystal Brawl, development, igda, nyc, playtest | 1 Comment |
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