Day 228

Today I got up the courage to do the bezel. I'd already had the plastic sheeting and I just needed the spray paint to finish the job. My biggest fear was that I'd screw this up completely and have to buy another sheet (around $20). I spoke to the guy in the paint department at Home Depot and he suggested a brand of spray paint that has a nozzle that isn't supposed to drip, run or spatter, and provides a nice wide spray.

So I cut the plastic to size and after a few trial and error tests of trying to put the bezel in place, I had to take the Dremel tool to take off some of the edge. Better to cut too little than too much, as my old Wood shop teacher used to say.

After finally getting it to fit in place, I took a china marker and marked the left and right sides and placed tick marks where the monitor shone through.  Took the sheet back out, masked off the area where the monitor should be and spray painted the rest of the inside.

After it dried, I took the mask off and put the sheet in place. Not too shabby, says I.

Now I have just enough plastic left over to do the marquee along the top. I still haven't established who will print the marquee art I've made up, so I'll do that today.

I also want to find some plastic stickers for the arcade control layouts. I'm hoping I'll find static cling stickers so I won't mess up the bezel.

Day 225

Well, today I finally got my laser games to work. My problem was that there were two instances where I would have to press the escape key in order to progress into and out of the games. I fixed one of them by upgrading one of the modules within Hyperspin, called Hyperlaunch. Hyperlaunch is a sub-program which allows certain emulators and PC games to work within Hyperspin.

Once I had that in place, I got rid of one of the little windows that would pop up whenever I tried to run either Dragon's Lair or Space Ace.

The other issue was I couldn't get the key settings to stick in the Daphne emulator itself. So I went into the configuration file and made the changes manually.

I also (with the help of other users on the Hyperspin forum) fixed the onscreen theme that shows the available games. One of the graphic objects sat in front of the game wheel so you can't see which game you're selecting.

I got the plastic sheet from Home Depot for the front of the cabinet and I need to lay out where the monitor is located so I can paint one side and get it placed. I also need to print out and place the controller layout for the buttons depending on which emulator or jukebox program you're using. I want to get this sucker finished before Christmas so Amanda can help finish decorating the side art.