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

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.

Rion

@cosmo0 Any plans to update the pack with Orionsangel Realistic Arcade Bezels?

There have been some major updates since last time.

Clyde

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

@Aksen I don't really see the point of using overlays on a 4:3 screen, especially in a physical arcade.

Having built a DIY upright cabinet with a 4:3 monitor myself, I can tell you that overlays are very useful in that aspect ratio, either for vertical games like you can see in this thread, or as complete bezels around a reduced game area like the one on the left screenshot in the opening post of this thread. In my experience, most original bezels are much closer to 4:3 than to 16:9 and have to be extended somehow to the latter like that leftmost picture has been.

Bezels and overlays are the main reason I chose a 4:3 monitor with a much higher resolution (1600x1200) than most emulated games have, so that the artwork and the game area can be displayed without reducing their image quality.

Aksen

@Clyde This is sort of what I was thinking - I've got a picade with a plastic bezel (8 inch screen), but they sell and upgrade kit to a 10 inch screen with little to no bezel. it would be neat to play games at the 8 inch size, with a virtual bezel popping in for each game.

@cosmo0 since this doesn't support 4:3, don't worry about it... not really a feature request. Something will come along someday, and in the meantime I'm using this solution for my plug-in retropie.

Clyde

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

Something will come along someday, and in the meantime I'm using this solution for my plug-in retropie.

FYI, there's an active bounty for implementing an artwork system in RA that is compatible with MAME's artwork format. A promising first picture was posted there, recently.

Bandar

Hi,
First of all thank you so much for the amazing work. This tool helped me more than you could imagine.
But I encountered an issue with the realistic overlays. For some reason the game still runs on full screen. I went to retropie config and from there I changed Retropie aspect ratio settings to config and yet they are full screen. So I set it custom and it works but now all the other games that don't have overlays are visually ugly because they are running on a different aspect ratio that I set for all games.
Is there a way to have the overlays running without affecting any other games?
Thanks :D

mike855

@Bandar Hello. I have the same problem the game are bigger than the Overlay screen

mike855

Ok I found the problem, it's the value of aspect_ratio_index which is 22. This retroarch update it needs 23

It is in the file : configs/all/retroarch/overlay/arcade-realistic/common.cfg

cosmo0

New release: v5.1

https://github.com/cosmo0/arcade-manager/releases

New features

Can now convert MAME DAT files to CSV
Small help pages improvements
Upgrades libraries to latest versions (but you don't care about that lol)

Bugfixes

Fixes some CSV parsing bugs

Known bug

Overlays installation doesn't seem to be working on Linux. It will require quite a lot of work to fix.

cosmo0

Oh and btw the overlays should have been fixed (it's not related to the software).

cosmo0

lol "about a year later"