New Gaming Room (in the works)

Well as I recently moved in to a new apartment, now I have a spare empty room at the back which I plan to turn it into a dedicated gaming room. The bad news is I won't be able to get started until next month or so as the room is currently filled up with boxes and stuff I've yet got to organize/throw out. In the meantime, I began to design the furniture myself, as I looked in many furniture stores and couldn't find something that fits both my needs and the space in the room.

The room itself is quite small, but is enough for what I need. It measures 2,50 x 2,50 meters. The walls are all painted white, dunno yet if I'll paint them with another color or not.

I'm planning on putting all my consoles except for the Wii and X360 which will stay in the living room with the new LCD TV that will replace the 29" CRT that will go to this gaming room.

This is the furniture set I designed this afternoon in AutoCAD:



It consists on a cabinet (left) for the games, with a blurred glass door, and a single drawer at the bottom for spare cable storage. (The blue lines are optional mountable shelves).
Then a really simple TV rack, for all the consoles as pictured there and two shelves for the audio speakers.
Next, a chest of drawers for controllers/handhelds/accessories for which I had this cool (but expensive I believe) idea of filling the drawers with custom cut foam casts/patterns for storing the handhelds and some of the accessories.
And last but not least, those three cube style wooden shelves/thingies for magazines/figurines/whatever.

I thought of making all these in dark tobacco wood.

As for decorative stuff, I've already got some old and relatively new Nintendo posters and a hand drawn Samus Aran made by a friend of mine:

And for the door, I was thinking on buying a sign like one of these:


Oh and I've already got the sofa, don't like the colors (dark and light blueish stripes) but it was really cheap and it's extremely comfortable :thumbsup:

Well really long post, just wanted to share this with you guys (mostly the designs), tell me what you think!
And suggestions for wether or not painting the walls are also accepted :nod:

Tchoin.-

 

I like it. Make sure you have a good system for hiding wires. I take it you'll be using a series of VGA boxes and splitters to get past switch overs.

I can't wait until I finally stop hopping around the world and get a real job and a permanent place.

I've never lived in one place for more than a year since I was 10 years old - Makes it so hard to have a collection and a set up. :crying:

 

You're right I haven't given much of a thought to the wire hiding issue, maybe lots of velcro straps will do the job :katamari:
As for the connections, the TV has 2 composite/s-video and 1 component inputs, the NES/SNES/N64/DC will go via composite through one of the AV switches and the GC/PS2/XBOX via component through the other AV switch (that also has RJ45 ports which come in handy) and I'll use the TV's audio output to hook it up with the audio system. I just wish I could find a decent powered AV switch with more than 4 inputs and a remote control so then I would be able to control absolutely everything with my lovely Logitech Harmony :love:

I know how you feel about moving a lot, it kinda sucks right? In the past 6 years I've moved 4 times, and I also lived for 6 months in the USA back in 2007 and had part of my collection there (most of the non-Nintendo stuff), which I could finally bring and put altogether last year (having some casualties though... one SNES and a PSOne missing in action thanks to the postal service).

 

I suggest painting the wall behind your shelving as an outrun mural. Blue sky, green grass, couple of palm trees, bit of road leading off to the horizon. Then paint you shelving red.



Just an idea but i think it would look sweet.

 

you know. I always though you're supposed to post completed collections here. Not some sort of "this's what I wish I had but it's not even made yet"

 

I found out some time ago that a flexible and semitransparent plastic pipe does the job of hiding power cables greatly (used it in my previous house, here I'm still stepping over a pile of cables ), you just need to make sure it's wide enough to fit all the cables inside.

 

Yeah wasn't quite sure where to open this thread, mods feel free to move it please if it doesn't fit here.

And anyway it's not like I'm day dreaming about having a wild collection of obscure devkits, I'm just talking 'bout how I'm planning to put a bunch of dark tobacco wood together and getting some feedback and ideas before I start building it.

@concept: That's a really cool idea, I was thinking on doing some kind of mural painting or something, though I really suck at painting :-( is it easier than it looks? I remember seeing somewhere over the net a guy that painted a Day of the Tentacle mural in his room and showed the step-by-step, pretty cool actually.

 

I think if you did Outrun you could stick with some pretty blocky graffics and it would be pretty easy to paint. Have a try on a smaller scale (A3 maybe) but im sure that you wouldnt need to be a great artist to paint a cool looking wall.

 

If Outrun is too tricky, try Tetris.

 

wow, when I make posts like that on other forums people always become anal and take it the wrong way.

 

Nice idea, and a good layout. I see nothing wrong with posting in advance... I'm sure you'll update with pics in the future ;-)

Cable-wise, how about that conduit you can get at your local DIY store? It's like two C shapes that slide together, and have a sticky backing.

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/35964.../Mini-Trunking-PVC-White-16-x-16mm-Pack-of-20

(they seem to call it trunking)

Or this stuff:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=220580&doy=9m3&C=SO&U=strat15

Either way, you should get something in your local DIY store :thumbsup:

As for decorating, that's personal preference. Either paint the walls one or two colours, or you could do a mural. I wouldn't recommend it if you are no good at art, as it isn't as easy as it looks! However, for a tip you should "square up".

Basically, take a picture you like, and get a piece of acetate and draw a grid on it. Say 5mm squares. Stick that over the picture. Now, let's say the image you want takes up 10 of those squares across. You want that image on your wall. Let's say you want the image 2 metres wide. 2 metres / 10 squares = 20cm squares. So draw a grid on your wall in pencil, with 20mm squares.

Now you can transfer each square one at a time. It makes it easier to draw the image. If you don't get what I mean, I'll try and take a pic for you.

Paint-wise, I guess acrylic paint would be OK. Bear in mind that it isn't waterproof, though!

One thing - composhite?!? Ugh! You're taking pride in how your setup looks, so take some pride in how your games will look! If you can't use RGB, then use S-Video wherever possible. You can get an S-video switch easily enough.

I take it you already have the television? If not, you could consider one of the Sony broadcast monitors that gamers seem to like. They'll have RGB inputs ;-)

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-PVM-2950Q-...60183566QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0

There are several of that model on eBay, ranging from $75 to $300. Looks good!

 

Room for a NES! love it!

 

Nice setup! The only thing I would say is that you may want to have extra space for future consoles. Like when you're going to move your wii or 360 in that room to make place for that brand new ps4/xbox1080/N1024 (personally it makes me think each 5 years).

Also, dark tobacco wood looks really nice!

 

Is this in reference to the Japanese Love Hotels again retro?

Seriously though, the Squaring Up idea is pretty smart if your not confident in your artistic capabilities.

I would say give it a try.

Paint something you think would be cool and if you not happy with the way it turns out... paint over it and do something else. You have a "blank canvas" go crazy with it.

Even if it isnt perfect and other people think its shite the only thing that really matters is that you like it. (I painted and changed the led in my minging looking yellowing dc, http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21815 i have friends who have told me it is shite/stupid/sacralidge but i think it looks the mutts nutts, so fuck 'em.)

If you never try, you will never no.

 

looks good, I was thinking of setting up my own game setup but I don't want all the cables and wires to show(drive me nuts), also having to older consoles that aren't Av/S-video compatible is another issue. I really have to learn how to mod consoles.

 

Good contribution as usual Gaming.

 

Is that better? looks like I'm spamming for posts my bad.

 

Haha, no! More that you have to keep away from the walls if you use acrylics, or varnish them. You might want to 'spruce up' the walls from time to time with sugar soap or something - if for example they get a bit scuffed or you accidentally throw beer over them in a drunken stupor. If you did that to acrylic paint, you'd end up with a smudged mess!

 

Not to mention a bit of console damage. Back to the Love Hotel theme then.

 

I think I'll leave the art stuff for the last, got a couple of friends who are good at that and can give me a hand. Haven't decided for which game art yet. Browsing through the net I found some examples of what you guys say about squaring up, it seems it makes the job much easier.

@ retro: I'll try to use S-video instead of composhite :lol: the only things I've got in composite are my nes, snes and n64. Well and DC too, until I get a vga cable. That Sony monitor looks really nice, but the shipping costs plus customs would fuck me :-(