I'm building a dos arcade cabinet. Attached is a picture of my first prototype controller. This was used to make sure my layout was comfortable, to determine if I have all the buttons I need, and to see how easy it would be to map it into dosbox. The goal was versatility across as many games as possible, and so far I've been able to map it into every game I throw at it, with a single keymap! I'm only about 7 games in so far, but things are looking promising.

I'm using joytokey to map the buttons, because there are actually 3 x USB joystick controllers, and dosbox only recognizes/acknowledges 2 of the joysticks controllers. So I use joytokey, which recognizes all 3 controllers, and map them mainly to keyboard keys. I've also been experimenting with setting the second joystick to the mouse because I wanted Tyrian to work with 2 players, and it doesn't support 2 players on one keyboard. BTW, that map works absolutely perfectly! So far I've had no game conflicts as most of the games I'm installing don't use the mouse anyway.

If I can get away with a single keymap for all games, that would be perfect. That would make things very easy moving forward. Especially as I want to use the dos menu system "direct access 5" and having individual keymaps for every game simply won't be possible. My key mapping strategy is to choose keys that either most games use by default, (for example, the main keys for player 1 are bound to alt, crtl, space and enter, (as you can see in the picture)) or bind the buttons to keys that are supported by a games in-game "keymapper". It's taken a bit of playing around, but so far, I've been successful. I've even gotten some point and click games to work!

There will be games that are either impractical or impossible with this setup without over complicating it, for example, early Sierra point and click titles, abuse, some advanced flight sims etc but I should be able to get enough games to have a good time.

The plan is to have 6 arcade machines all networked together for multi-player games, and have them all in my distillery/bar that I'll be opening early next year. The plan will be to have competition nights as well.

But for now, here is the prototype ☺