Using MAME Overlays/Bezels and shaders with RetroArch in RetroPie

krull

I hope somebody can answer some noob questions.

Ive got the program up and running, and everything works great.....except no overlays on the N64 or Mame show up. Any obvious things to look into?

Any easy way to add overlay files to the manager?

Thx

clintmo

@Rion Did you get around to completing this? The resolution of my monitor is 1366x768 and I have successfully changed the resolution in all .zip.cfg files except for the ones that don't contain this information.

Rion

@clintmo No sorry kind of forgot about it. But if you start up the game that don't have these settings and follow my post here you can manually do it yourself if you hook up your pi to a 1080p source or change the resolution of your monitor.

Maybe the bug is fixed in Windows now i don't know?

Graboid

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

I finished my set of 1024x768 bezels and cfg's a while back. Just as batch crop followed by a resize action. Wrote a little script to recalculate the viewport size & position.

I haven't tested them all, but I am willing to share them anyways, if there is an interest.

Hi @Zigurana I'm just looking into this now and use a 1024x768 screen, if you could share your files that would be great. Thank you!

Zigurana

@Graboid :
Hey, you can Graboid them here, or at least once it finishes uploading (~3hrs for 126MB, sigh).

Graboid

@Zigurana Thank you! These are great. I can't see the invaders.png included though. Could you send this across. As my bartop is invaders themed, this would complete it! :)

Graboid

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

@Graboid :
Hey, you can Graboid them here, or at least once it finishes uploading (~3hrs for 126MB, sigh).

I modified the ones below as they were too cropped. I added some detail back in, not original's but customised for myself. I plan to do some more also, especially for the vertical games.

Zigurana

@Graboid nice!
I'll try and find the space invaders one, when I get a chance.

UDb23

@Graboid Here's a Space Invaders overlay (+ other classics).
It's intended for 1080p and maximum playable area but it shouldn't be difficult to adapt to 1024.

Graboid

@UDb23 said in Using MAME Overlays/Bezels and shaders with RetroArch in RetroPie:

@Graboid Here's a Space Invaders overlay (+ other classics).
It's intended for 1080p and maximum playable area but it shouldn't be difficult to adapt to 1024.

Thank you! If you don't mind I'll try and convert your awesome creations to fit 4:3

UDb23

@Graboid Sure! Glad you find them useful.

Graboid

@Zigurana Do you have a copy of the 1943.zip.cfg file that resides in the ROMS folder? Mine doesn't fit properly, mainly the top and bottom are not fitting properly.

Graboid

@Zigurana Can you test this Donkey Kong overlay on your 4:3 screen, I want to make sure it's consistent across all 4:3 screen as I am creating my own 4:3 based on @UDb23 excellent work.

How it looks on my 4:3 screen
0_1487755610567_dkong photo.JPG

Overlay

space invader

Hi!

So I installed the rp-video-manager and the arcade overlays work well.

Only one question, I would like to apply that but without the scratches and reflections, so could it be posible to download the artwork in psd format or whatever where I could eliminate some layers and mantain the ones I want?

Many thanks for the hard work!

joelf

Hi @Floob

I have a 4:3 and want to have a few for vertical games.

Is there some way I can make the overlay to maintain proportions, center the image?

Maybe something to do with overlay0_rect ?

EDIT: yup, that was it.

This looks ok on my 1280x1024 monitor:

 overlay0_rect = "-0.22,0,1.44,1"

That is the positioning left, top, right, bottom. note that the padding on the right should be twice the positioning on the left to center the image. The unit is screen lengths or heights, "0,0,1,1" is default - the left side starts at the 0column of the screen, the top starts at the 0 row, and ends at the row that is 1 full screen length down, and 1 full screen right. If I placed "-1,0,2,1" I am telling the png to start at the column that is -1 screen to the left (1 full screen away) and the 2 is 1 screen length past the right side (the actual screen legnth is 1 plus 1 extra is 2).

This will be added to each of the CFG files found in \\RETROPIE\configs\all\retroarch\overlay\arcade-bezel-overlays

In the rom.zip.cfg, found in the roms folder, I am playing around with the height and width. so it looks ok. I found that

custom_viewport_width = "656"
custom_viewport_height = "875"

works well for this screen, when you are in a vertical game like 1943. Then to center the CRT monitor take the screen rez, subtract the width and height, then divide it by two.

I'm hoping there's a proportional/center toggle, so I don't have to do this.

joelf

I use my machine on two screens - a 16:9 and 4:5

I created 2 folders in /arcade-bezel-overlays /4by5 and /16by9 i added the game.cfg files in there and referenced ../game.png either as overlay0_rect = "-0.22,0,1.44,1" or overlay0_rect = "-0,0,1,1" to stretch the same 16:9 ong to fit one monitor or the other.

In the retroarch CFG I just add in the subfolder depending on the screen I am using, and adjust the placement of the center of the screen (I really wish there was a center token)

I then need a script the adjusts all the game.zip.cfg files to recenter them too. This is the guts of this script, but I'll have ti do a regex find and replace I think. https://pastebin.com/fnf4HCnS

phulshof

Has anyone created a script yet to convert MAME .lay files to RetroArch format? Is it even possible to do so?

I'm sitting on a ton of 16:9 MAME bezels (I converted practically every bezel I could find from RocketLauncher (Krakerman, Griffin518, Derek Moore, Ashurax, etc.) to MAME format), and I've been sharing the results via MEGA and EmuMovies, and I thought it might be interesting to have them converted for use in RetroArch as well.

UDb23

@phulshof I dont't think it's possible to do it automatically.
You have to rescale the actual game area for these bezels to adapt to specific retroarch core actual screen ratio and game area size. Also do you want to scale integer, maximum possible game area or full original bezel (small game area, like official mame bezels do) ?
And you need to create retroarch CFGs accordingly.
Automatically scaling or cropping mame bezels wouldn't do justice to those really nice original artwork.

In the end I choose to manually create the overlays/bezels for the games I like most and/or retropie forum users asked for.
See these posts.
Overlays Repository here.

phulshof

@UDb23

I have 1000+ 16:9 bezels here, so if it's in any way possible I'd like to script the conversion (image rescale if needed, and .lay to .cfg). 😀

There's not that much difference between the .lay and the .cfg parameters, is there? Can RetroArch support multiple overlays per game, and allow you to pick one?

phulshof

As an example, here's a bezel by Ashurax for Sexy Parodius. The .lay information that goes with it is
<element name="bezelA">
<image file="Bezel - 16x9 (Ashurax).png" />
</element>
<view name="Ashurax 16x9">
<screen index="0">
<bounds x="322" y="37" width="1277" height="1006" />
</screen>
<bezel element="bezelA">
<bounds x="0" y="0" width="1920" height="1080" />
</bezel>
</view>

As you can see, the bezel is defined as 1920x1080, with the viewarea defined starting at (322,37) with width 1277 and height 1006. What would such a definition look like in a cfg file for this bezel?
0_1498025832586_Bezel - 16x9 (Ashurax).png