Pixel Theories | a gamer getting older...

Xbox 360 DIY Arcade Joystick - part 3 (the setback update)

I haven't had much time lately.  After a recent trip to LA for business, I have been taking time to clean up around the house and plan for my Super Bowl party this Sunday.  In light of my latest setbacks, I am starting to think that it's likely that I won't have this stick done for another week or two.

Things were looking up initially, I made the four side pieces with miter cuts.  And the console board with a jigsaw, thought I'll probably make the next one with a circular saw.

After getting all four sides of the housing cut, I gave practically coated each angle in glue stuck the four sides together and put them in a vice for an hour.  I stuck two larger pieces of wood on the outside of outside of the housing to evenly distribute the pressure of the vice.

Next I started to get the button/joystick layout on the console board.  This took a little research, I went to a couple of arcades about two months back or so and eyed the spacing between buttons.  The standard spacing between buttons at an arcade is pretty wide I'd say about 3/4".  I on the other hand like the buttons closer, so the below configuration has them spaced at about a 1/2" between the buttons.

Here's were things got really hairy.  During drilling the holes for the buttons I noticed that the spacing between holes were getting a little nicked when starting the adjacent hole.  Moreover I wasn't paying close enough attention to the housing that had dried with two of the four corners at a less than perfect mesh.  After an a initial appraisal of my errs...I went a little apeshit!

I spent nearly two hours trying to realign the housing, and at one time went as far as trying to fasten the corners with screws, but the damage had been done.  The buildup of glue and my later attempts to sand it off had made imperfect cuts by an imperfect craftsman so fucked that I was only left to start cutting new pieces for a new housing.  Then adding insult to injury, when I tried to drill the last four holes a huge nick came out of the wood - I am Jack's wasted life.

I have started a new board and housing though I am going to use a circular saw to cut the board and I have increased the spacing between the buttons to reduce damage done to the board.  This time around the housing will be regular straight cuts and will be fastened with carpenter nails.  I expect to be done with the board and housing sometime next week.

Goodnight Sweet Prince

For three years you've been my right-hand man. You're untimely death by way of drowning was unfortunate. Who could've imagined that a cardboard cup would bust at the seems in the middle of the night and take you from tour of duty.

But I somehow will manage to survive with this new 3G iPhone.

Xbox 360 DIY Arcade Joystick - part 2

The buttons and joystick have arrived.  But feeling the weight of the joystick, has me concerned about the balance of the board.  So I've decide to make it larger and include the left/right triggers and add the sync button, which I initially forgot.  Monday I'll pick up the wood and start crafting the case.

The parts were ordered from Lizard Lick Amusements.  Coincidentally, everything came as ordered in a small box and shipping was excellent.

The beast of a joystick, I don't really like the Sanwa style joysticks, but this baby is a monster.

I now need three more white buttons; my mistake.

Part 3 to come later next week, it's going to take some time putting together the frame.

EndWar suffers from over simplicity.

We gamers are a fickle bunch, we are mildly pleased one minute and utterly disappointed the next.

Back at the end of August at PAX I saw the demo of EndWar by Ubisoft's marketing reps and a member from the dev team from the Far East.  At that time I was impressed with the not only the voice communication, but the clever hud and unit management system built into the game.

Unfortunately since that time there has been no improvement upon the game's overall structure.  In a lot of ways EndWar is just as disappointing as Battlefield 2 in it's limitations.  For example, like BF2, EndWar only supports the "deathmatch" & "seige" modes throughout the Theater of War and multiplayer matches.  But this game's has so much more potential; it's fully capable of capture, search and destroy, demolition missions, etc.

The whole of the game puts you in the shoes of a field commander, tasked with facing multiple other field commanders from the EU or Russia.  Though the game won't let you devise too much of a strategy, as you only get to pick one of two potential battles even if you win or lose.  And those battlefields are selected for you.  To encapsulate the game as a whole: it feels as if you're constantly being proded to pick the lesser of two evils.  Real strategists wil be dissapointed as there is no option to be wildly creative or relentlessly methodical.

Furthermore, units under your command have no special identity other than call signs.  The closest thing you can do to specialize your units is to upgrade them; which is handled in something of an unique but absurd fashion.  Rather than upgrading individual units, once you buy an upgrade it applies to units of a particular rank.  So certain units won't be available for an upgrade unless you wrought them in the fire of war.  Of course these blanket upgrades impede you from having more flexibility from a certain type of unit.  Let's say that you want one tank unit to be fast and flexible, and you want another tank unit to be more powerful and defensive.  In EndWar this is impossible.

For some reason it feels as if the game was built with such a structured sense of rock, paper, scissors, that it never truly ever evlovled from that form of simplicity.  In a some respects EndWar feels more like a demo of voice recognition capability than a retail video game.  Granted the controls and mechanics are great, but in the end this game won't take long to master, it won't require much strategy, and may not have the difficulty to hold many gamers interest.

Xbox 360 DIY Arcade Joystick - part 1

So I've decided to take the effort to put together a DIY 360 arcade stick.  There seems to be enough literature out there on the interwebs for a layman like myself.  I have an idea of what I'd like to do as you can see below, please forgive the quick blueprint as this was done in under fifteen minutes.

 

I do know that I'd like the joystick to be fairly big, at least the size of a standard 8^1/2" x 11" sheet of paper.  And the border of the joystick will be fairly malleable wood, but I have yet to venture to the hardware store so this is TBD.  I have already made the purchase of the parts online and they should be here in a couple of days.

It will basically be a HAPP controller.  The joystick is the black 8-way HAPP competition joystick, and the pushbuttons are HAPP competition as well.  I have decided to keep the 360 style theme as the A,B,X,Y buttons will be Green,Red,Blue, and Yellow respectively.  The LB and RB buttons will be white, as will the Select and Start buttons.  And I want to keep the 360 guide button.

Between the online instrusctables and multiple designs I've seen over the past couple of weeks, I'm sure it won't be that hard.  But as this is my first whack at this I may aim for functionality over aesthetics.

Snuggie Makes Easy Masque of the Morlocks Costume

Just watch the video.  I don't really understand why anyone would want one of these, as a decent size blanket does exactly the same thing as this Snuggie claims to do.  It just got my attention though as I the first time I saw this commercial I remembered Masque of the Morlocks.  Pretty obscure I know, but that's something we nerds to well; pointing out the obscure or not so obvious.

Looks like you'd only have to add a hood and a belt to make this a Masque costume for next Halloween.

My X-Mas Haul is Leading to a Short Stretch of Novels.

I don't mean to brag, but I had a pretty good X-Mas haul. 

To start my wife bought me the Watchmen graphic novel, which I haven't even gotten around to reading -- ever.  In fact to be honest, throughout most of my formidable days I was mainly a reader of X-books, mainly The Uncanny X-Men.  That was until I discovered, American Flagg, which was the first indie comic I ever read; and immediately I was hooked.  However, that was around the same time I got a NES for the Christmas and eventually the few funds that I had at that tender age were "redistributed" towards game purchases.

Moving on, I also received Call of Duty: World at War from my mother-in-law.  Funny thing is she almost bought me Fallout 3, but apparently an idiot at Target told her that game was and I quote... "horrible."  I had too much heart to ask for the gift receipt to take it back, and besides several people on my FL have the game, so it'll get some use.

My brother-in-law bought me a t-shirt with the cover of the first X-Men Secret Wars comic.   It's awesome, I don't really go shopping for stuff like this these days, as it doesn't fit my professional line of work.  But I think that I may have to go out and find some more shirts like this, just to wear outside of the workplace.

Adding to the haul was Weezer's: Red Album, $100 in Best Buy gift cards, one hundred greenbacks, and of course the traditional boatload of chocolate that I get every year.

Being a little cash heavy I decided to head to Half-Price Books today and picked up The Dark Knight Returns, The Gum Thief, and Generation X.  So as it is I am a little behind in my reading as I am also smack in the middle of two other novels.  Making my list of books to read look like the below:

The Bourne Identity (halfway)
Halo: The Cole Protocol (just started)
Watchmen
The Dark Knight Returns
Generation X
The Gum Thief
Slaughterhouse-Five

Any suggestions to add to the list?