Big10p,
1. The trackball and spinner both work off mouse controls. One is plugged in via usb, and one with the ps/2 port. The trackball, by default, has 3 buttons that act as your standard 3 mouse buttons in windows. The big difference with the spinner is windows still sees it as a mouse, but it only moves on the Horizontal (X) plain.
2. If a 3d game can be worked out with the control set, then I say go for it. Just remember that the player joysticks are not analog, only 8 way directional.
3. Nothing specific really, I'm leaving that up to the individual developers. Remakes of classic games are always a good way to start, of course with a different name and mondernized graphics. :)
4. Yes, MAME is the big draw. Problem is the copyrights to the roms, and I am tired of trying to deal with a way around it. I don't provide any roms, so having a turnkey type setup is pretty much out of the question. Except for the few roms from www.starroms.com that I can provide legally. As far as a market, I don't really know. I'm seeing the success of Xbox Live arcade and thinking there must be a market out there for this. But if a developer is a making a game anyway, it probably won't take a lot of work to change it a bit to be arcade controls friendly, so the time and effort put into should be worth it, hopefully.
What I am thinking about is designing a sort of webportal where users can either purchase games on CD and install them on their arcade boxes/cabinets. Or if their box is online they can download the games directly. The back end of the website will have an area for each developer where they can upload their games, set pricing and manage the tech support aspect. Whether a small amount of the purchase ammount will go to the site for bandwidth and maintenance will be determined by the one doing the site. I have a few friends in mind that are extremely good at doing web stuff, so we'll see.
I hope I answered your questions.
1. The trackball and spinner both work off mouse controls. One is plugged in via usb, and one with the ps/2 port. The trackball, by default, has 3 buttons that act as your standard 3 mouse buttons in windows. The big difference with the spinner is windows still sees it as a mouse, but it only moves on the Horizontal (X) plain.
2. If a 3d game can be worked out with the control set, then I say go for it. Just remember that the player joysticks are not analog, only 8 way directional.
3. Nothing specific really, I'm leaving that up to the individual developers. Remakes of classic games are always a good way to start, of course with a different name and mondernized graphics. :)
4. Yes, MAME is the big draw. Problem is the copyrights to the roms, and I am tired of trying to deal with a way around it. I don't provide any roms, so having a turnkey type setup is pretty much out of the question. Except for the few roms from www.starroms.com that I can provide legally. As far as a market, I don't really know. I'm seeing the success of Xbox Live arcade and thinking there must be a market out there for this. But if a developer is a making a game anyway, it probably won't take a lot of work to change it a bit to be arcade controls friendly, so the time and effort put into should be worth it, hopefully.
What I am thinking about is designing a sort of webportal where users can either purchase games on CD and install them on their arcade boxes/cabinets. Or if their box is online they can download the games directly. The back end of the website will have an area for each developer where they can upload their games, set pricing and manage the tech support aspect. Whether a small amount of the purchase ammount will go to the site for bandwidth and maintenance will be determined by the one doing the site. I have a few friends in mind that are extremely good at doing web stuff, so we'll see.
I hope I answered your questions.