BUILDING A CUSTOM ARCADE MACHINE
After selling over 200 gaming machines since Decemeber 2017, I have really gotten confident with the software involved in making these tiny arcades. I have decided I am confident enough to branch out and try my hand and producing full sized arcade machines. You can follow my progress here. I will keep posting pictures until the first machine is complete.
For my first full size arcade I decided to try me hand at a bartop style machine. I chose this style for two reasons. Size of space I have is limited and my work area is cluttered enough as it is, and cost of materials. Originally I wanted to cut the wood and do all of the build from beginning to end by hand but time forbid me from diving in too deeply. I instead opted to buy from http://www.monsterarcades.com/ and I later regretted it.
In the photo above you can see the kit after I had set the buttons into it. They aren't mounted really. I just put them there for effect.
The kit arrived quickly (about 6 days) and everything I had ordered was included except for the PSD templates which I needed for making the vinyl wrap art.
One of the main reasons I chose to buy from this company was their offer of including all the templates with each machine. After 3 weeks of calling and emailing with no response, I had finally decided that I would make them myself but just before I did someone responded on the Monster Arcades Facebook page and offered an apology and the files I had sorely missed!
If anyone out there is going through the same frustrating process and finds this page, here are the files you are looking for.
I decided to start over on this project and build a whole new SD Card image from scratch but I started with the most recent build of MotionBlue which I downloaded from ARCADE PUNKS. The base install sucks up about 16gb because of all the art involved but it runs very nicely and is a great adaptation from the usual RetroPie or Recalbox builds I have made.
Bellow is an example of what my stock MotionBlue frontend looks like.
I did some digging and finally found the location of the system art files that I want to alter!
ATTRACT MODE > LAYOUTS > MOTIONBLUE_4X3
Next I plan to replace them with my own custom video backgrounds and to redesign the frames used in the menu layout. When I am done it will look a lot more professional.