AdvanceMAME Bezels

Alturis

@alturis On arcade games I too prefer "full height" game area; stretching GBA's version of G&W "Fire" (reason why I created these GBA overlays) would generate a very "blocky" image.
As you said, cropping that ovl could be a quick solution.

Yeah I can see what you mean there. With game boy roms full height could be just too pixelated for sure. I will have to look into how to actually get the emulator to squeeze it down and see how that feels.

Alturis

@alturis said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

I will have to look into how to actually get the emulator to squeeze it down and see how that feels.

And there is the answer!
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Smaller-RetroArch-Screen

illando

Hi @caver01

I used the original artwork file from form the website linked before with Asteroids Deluxe as you suggested.
As I can see.... artworks are enabled (correct retropie folder, correct artwork version) but AdvanceMame is showing only backdrop and not bezel. I tested also other games with the relative untouched artwork bot no bezel can be displayed.

Is there something I should check in the advancemame.rc file apart:
display_artwork_backdrop yes
display_artwork_bezel yes
dir_artwork /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame/artwork
?

caver01

@illando no, that should be enough. Do you possibly have another entry in the .rc file that overrides? For example, advmame will let you duplicate any setting with a rom prefix to override for that rom, or for a certain resolution, or for vector, or for vertical, etc.. A search for bezel will answer this quickly I suppose.

illando

@caver01
No other in the entry in the advancemame.rc file about " bezel" :-(
I tried also to update advancemame3 from binary and from source.
Nothing.

I don't know what to think.
Maybe in the next retropie release.

Meneer Jansen

I'm re-installing Retropie because my old SD card crashed. Copied all its contents to a new SD card but the damage was too great. I'd rather poke myself repeatedly in the eye than to redo all the settings... WHAT A PAIN! Retropie is a big mess if you ask me.

Anyway to get my bezels (read: artwork) back I had to set in "advmame-0.94.rc":

display_artwork_backdrop yes
display_artwork_bezel yes
display_artwork_crop no
display_artwork_overlay yes
display_aspectx 16
display_aspecty 9

Caveat: where does your advmame-0.94.rc file reside? It's in two (!!!!!) places:

/opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/
/home/pi/.advance/

That last dir is "hidden" in Linux (because it starts w/ a point). I changed the one in the home dir. Good luck. :-)

SunnyMo

is there any way to make bezel suits 1920 * 1080 fullscreen without blurry? i use advmame3.8 and made a 1080p MAME bezel png file and .art file, but after starting the game, i found the bezel is blurred just like it is downscaled first and then resale to fit the screen, it's totally blurry. i used the same png file in lr-mame2003, it works well. thanks. @UDb23

UDb23

@sunnymo Unfortunately advmame 3.8 has issues with displaing bezels correctly on the Pi.

SunnyMo

@udb23 thanks for the reply. what a pity, advmame 3 is the best emulator i can find to play Ninja Baseball Batman at better speed on pi3b+, hope advmame can be improved for this problem in the future.

Meneer Jansen

@udb23 said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

@sunnymo Unfortunately advmame 3.8 has issues with displaing bezels correctly on the Pi.

If I'm not mistaken then the newer versions of Mame use a different format for the artwork. So AdvMame 3.8 might not have issues, it might need differently formatted artwork.

mediamogul

@meneer-jansen said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

it might need differently formatted artwork.

I believe it's just an issue with timing. Currently, the artwork is being scaled to the native resolution of the video, which is then upscaled for display. If it were scaled to the adjusted display resolution, it should look great.

UDb23

Already wrote to the author about this issue on Advancemame's forums in the past; got a reply but basically nothing actually happened so far in terms of fixing this issue.

More recently another user wrote about the bezel issue on that forum; again no feedback.
As already proposed (but didn't happen yet) all those retropie users interested in bezels with advmame should ask to fix it on the advmame forum. If multiple people are asking probably the author will fix.

UDb23

I just posted again on that thread. Please do the same.

SunnyMo

@udb23 thanks for the effort of reporting, i'll do it too. bezels do make a better feeling on model TV to play retro games.

Meneer Jansen

Would it be possible for y'all to use an older version of AdvMame?

caver01

@udb23 said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

More recently another user wrote about the bezel issue on that forum; again no feedback.

Ha ha ha. That other user was me ;-) I'd really love to have this working. Not sure what else we can do except add more voices.

UDb23

@caver01 Yes, more voices probably is the only chance.

UDb23

Andrea, the developer, just replied on the forum:
"Hi guys,
OK. Working on it.

Ciao,
Andrea"

mediamogul

@udb23

Woohoo! Score one for the squeaky wheels.

mediamogul

I just tested AdvanceMAME 3.9 that contains a new feature to scale the screen larger in order to better accommodate artwork display. The good news is that it looks great. Unfortunately, the bad news is that the Pi3B seems unable to handle the scaling without considerable slowdown. I plan to kick the tires a little more, but after testing with 'Space Invaders' already, which normally isn't all that demanding, I don't expect things to improve with the more advanced titles. It'd be great to get more reactions from others here as well.

I haven't had that much time to play/test/post here recently, so if it happens that 3.9 gets released to RetroPie soon and reports of slowdown start to occur, keep in mind that the feature can be turned off by adding display_artwork_magnify 1 to /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/advmame.rc. Without a setting specified, the default behavior is auto and specific scaling factors can also be added with 2, 3 and 4. Full details can be found here.