Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI

Evert

@cosmo0 , this is a brilliant bit of software. Love how easy it is to load overlays now. I used to do this the manual way and did not get past about 10 or so overlays until I was fed up. This is great.

Evert

@cosmo0 , would it be possible to include the neo-geo folder as well in this software package? I noticed that there are overlays made for some of the neo-geo games, but as I have split them out of the FBA folder and put them in the neo-geo folder, the program doesn't load the overlays.

I also noticed that the overlay for Bionic Commando and Red Earth is the wrong size, the overlay stretches over the game image.

tekn0

I just wanted to say thank you for making this wonderful tool! I have used it to create a mame2003 rom list I am very happy with.

Excellent work!

cosmo0

@cloudlink said in Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI:

@cosmo0 said in Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI:

https://github.com/cosmo0/retropie-overlays/tree/master/_sources/generic pick your TV screen and I'll add the screen :P

exodus_OLDCRT_DAY.png would be awesome!! :)

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/16430/overlays-compilation-repository-for-consoles-and-handhelds-1080p/3

Let me know what you think :) I'm not much of a designer, I just used what was available to me...

cosmo0

@evert said in Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI:

@cosmo0 , this is a brilliant bit of software. Love how easy it is to load overlays now. I used to do this the manual way and did not get past about 10 or so overlays until I was fed up. This is great.

Thanks! :)

@evert said in Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI:

@cosmo0 , would it be possible to include the neo-geo folder as well in this software package? I noticed that there are overlays made for some of the neo-geo games, but as I have split them out of the FBA folder and put them in the neo-geo folder, the program doesn't load the overlays.

I also noticed that the overlay for Bionic Commando and Red Earth is the wrong size, the overlay stretches over the game image.

I have noted the Neogeo request, I will do it for next version.

I'll check the overlays, thanks for the report. Is it the artwork or realistic pack?

@tekn0 said in Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI:

I just wanted to say thank you for making this wonderful tool! I have used it to create a mame2003 rom list I am very happy with.

Excellent work!

Thank you very much! :) I'm very glad to know at least one person uses this tool to manage their game collection, I spent a lot of time tuning it :)

Evert

@cosmo0 It is for the artwork overlays

AndersHP

I still haven't tried this but will soon. One question:

If I want my MAME and FBA games all sorted inside the Arcade folder, using your "best games" option, I guess your tool would copy the selected "best played in MAME" and "best played in FBA" roms and make a gamelist, but what about the emulators.cfg file that determines which emulator runs which games - is this updated correspondingly?

cosmo0

@andershp said in Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI:

I still haven't tried this but will soon. One question:

If I want my MAME and FBA games all sorted inside the Arcade folder, using your "best games" option, I guess your tool would copy the selected "best played in MAME" and "best played in FBA" roms and make a gamelist, but what about the emulators.cfg file that determines which emulator runs which games - is this updated correspondingly?

No, no feature to do that yet, but it's planned... someday :)

tekn0

@andershp Put all the roms you want to be just FBA in the fba folder. Then do this command:

ls -1 RetroPie/roms/fba | sed -e 's/.zip$//' -e 's///g' -e 's/^/arcade/' -e 's/$/ = "lr-fbalpha"/' >> /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg

AndersHP

@tekn0 Thanks. This method was mentioned in the MAME vs FBA thread also, I just thought maybe this tool did this since it had a "best core" option.

Can still use it to sort off the countless mahjong/adult games though, looking forward to that :)

jca2112

Just tried out Arcade Manager -- glad to see something related to MAME rom management available on the Mac platform.

Question: Is there an automated way to uninstall overlays?

I used the Arcade Manager function to install Realistic overlays, then decided to change and install Artworks overlays, but some of the Realistic overlays were left behind. (I assume because no Artwork version was available?) Is there a way to uninstall ALL the overlays so I can start over?

Also, is there a way to use bezels/overlays files JUST in the roms folder? (Instead of having to install into the /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/overlay/ overlay folder?) Would it just be a matter of changing all the rom .cfg files to point the input_overlay = /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/overlay/ to a /roms/ folder instead? Basically I want all the roms (and related overlays, files, etc.) all to be on an external USB, rather than having it on the internal SD card. That way when you take the USB and all the games, all the overlays, etc. go with it.

Appreciate any help/info.

cosmo0

@jca2112 said in Arcade Manager: install overlays and manage roms in a user-friendly, fast and cross-platform GUI:

Just tried out Arcade Manager -- glad to see something related to MAME rom management available on the Mac platform.

Yeah, I'm on Mac too, which is why cross-platform was really important to me :)

Question: Is there an automated way to uninstall overlays?

I used the Arcade Manager function to install Realistic overlays, then decided to change and install Artworks overlays, but some of the Realistic overlays were left behind. (I assume because no Artwork version was available?) Is there a way to uninstall ALL the overlays so I can start over?

No, not at the moment. As a workaround, you can do the following:

open the roms folder where the realistic overlays are, and delete all .zip.cfgfiles
open the config share and delete the folder all/retroarch/overlay/arcade-realistic(this is not necessary, it will just save some disk space)
re-run the artwork overlays installation

Or you can just delete the .zip.cfg files of the leftover realistic overlays if there are not many.

Also, is there a way to use bezels/overlays files JUST in the roms folder? (Instead of having to install into the /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/overlay/ overlay folder?) Would it just be a matter of changing all the rom .cfg files to point the input_overlay = /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/overlay/ to a /roms/ folder instead? Basically I want all the roms (and related overlays, files, etc.) all to be on an external USB, rather than having it on the internal SD card. That way when you take the USB and all the games, all the overlays, etc. go with it.

Actually I tried to do that, but it's quite complicated.
Let me think about it, maybe I'll find some way by re-computing the path for each folder.

rodney465

hey guys i just bought my first rasberry and i am a newbie i want to know are there a guide on how to install Arcade Manager im totally in deep waters here any help would be appreciated.
note i downloaded Arcade Manager v4.2 with all of its contents not knowing which one to pick aswell

roostaar

App looks great cosmo0 but I'm having problems when editing the downloaded .csvs

I'm using Excel to try and filter out horizontal aspect games. If I save the file as .csv using Excel, even if I make no changes at all to the file, Arcade Manager gives me this error...

Error: Uncaught Error: Invalid closing quote at line 2; found "," instead of delimiter ";"

File: /Applications/ArcadeManager.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/node_modules/csv-parse/lib/sync.js
line: 30 ; column: 5

error: Error: Invalid closing quote at line 2; found "," instead of delimiter ";"

If I do not edit the file, Arcade Manager does process the .csv

But I am trying to filter Vertical games only. Please help!

cosmo0

@rodney465 I'm sorry I'm not sure what you're asking. Installing is as simple as unzipping, and you should just have to click through the app to install the overlays packages.
If it's still too complicated for you, I'm not sure this app the right place to start. I tried to make it as simple as possible, but it still assumes you know a little bit about arcade emulation.

@roostaar Hey, thanks for the heads up, could you provide me the failing CSV? Thanks!

roostaar

@cosmo0 Hey thanks for getting back so quickly.

I had another read of the help file and managed to get around it by deleting any columns after the first one. As you mention that the App only reads the first column anyway. Not ideal, but worked!

I also checked out Arcade Italia, I never knew you could download custom .csv from them. Very useful. I got a vertical only list from them and put that into AM, but it still failed to load unless I removed columns 2 and above.

I just tried this CSV downloaded from Arcade Italia. It's Vertical only roms for Mame 0.78.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pj0o77bkoso3m5k/MAME 0.78 Vertical.csv?dl=0

It fails unfortunately, but if I remove all columns except the first, it works.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ai9pvqeyszb6nc/MAME 0.78 Vertical (one column).csv?dl=0

Hope this helps! Cheers :)

PS - I see the CSV from Arcade Italia is column separated, not comma, although I did try editing several of the downloadable CSV from within the AM app and all these failed if edited at all.
Like this one...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qiohj6jkhzrc319/set-noclone.csv?dl=0

cosmo0

@roostaar Thanks ! I'll check them out.
ArcadeItalia's CSV have a bug where the columns headers and the data do not match towards the end. If you just remove the last few columns it works.

The CSV included in the app often come from ArcadeItalia, usually I made sure to fix them, but I probably missed a few.

Anyway, I'm glad that my app is useful in the way I hoped :)

felchwizard

@cosmo0 Hey I've tried installing the overlays with your Arcade manager, but the games seem to be severely cropped?

is this an issue with retropie 4.4 ? or has the script changed somehow?

thanks

Aksen

Hey! I'm planning to use this for my picade setup, which uses a resolution of 1024x768. Is there a way to load 4x3 bezels instead of 16:9?

cosmo0

@felchwizard Are all the games cropped, or only some of them? There might be a few with coordinates bugs, but most of them should be ok. If it's all of them, it's a bug somewhere.
If you're talking about overscan (small crops on all sides), it's normal.

@Aksen I don't really see the point of using overlays on a 4:3 screen, especially in a physical arcade.
But no, the software can resize the overlays, but it has to be a 16:9 resolution.