3D Arcade, The return

3D Arcade, a return

Back in the in the early 2003/ 2004 I found a 3D style front-end called 3D Arcade. I found it while surfing through Mameworld during this period. This is before Emumovies and the some of the better front-end existed. This is before Hyperspin, GameEX, Mgalaxy, Launchbox, so this is a long time ago. I have somewhat of a love hate relationship with this front-end because it was a nightmare to setup. The instructions described making gamelists a playlist of playlists ( yeah, it didn't make sense to me either.) But that wasn't why I downloaded it. when setup with all the arcade (which took an age because you had to download the individually and there were something like 400 plus different game models but it also, presented everything from arcades to pinballs and even decent recreations of old consoles. If you ran the exhibition location, you were greeted to a masterful location which you simply walk around the arcade where you see different rendered cabinets which when done right look fantastic. 

So, Why am I going on about something so old. Maybe I am a little nostalgic about this old system. Well it appears that this relic is being resurrected, Thanks in part to )p( and Skurdt over on the forums. This started with )p( wanting to learn Unity for his son so he could teach him the basics (his son is 13 so he is the right age to learn this stuff). I literally popped in to see if the project was still going and a new section saying 3d Arcade in unity greeted me. So this sparked my curiosity. So far they released a limited build with some basic groundwork for possibly a better version. While Unity has its own limitations its not as bad as directors with some paid extras that enabled it to work. So what have they done so far. surprisingly quite a bit for a preview build. But my main issues with this are the UI needs to be a lot more user friendly and a decent tutorial because the last was was very confusing with phases like "a playlist of playlists"

But the positives are a decent jukebox setup if configured right 

The pro's if this is pulled off

Decent maps with a possibly a chance to edit the cabinet setups 

A way to incorporate new innovations like online play and a change to share 

I will be looking at his project a lot more closely as a resurrected front-end from the past is coming back

Anyways if you want to help out visit here

http://3darcade.messageboard.nl/viewforum.php?f=15

If there any modeler that could help with creating some of the updated cabinets, any help would be greatly appreciated 

anyways just a quick one , anyways this is jackhammersalm signing off