12/16 - 12/20

This week, I made a lot of progress toward finally finishing my arcade machine project. Firstly, I had to take apart the arcade machine in order to fix some of the pieces that needed fixing. Firstly, I had to paint one of the sides that I had neglected painting last week, which didn't take me too long to do. Using a sanding bit on a cordless drill, I was able to widen the spaces in the button holes, so I could fit buttons through them. I had to do this because the paint I had used to paint the arcade machine was clogging up those holes that are designated for button use. I then had to reassemble the arcade machine, which took a while due to its many complexities in the order of putting it together. Then, I wired the buttons to the pcb using jumper wires. However, the connections get disconnected from time to time, so when I get back from break, I will cut the wires I had soldered onto the buttons, and then solder extensions in between the cuts, where I will then place electrical tape in order to insulate it. I will do this to reduce the number of connections needed for each button to function, which should improve its performance. I was finally able to actually boot up the game on the arcade machine and run a few games, exclusively for testing purposes. Through testing with Sacha Silvia and Alex Hickey, I was able to uncover some bugs that I assume are being caused by the button extensions complicating everything. Below are some pictures I was able to take that show the different menus of the game, and also some pictures of me beating the brakes off of Alex, who I defeated in a definitive 20-15 victory.