Using MAME Overlays/Bezels and shaders with RetroArch in RetroPie

bengus

Floob: This is absolutely fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to add this to your video manager tool. It is greatly appreciated!

Floob

@bengus No problem. Thanks for the comment, I'm glad its useful.

dabone

Does anyone have a source for overlays without the flare and scratches on the main screen area?
I used to collect real arcade games, and if my games had looked that bad, they would have gotten new glass.

Most of these look like scratched up plexiglass with a light right above you.

Other than that I love this feature.

Later,
dabone

Floob

Lots here:
http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_artwork_ingame.php

punking

Hi

Thanks for the effort and time in producing the video manager tool. It works great. I have one question.

For Mame2003 roms that don't have any overlays or shaders pre-made how do I configure a cfg file to at least smooth the screen, scanlines and maybe even the curvature.

For example:

When I run Hyper Sports now it looks terrible because there's no smoothing or any effect applied. It's blocky and sharp.

Would I have to create a cfg for that specific rom and what would I have to put into it.

Thanks for your time.

Floob

@punking said in Using MAME Overlays/Bezels and shaders with RetroArch in RetroPie:

Hi

Thanks for the effort and time in producing the video manager tool. It works great. I have one question.

No problem.

For Mame2003 roms that don't have any overlays or shaders pre-made how do I configure a cfg file to at least smooth the screen, scanlines and maybe even the curvature.

You could enable a shader for the system as a whole using the configuration manager
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Configuration-Editor
This would effectively edit /opt/retropie/configs/mame-libretro/retroarch.cfg

For example:

When I run Hyper Sports now it looks terrible because there's no smoothing or any effect applied. It's blocky and sharp.

Yeah, thats the "natural" look - I dont like it either :) Although to be fair typically the resolution would be tweaked.

Would I have to create a cfg for that specific rom and what would I have to put into it.

You can either create a .cfg for that rom, which could include resolution settings, or you can set a system (lr-mame2003) wide settings such as integer scaling and a shader enabled.

Thanks for your time.

punking

Thanks for the quick reply. That all worked.

Higgy

First off as others have said great work Floob.

I am using a PC Monitor (via DVI connection) like I imagine a lot of others must be. Mine has the typical widescreen resolution of 1440x900 (it probably also does 1280x800) so a 16:10 ratio.

I was going to have a bash at just converting one of your files/cfg for 1440x900, I had selected Donkey Kong first.

I got it all working last night, it looks great!!

Before I crack on and convert the others, I have a question:

DKong has a native res of 224 x 256 but RetroArch is displaying it in a 750 x 1000 window. This is not a multiple of the original, so this does not matter? - Does the RPi hardware do all this without much performance punishment?

Scaling your numbers into my 1440x900 I have now the following in the .zip.cfg file:

custom_viewport_width = "750" Custom_viewport_width = "625"

custom_viewport_height = "1000" custom_viewport_height = "833"

custom_viewport_x = "585" custom_viewport_x = "408"

custom_viewport_y = "50" custom_viewport_y = "42"

I am trying to keep the aspect ratio of you Overlay Window correct. So my width/height is just reduced by a factor of 1.2

The start location in x is slightly different as it is initially scaled to 1600 to keep the correct scaling and then cropped to 1440 so I have to scale by 1.2 then subtract 80 pixels [ (1600-1440) / 2]

Is there a fancy way of reading in the parameters for each *.zip.cfg file and performing a maths function then re-writing out the file? It will save me a lot of time :)

I have converted all the Overlay .PNG's using a batch conversion with GIMP to 1440x900

cheers

Floob

@Higgy
Its a good point about the aspect ratio on some such as Donkey Kong. I created the configs based on the original PC versions posted here, and in the first post you can see some caveats:
http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5085

I have tried to standardize each overlay, but this was not possible due to differing bezel artwork sizes. But I have kept the aspect ratios as correct as I can.

All glass screen bezel artwork, with a few exceptions made by me (Bombjack, etc..) are from Mr. Do!'s Arcade website on Mameworld, all credit goes to him for these.

Each machine overlay comprises of around 15 layered images, including glass effects, dust, dirt, room lighting reflection, arcade backdrops, cardboard monitor bezels, wells gardner monitor image, etc..

Each machine is presented as if you are stood directly in-front of the machine looking directly at the screen. Only the screen itself is not tilted away from you like a real machine as this would be a bit impractical on a flat PC monitor.

ALL shaders provided do require tweaking per machine, but I just haven't had the time. I personally like a glow effect, scanlines, curved screen, slight desaturation - PC emulation looks to saturated IMO. These are not required, feel free to use own preferred shaders.

Each overlay is made to be used with roughly 70-80% opacity. Again, adjust to suit personal tastes. 100% will give maximum reflection effect, but also more faded washed-out look.

ALL overlays are 1080p only. They may scale, but don't have the monitor to test, only a 1080p monitor.

If you convert the images from 1080p to 1440x900 that will inherently have a slightly different aspect ratio, so you may find you need to tweak each config to compensate for the resized viewport area - although that sounds like what you are doing.
As there are many configs the same in the games, I guess you could do a search and replace without opening files, like https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/ or similar. Then you'll see from timestamps whats left.
Or you could get clever with Poweshell: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692806.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Higgy

@Floob
Thanks for the find/replace info. For some reason it would not accept finding/replacing the 4 lines about image size & location, so I had to do it one line at a time. Anyway all sorted now.
I could not get my head around Powershell - I don't do programming so it was tricky for my brain.

I was wondering why some *.zip.cfg have figures for scaling the image, but the location is X=0 Y=0?
There are lots of files, so did you just miss a few? Looking at their *.PNG Overlays, having a 0 & 0 does not look right. In this case I dropped on a rectangular box onto the Overlay in GIMP and used those coordinates for the location.

I would be testing it tonight, but after getting the ROMSET I am having difficulty unzipping it to get the additional ROMS you have created Overlays for. I am now using 'PeaZip' and it seems to be doing something. Just slow with 30GB to process!!!!

Higgy

@Floob - things have been progressing well. I have it all working in principle. A few tweeks needed here and there on the configs.

Once finished would you like the files for 1440x900 ? They would be best with you to advertise so to speak. As I said i am sure lots of people are using PC monitors with this resolution.

I am now concentrating on the hardware build - a 2-player bartop.
Sounds in RetroPie menu had noise via 3.5mm jack so I am using USB soundcard.
For controls I am using 2x Minimus32 boards (aka KADE) which will be setup as keyboard button presses.

The overlays look so good. And having a widescreen monitor it is a great way of feeling immersed without those darn black side boarders ;)

Floob

@Higgy Glad to hear things are working well.
It would be good to add the 1440x900 images and configs to the video tool, but I'm thinking that they would be fairly large?
The download is already 500MB and I really need to update the tool to call down the images if needed, so I'll need to find suitable hosting for that as well.
It would be good to eventually add a complete MAME bezel set, but I think its all about finding the time.

ruxton_bruce

@Floob I'm trying this with retropie 4 and i'm experiencing a strange behavior. When i open a game without bezel, it opens the settings of the last game with bezel. For instance if I open Asteroids and then Street Fighter II, i get the bezel from Asteroids on Street Fighter. I have seen others having the same problems. Is there a fix for this with Retropie 4. I have tried updating retropie just today and the problem still exists. The above worked fine for me on Retropie 3 it just started happening when I updated to Retropie 4.

Any help much appreciated

Floob

@ruxton_bruce
Can you paste you /opt/retropie/configs/mame-libretro/retroarch.cfg file into pastebin?

Higgy

@Floob Sizes of new files is 330mb.

I am using Retropie v4.0, but I have transferred the files manually. As I am only testing I don't think I have opened a ROM which does not have a bezel, so I can't comment on @ruxton_bruce issue.

I have the bartop all painted, so hopefully soon I can crack on with the fun part of assembling it all together and wiring in the buttons :)

GreenHawk84

Hello,
I started a topic but nobody seems to know - is there a way to do system specific bezels like Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo? This way whenever I run a console core I can just have the Sega bezel or Nintendo bezel? I run on a 16:9 monitor with 4:3 aspect on most games, so the sides would look nice with something there.

For Arcade, I can set the bezels as game-specific?

Floob

@GreenHawk84 Sure, you just specify the overlay in the system specific retroarch.cfg file.
Like this:

GreenHawk84

@Floob , thank you. Do you happen to know of any good SNES, NES, Genesis, NEO-GEO, ETC, bezels to apply to a system?

Floob

I use the packaged ones here:
https://github.com/biscuits99/rp-video-manager

GreenHawk84

@Floob that's strange, a lot of them are labeled as different ones but are actually the same old TV image.

Even better, how can I make my own bezels? I would definitely crank some out with photoshop if I had a template/guidance.