Backdrops in mame2003-plus

UDb23

@Clyde said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

It's still my trusty old 1600x1200. :)

Done. It should fit the "cutouts" but got no way to test on my side.
Files here: https://github.com/UDb23/rpie-ovl/tree/master/arcade/Battlezone

UDb23

@Riverstorm said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

Was the original backdrop white?

Original in good condition (how it looks without blacklight):
Battlezone_bezel small.jpg

Most pictures you find are more "yellowish" and have more faded blue due to cardboard deteriorating over time.

I am so used to seeing green from Mr. Do's old art that it threw me a little on first load.

Green from MrDo doesn't match the original blacklight inks (personal opinion).
This is a real one:

Shown event better better in this video:

Blacklight used in early upright release (periscope) and therefore "greenish UV"; cabaret no longer used blacklight so color looked like first image but artwork slightly different.

You may have noticed I do quite extensive research before creating overlays or BDs
;-)

Green "UV" overlay in the works....

I see "Display Artwork" in the core options

Has no influence on RA overlays AFAIK. Does affect Mame overlays and BD. You need to remove the mame artwork zip from the folder but still keep "display artwork" enabled (it does the red & green vectors in the core).

Riverstorm

@UDb23 - That's some nice pics and extensive research, thanks for sharing. I like reading that type of stuff and seeing the original as memory is definitely nostalgic vs. the "truth". I had no idea it was more "white".

With Omega Race I went back and forth between UV1 and UV2 before settling on UV2 as my final backdrop. I like that UV look.

Ok, thanks for the information. I think I am straightened aroundn now. I did a bit of testing and it seems "Display Artwork" turns backdrops on and off only and doesn't affect overlays just like you said.

I would disable "Display Artwork" in Battle Zone it would remove the "backdrop" but loose the color also. I had no idea you had to enable Artwork to get color. Is that embedded in the code or is it an overlay or something?

Back to the point my confusion came from the old Mr. Do Battle Zone artwork. I thought it was a backdrop and overlay combined but I see it's a single .png and designated as a backdrop in the .art file.

Interesting thing about AdvMAME when you use the old Mr. Do Battle Zone artwork it actually clips the left and right side art and only leaves the top bar so I thought they were different file designations like an overlay and backdrop.

AdvMAME seems to only display the game area. I couldn't get the side bars in Battle Zone to display correctly. In Plus it works fine.

The shortest way to disable overlays I found was to rename the game.zip.cfg since there's no RA/core option to turn that feature on and off.

I keep thinking overlays should be like backdrops and have a enable/disable option.

Mr. Do's Space Invaders art has both an overlay and backdrop combined in one file. With AdvMAME you can turn them on and off separately as they have section headers in the .art file like "backdrop:" and "overlay:" that can be loaded or ignored depending on the option settings.

Anyway thanks for pointing that out and looking forward to the UV version.

UDb23

@Riverstorm said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

Is that embedded in the code or is it an overlay or something?

It is embedded and think it's game driver specific. Found it by playing around with the options.

Interesting thing about AdvMAME when you use the old Mr. Do Battle Zone artwork it actually clips the left and right side art

I seem to remember it has an option to display full bezel/overlay/BD vs crop (=just the game area)

Riverstorm

@UDb23 said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

I seem to remember it has an option to display full bezel/overlay/BD vs crop (=just the game area)

Ah, ok, I will keep that in mind. I have part of my vector games in AdvMAME and as you make overlays or backdrops for certain ones I move them over.

UDb23

@Riverstorm Did you install latest advmame 3.9 ?
Do you compile it from source?
Gonna try it when I have some time.

UDb23

@Riverstorm said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

seeing the original as memory is definitely nostalgic vs. the "truth".

Totally agree.
I had a chance to play some of these old vector classics, at the time when they were the most innovative technology. I remember Star Castle was presented at an exhibition intended for operators only, but somehow we were able to attend ;-)
And of course Asteroids and later on Star Wars: the cockpit version simply was a dream; you felt like flying your x-wing into the trench !! Unforgettable.

Riverstorm

I am actually still on 3.8. I haven't upgraded AdvMAME in quite some time. I do upgrade keep my RetroPie script upgraded and mainly Plus as that's where I've spent all my time lately.

I love hearing those type of stories, that's what makes the nostalgia so strong and it had such a powerful effect it keeps projects like this alive.

Clyde

@UDb23 I tested the 4:3 bzone overlay. It works, but it's slightly off vertically (the radar's upper mark isn't in the cutout).

Alas, the Retroarch screenshot function doesn't include the overlay, so I can't show it to you at the moment (I'll have to leave for work soon). Can you suggest a screenshot software for the Pi that will include the overlay?

edit: If it helps, here's a screenshot in 1600x1200 without the overlay: https://i.imgur.com/9ZdFdkR.png

UDb23

@Clyde Understood, no need for additional pics. Let me check.

UDb23

@UDb23 I usually just take a photo of the tv with my smartphone. Not perfect but effective.

caver01

@UDb23 I am running AdvMAME 3.9 now, installed from binary on my recent rebuild.

By the way, thanks for the input about smoothing with the vectors. I know I messed up posting my question on the wrong thread, but wow did that smoothing ever make a difference. The vector system look perfect now.

Clyde

@UDb23 Although I do have a smartphone, I only use it as a digital camera, not as a phone (I bought it from a coworker for 50€ for that reason alone).

Thus, it's a bit cumbersome to transfer the pictures to my PC afterwards. Motivated by the current problem, I may look into other screenshot software for the Pi that can also grab overlays, if only for future use.

UDb23

@caver01 Glad it helped.

Riverstorm

@Clyde - Here's a link to raspi2png. It's small and works well but you need to SSH into your Pi with PuTTY (or some other terminal emulator) while you play on another display or TV but it will capture the screen exactly as you see it with overlay and backdrop at the displays resolution.

You don't need to do step 2 if you're going to run it from the downloaded folder. It will create a folder named raspi2png in your home folder that works well but you will need to use ./ in front of raspi2png to run it (if you prefer not add to the bin folder). The only difference is the ./ in front specifies the current folder vs. the search path.

Also snaps are named snapshot.png in the current folder and will overwrite on each run unless you use -p parameter shown in step 3 below. If you only need one snap at a time then you wouldn't need to specify a name. Other parameters listed below.

Basic steps:

git clone https://github.com/AndrewFromMelbourne/raspi2png/
sudo cp -a raspi2png/raspi2png /usr/local/bin
raspi2png -p "mysnapshot.png"

Usage: raspi2png [-p pngname] [-v] [-w ] [-h ] [-t ] [-d ]
-p - name of png file to create (default is snapshot.png)
-v - verbose
-h - image height (default is screen height)
-w - image width (default is screen width)
-t - type of image captured
     can be one of the following: RGB565 RGB888 RGBA16 RGBA32
-d - delay in seconds (default 0)

Clyde

@Riverstorm Thanks very much. Although I'm using Linux which comes with terminals and ssh ootb, your very elaborate guide may be helpful to others. I added your post to my collection of forum links that may be useful in the future. 👍

I did one thing differently: Instead of copying raspi2png to /usr/local/bin, I hardlinked it to /home/pi/bin/ with this command:

ln /home/pi/git/raspi2png/raspi2png /home/pi/bin/raspi2png

Since most Retropie users will only use the standard user pi, it shouldn't matter in everyday usage, but I prefer to keep software that isn't part of the official repos out of global system directories. Also, in contrast to a copy, by hardlinking the file it will stay up to date if you update the original in the git clone, and if you ever delete the git clone, the hardlink will still work like the original, since hardlinks are just additional references to the original data. Finally,$HOME/bin is in the global shell path, so its contents can be used from any directory like the contents of /usr/local/bin. But I digress … (and I may've told you things you already know. 😉 )

When I went to clone the raspi2png repo into my ~/git directory where I store all the cloned repos, I noticed that I already got it in last September. 😳 😄

Here are two pictures of my Battle Zone. The first one shows the deviation of the radar and score board, while the other is meant for showing the boundary between the overlay and the playing area. (Should the scoreboard be so close to the overlay?)

caver01

@Clyde Hey, just a quick observation of those screenshots— in the final config, you might consider disabling the scanline shader for Battlezone. The actual vectors would have been totally smooth like on an oscilloscope. Color vectors have the shadow mask, but here, colors are from the overlay, so no CRT effects. Just a thought.

UDb23

@Clyde It seems that the 1600x1200 ovl is not aligned in your case, even if it's just the 4:3 game area taken from the 1080p ovl (!?)

Anyway I just updated both versions of the ovl with the radar "round border" being slightly higher positioned.
Can't make it further higher as I'd have to reduce the "radar" text even more; wouldn't look nice.

As long as the radar area is basically fully visible I think it's ok. Even real arcade cardboards were not perfectly aligned if you look at the images and videos you can find on the web.

Unfortunately it would be really tough for me to precisely align the ovl image to your 1600x1200 by trial & error based on step by step screenshots you would take ... sorry.

Clyde

@caver01 That's a definite point you're making. I plan to do that, like I did for Omega Race. I'm just used to do one step at a time to avoid issues that I can't pinpoint to a specific change if I'm making too many of them at a time.

@UDb23 Thank you very much. Alas, your new version just moves the radar cutout a miniscule amount that I can only spot if I view both screenshots in quick succession.

I think that the "RADAR" text would have to be removed completely to get a correct radar cutout. But I also think that it's not really worth the effort.

Riverstorm

@Clyde - That actually makes good sense and I like your idea better. I will move and link it. I like raspi2png but it would be nice to have it work more like an old school TSR so we could capture full screen without using SSH.

I am definitely not a power user on any linux platform so any tips are welcome. I am mainly Windows focused with a bit of linux due to our switch fabric (our switches are linux based). I work on firewalls (Fortigate & Palo Alto) switches (Cisco & Extreme), routers (Cisco), virtualization (VMWare), storage (NetApp) and a whole lot of fiber connectivity. Our campus is several blocks so not huge but a good sized network with several hundred PC's. I can build you a solid, secure & redundant network. ;)

I can talk subnetting, routing, routing protocols, switching, firewalls, etc. all day long but I find firewalls the most interesting as they do so many functions nowadays and aren't just about security anymore. A close 2nd is virtualization. It's such incredible technology.

If you come across something better than raspi2png for a decent full screen capture you'll have to let me know.