The Windows#
Arcade Creator has one interface for players and three for whoever runs the place. It helps to know which is which before anything else.
Window | Opened with | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
The door panel |
| Photos, address, price and your balance. Buy it, visit it, or walk in if it is yours. |
The business panel |
| The owner's office: money, staff, machines, upgrades, scores, trophies and the venue's own settings. |
The creator |
| Admin only. Where new arcades are placed on the map and existing ones are edited. |
The settings panel |
| Admin only. Every behaviour of the resource, in 17 sections. |
Almost nothing is configured in files. Prices, permissions, income, the garage, doors and the command names are all edited in the settings panel, saved to the database, and applied to everyone already connected.
What a Fresh Server Opens With#
Six arcades, the ones the base game puts on the map, each with a blip, a door and a price. All six start unowned and for sale.
Arcade | Where | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|
Pixel Pete's | Paleto Bay |
|
Wonderama | Grapeseed |
|
Videogeddon | La Mesa |
|
Warehouse | Davis |
|
Insert Coin | Rockford Hills |
|
Eight-Bit | Vinewood |
|
All six share one interior. Each player who walks in gets their own copy of it, dressed with that venue's own machines, murals, lights and music, so two arcades never see each other.
Creating an Arcade#
There is no limit to how many venues a server can have, and none of them is typed into a file. Open /arcadecreator, press New arcade and fill in the form.
The form#
Section | What you set there |
|---|---|
Business details | The arcade's name, the purchase price, which account it is paid from, and the cost per play it opens with. |
Style | The ceiling finish the venue starts with: Retro, Mirrored or Hipster. |
Location | Two points placed in the world: the entrance and, optionally, a separate garage entrance for driving in. |
Photos | Up to four pictures shown on the door panel, taken in game with a free camera and uploaded automatically. |
Map blip | On or off, its name, its icon, its colour and its size. |
Placing a point#
Press Select next to the entrance or the garage entrance. The panel closes and you aim at the ground: a marker follows your crosshair and a line is drawn from you to it.
Key | Does |
|---|---|
Mouse | Aim. The point lands wherever the ray hits the world, up to fifty metres away. |
| Turn the heading — the arrow shows which way a player will face. |
Mouse wheel | Raise and lower the point, for a door on a step or a balcony. |
Left click | Confirm and go back to the form. |
| Cancel and keep the old point. |
You can walk while aiming, so the camera is never the thing stopping you from lining a door up properly. The heading and the height are shown on the button bar in the corner as you change them.
Taking the photos#
Name the arcade first, then press Take photo. The panel hides and you get a free camera: W A S D to fly, the mouse to look, and a key to shoot. Pictures are uploaded and attached to the venue, so every player sees them on the door panel. Needs screenshot-basic and a hosting token; without them the step is skipped and the panel simply shows no photos.
Buying, Running and Selling#
A player presses E at the door and sees the venue's photos, its district, its price and their own balance. Buy takes the money and the place is theirs; Visit walks into somebody else's, if they allow it.
Thing | How it works |
|---|---|
Cost per play | What a customer pays to start a machine. The owner sets it; owners and staff can be let in free. |
The safe | A physical safe in the office. Takings pile up inside it and somebody has to walk over and press |
Passive income | The venue earns on its own while nobody is playing. How much, and how often, is a setting. |
Access mode | Everyone, staff only, or nobody. Separate from the Open/Closed switch, which shuts the place entirely. |
Selling | Gives back a configurable share of the purchase price plus whatever is in the safe. The machines, the upgrades and the staff are lost, and the venue goes back on the map. |
The Laptop Shop#
Machines are bought from the laptop on the office desk — sit down and the Pixel Emporium catalogue opens. Each cabinet has a page with artwork, screenshots, a description and its price, and there is a second tab for the property upgrades.
Buying a machine does not place it. It goes into the venue's storage, and the placer puts it on the floor. The same works in reverse: a machine can be put back into storage from the business panel and placed somewhere else later.
Placing Machines#
Open the placer with /arcadeplace. The camera flies to a slot, a translucent copy of the cabinet appears exactly where it would stand, and a list on the left shows everything the venue owns.
Key | Does |
|---|---|
| Step between the 35 floor slots. The camera moves with you. |
| Choose which machine to put there. The ghost updates as you scroll. |
| Turn an add-on machine. Built-in cabinets have a fixed heading per slot. |
| Place it. The first item in the list is Remove game, which empties the slot. |
| Close the placer. |
Not every machine fits every slot, and the panel says so rather than letting you drop a cabinet through a wall. Wide machines — the light gun, the three racers and CamHedz — take two slots and are only offered on the pairs that can hold them. The quad bays take the street cabinets, and the claw and the love tester only go where the game puts them. A machine that fits nowhere shows no preview at all.
Two players can use the same two-seat cabinet at once. The script keeps each player's animation and their light gun in sync for everyone else in the room, so a second player walking up to Badlands Revenge II really is playing beside you.
The Business Panel#
Press F7 inside your own arcade. Eight sections down the left, and what you can open depends on your rights.
Section | What it is |
|---|---|
Overview | The safe, today's takings, the last seven days as a chart, net profit, how many machines are placed, who is on shift and the five most recent movements. |
Staff | Hire, fire and set each person's rights. |
Finances | Income, spending and net, with a ledger you can filter by plays, passive income, withdrawals and purchases, and group by type or date. |
Machines | Everything the venue owns, which slot it is in, how many times it has been played and how much it has made. Store a machine or send it back to the floor. |
Upgrades | Every decor and property upgrade, bought or not, each with an Edit button that opens its picker in the world. |
High scores | Every leaderboard in the venue, by game, with initials and score. |
Achievements | The venue's collection: nine plushies and fifteen trophies, with what each one needs. |
Settings | This venue only: open or closed, who may come in, the cost per play, and the button that sells it. |
Staff and rights#
Hiring someone opens a list of switches. Each is independent, and the set a new hire starts with is a server setting.
Right | Lets that person |
|---|---|
Open management | Open the business panel at all. |
Buy machines | Use the office laptop to buy cabinets and upgrades. |
Place machines | Move cabinets around the floor and change the decor. |
Open the safe | Take out the money the machines have earned. |
Change settings | Change the access mode and the cost per play. |
Manage staff | Hire, fire and change other people's rights. |
Open doors | Lock and unlock the interior doors. |
Rights are per venue. Being a manager at one arcade means nothing at another, and the owner always has all seven.
The Games#
Seventeen cabinets and one big-screen game, all of them playable. Every one keeps a score, writes to that venue's leaderboard and can unlock a trophy.
Machine | What you play |
|---|---|
Space Monkey 3: Bananas Gone Bad | A side-scrolling shoot 'em up across five sectors with a boss at the end of each, power-ups, extra lives and a bonus tally. |
Badlands Revenge II | A western light-gun shooter. Two players side by side, each holding a real gun prop everyone in the room can see. |
The Wizard's Ruin | A dungeon crawl with spells and bosses. |
Race and Chase — Street Legal, Get Truckin', Crotch Rockets | Three sit-down racers with their own vehicle and track. The player really sits in the cabinet and the wheel turns with them. |
Defender of the Faith · Monkey's Paradise · Penetrator | Three Degenatron titles on the street cabinets, each a complete retro game. |
Invade and Persuade II | The alien invasion arcade game, levels and all. |
Street Crimes: Gang Wars Edition | Four gangs fighting over a city grid against the clock. |
QUB3D · CamHedz | A falling-block puzzle, and a first-person shooting gallery. |
Shiny Wasabi Kitty Claw | A claw machine with nine plushies to win, three of them rare. What you grab appears on the office desk. |
Axe of Fury | A test of strength: swing the axe and watch the tower light up. |
The Love Professor | A love tester for two players, with a verdict neither of them asked for. |
Madam Nazar | The fortune teller booth, which also hides the door to the basement office. |
Don't Cross The Line | Played on the venue's big screen from the sofa. Two players, one controller each, with everyone else watching. |
Machines charge the cost per play the owner set, and the money goes into that venue's safe. The owner and the staff can be let in free with one setting.
Decorating the Interior#
Every decor upgrade is bought from the laptop and then edited in the world: the picker opens, the arcade changes as you scroll, and you confirm. /arcadeedit reaches the same editors directly.
Upgrade | Choices |
|---|---|
Walls | Nine murals, from a plain wall to street graffiti, a neon tiger and a galaxy. |
Neon | Nine lit signs above the mural — pink skyline, blue palms, golden city and the rest. |
Floor | The finish underfoot, from classic checker to something louder. |
Style | The ceiling: Retro, Mirrored or Hipster. |
Screens | The pillar monitors: off, or showing the venue's high scores. |
RGB lights | Nine effects — solid, breathing, heartbeat, rainbow, rainbow wave, sweep, two colours, chase and party — with a colour wheel, speed and brightness. |
Jukebox | Music for the whole venue: in-house arcade stations, the game's own radio, or a YouTube link. |
Barmaid | Staffs the bar and serves drinks to anyone who asks. |
Office fortune teller | The booth that hides the door down to the basement office. |
Garage | A basement garage with ten marked spots, shared by everyone with access, reached on foot or through the venue's own garage entrance. |
Living quarters | A bed area in the basement planning room. |
Every change is instant and seen by everyone inside at that moment. /arcadelights opens the RGB rig on its own, and /arcadedecor previews a look before paying for it.
Scores, Trophies and Plushies#
Finishing a game asks for three initials and writes them to that venue's board. Boards are per arcade, so each one has its own champion — and the pillar screens inside show them to everybody who walks past.
Collectible | How it is earned |
|---|---|
Nine plushies | Won from the claw machine — six cats and three rare ones. Each appears on the office desk, and can also become an inventory item. |
Fifteen trophies | For beating a score on a given machine, or clearing a milestone like winning every plushie or filling the floor with cabinets. They appear in the display case. |
The score a trophy needs is a setting, so the bar can be raised on a server where players grind.
The Settings#
Everything the resource reads, edited in game with /arcadeconfig: 166 options across 17 sections, each with a line explaining what it does. Changes are saved to the database and applied to every player at once, and any section — or the whole panel — can be reset to the shipped values.
Section | What it holds |
|---|---|
General | Debug output, language, in-game help and the name notifications use. |
Money | Which framework account each kind of payment touches. |
Ownership | How many arcades a player may own, selling, and who may walk in. |
Employees | Staff limit and the rights a new hire starts with. |
Passive income | What the arcade earns on its own while nobody is playing. |
Property upgrades | Price of the basement garage and the living quarters. |
Interaction | The |
Default decor | How a brand new arcade looks before its owner changes anything. |
RGB lighting | Limits and starting colours of the floor light rig. |
Creator & camera | Who may place arcades, and how the photo camera behaves. |
Commands | The names players type, and who may open this panel. |
Machine prices | What each of the 17 arcade machines costs its owner. |
Decor upgrades | Price of each decor upgrade, which ones are on sale, and who may touch them. |
Garage | The basement garage: how many vehicles, how close you must stand, and whether the front door takes cars. |
Trophies | Score a player must beat to earn each score trophy. |
Doors | The interior doors staff can lock and unlock, and how the prompt behaves. |
Plushies | The nine claw-machine plushies: whether winning one also hands out an inventory item. |
These values live in your database, not in a file. The resource only supplies the first set; after that the panel is the source of truth, which is why an update never wipes your configuration.