Neo Geo X Build

ruckage

@linuxarcadeguy said in Neo Geo X Build:

@tmntturtlguy i completely understand, also dont like how this forum works, am more familiar with a different forum setup and posting layout, more cleaner, as this is a bit of a chaotic format, but my post was directly attributed to this theme, am not sure where the theme wants the videos, and also cant get the scraped gamelist.xml to work with it...

Hi.

As @TMNTturtlguy said this isn't a theme issue, the theme has no control over that. It's most likely a gamelist issue - either it's pointing to an incorrect directory for the videos or it's possible there could be a duplicate gamelist.xml somewhere which is overriding the one you've created (I'm sure there is a separate gamelist directory, try checking there ).

The theme should work with video (it's actually the only view it supports) though I only use it with screenshots myself. You have to use the default video player though as the OMX player doesn't support the z-index - depending on your video resolution this may cause overheating/slowdown as it isn't hardware accelerated.

If you're still stuck regarding the gamelist and videos not showing then as @TMNTturtlguy said you may get more help if you open a topic in the help section as more people are likely to see it.

ruckage

@linuxarcadeguy
Actually I've just had a thought - aren't you trying to use this theme on a 4x3 display? If that's the case then it could be that the videos are being displayed behind everything else so you won't see them. This is simply because the theme is designed for a 16x9 display so you'll just have to wait until I make a 4x3 version. If however you can see the preview screenshots then something else is the cause.

smoothmalik

Can anyone point me to a topic on steps to add themes (marquees) manually, as I have encountered some issues as I stated above.

Stuart2773

@smoothmalik said in Neo Geo X Build:

Can anyone point me to a topic on steps to add themes (marquees) manually, as I have encountered some issues as I stated above.

check theses 2 posts above by @skj they should help you

(watch the video on how to scrape marquees)
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10806/neo-geo-x-build/203

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10806/neo-geo-x-build/208

put your neo geo roms in the neogeo folder
and the capcom roms in the fba folder

then just edit the:- es_systems.cfg as in the other link, and it scrapes perfectly.

ruckage

@smoothmalik said in Neo Geo X Build:

Can anyone point me to a topic on steps to add themes (marquees) manually, as I have encountered some issues as I stated above.

I don't think there is one, as I said earlier in thread you will need to scrape the images for your roms, including marquees and then replace the downloaded marquees with the ones I've provided.

@smoothmalik said in Neo Geo X Build:

@ruckage
A little help if possible...

2.I have capcom games also in the neogeo folder however Im only getting the neo geo option system selector option on the theme. How do I see the capcom screen?

If you have them all in the neogeo folder then only the neogeo system will show - you need to setup a capcom system and place the capcom games in there own folder.

An easier alternative for you may be to go into the neogeo theme folder - you will see a folder named capcom - rename this to fba. Then go to your roms folder and place your roms in the fba folder.

3.Also once i select the neo geo system the images on the next page of the theme to choose a game aren't displaying.

I don't know what you mean by this - what images aren't displayed? The previews?

FlyingTomahawk

@ruckage

Do you still have those 2 shaders that you showed in post 53?

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10806/neo-geo-x-build/53

If yes can you share them please?
Or what shader would you recommend to get that classic look?

ruckage

@flyingtomahawk

Would you like them with or without the borders?

FlyingTomahawk

@ruckage

~~Didn't make up my mind yet. Therefore, only if possible, I would like to have both versions, with and without the borders to compare.~~

With border is good.

Thanks.

Stuart2773

@ruckage

Ive found some marquees that are missing from you cps/neogeo build that are pretty much ready to go, all they need is the drop shadow adding.

ive uploaded them for you, should you wish to use them for your build.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/33vxrcfui9c22f2/marquees.ZIP

stuart.

ruckage

@stuart2773 said in Neo Geo X Build:

@ruckage

Ive found some marquees that are missing from you cps/neogeo build that are pretty much ready to go, all they need is the drop shadow adding.

ive uploaded them for you, should you wish to use them for your build.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/33vxrcfui9c22f2/marquees.ZIP

stuart.

Thanks

ruckage

@flyingtomahawk

Hi, sorry for the delay - I had to dig up the old files and redo the overlays as I couldn't find the completed ones.

The zip contains borders with an aperture grille + scanlines for the following systems:

Capcom
Neogeo
Mastersystem
Megadrive
PCengine
SNES

These are further broken down into different opacities so that you can pick how dark you want the scanline - eg. neogeo-25 has a scanline opacity of 25% , neogeo-75 has a scanline opacity of 75% - higher the number, the darker the scanline.

Also included are scanlines and scanlines+aperture grille without the borders. As they don't have borders you can just adjust the overlay opacity within retroarch to get the effect you like.

These are all designed to work at 1080p and in order for the scanlines to line up with each row of pixels you need to make sure that the image is being stretched to the full height of the screen (this is the default retroarch setting so unless you changed it yourself it should be okay).

*There may be problems with the pcengine overlays as the resolution on the pcengine is variable - it looked okay when I originally made it though I haven't tested this new version

0_1497706098682_neogeo overlay.jpg

0_1497706125369_capcom overlay.jpg

DOWNLOAD

skj

@ruckage

Where do these overlay shader files have to be placed?

FlyingTomahawk

@ruckage

Wow, that is more then I expected. Thanks a lot!

FlyingTomahawk

@skj

create a folder inside the overlay folder and name it whatever you like, just make sure you change the path in the sample below. For this example we use a folder named arcade-bezels.

You find the overlay folder here

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/overlay

Then create a cfg file for each game with the following contents and name it like the rom name. For example for Metal Slug the rom name is mslug.zip so name the cfg file mslug.zip.cfg and place that inside the same place where the rom zip file is.
Change capcom-50.cfg to whatever you need.

input_overlay = /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/overlays/arcade-bezels/capcom-50.cfg
input_overlay_enable = true
input_overlay_opacity = 0.900000
input_overlay_scale = 1.000000

skj

@flyingtomahawk

Thank you for the help 😀

FlyingTomahawk

@ruckage

Just a quick feedback.
So I got finally everything setup including overlays.
I normaly use the 50% overlays for horizontal games but I needed an overlay with vertical lines for shoot em ups so I just took the 25 and 50 overlays and edited them in Photoshop so that the lines show vertical. A bit of layer copy, rotate and paste kinda thing.
Created capcom-25-vertical, capcom-50-vertical, neogeo-25-vertical and neogeo-50-vertical.
Not sure if that is the right way to do it but it does work great thus far.

I also needed another system theme for fba as generic arcade for games that are not capcom or neogeo and here is the result.

alt text

Need to still work on some details like the selector font color.

Not sure if you had troubles with this theme but sometimes it seems to have a bit of a struggle to load the system page when I return from a game.
I had similar issues with my Futura theme due to too large sized pictures.
I took the 2 system background images, neogeo and capcom and ran them through the tinypng[dot]com site and the result is great.
Both images were reduced by 70-80% without any loss in quality which makes browsing through the theme now lot smoother and quick without bugs.

TMNTturtlguy

@flyingtomahawk I see one major flaw.....Turtles Arcade deserves 5 stars!

FlyingTomahawk

@tmntturtlguy said in Neo Geo X Build:

@flyingtomahawk I see one major flaw.....Turtles Arcade deserves 5 stars!

lol, totally agree.
Need to edit the gamelist file asap! ;-)

ruckage

@flyingtomahawk said in Neo Geo X Build:

@ruckage

Just a quick feedback.
So I got finally everything setup including overlays.
I normaly use the 50% overlays for horizontal games but I needed an overlay with vertical lines for shoot em ups so I just took the 25 and 50 overlays and edited them in Photoshop so that the lines show vertical. A bit of layer copy, rotate and paste kinda thing.
Created capcom-25-vertical, capcom-50-vertical, neogeo-25-vertical and neogeo-50-vertical.
Not sure if that is the right way to do it but it does work great thus far.

For scanlines to look correct you need to make sure that you have 1 scanline per row of pixels (column for vertical arcade games) so simply rotating the image won't look correct. Unfortunately as you lose a lot of resolution when rotating the screen it's difficult to get good looking scanlines for vertical games. The other problem is you'll find that there are several different resolutions that are used and so you need a different overlay for each.

I also needed another system theme for fba as generic arcade for games that are not capcom or neogeo and here is the result.

Need to still work on some details like the selector font color.

Looks good, I want to make at least one more system for this as a general arcade system, still deciding on a style for it though :). I may also add a default system to make it easy to expand - probably in the neogeo stripe style but made so it can be coloured however you like.

Not sure if you had troubles with this theme but sometimes it seems to have a bit of a struggle to load the system page when I return from a game.
I had similar issues with my Futura theme due to too large sized pictures.
I took the 2 system background images, neogeo and capcom and ran them through the tinypng[dot]com site and the result is great.
Both images were reduced by 70-80% without any loss in quality which makes browsing through the theme now lot smoother and quick without bugs.

Yeah, I have noticed retropie occasionally struggling with this when exiting games and my first thought was the file size of the images. I actually tried PNG compression before releasing this and it didn't seem to improve anything though so I don't think file size is the main issue. Also compression does adversely affect image quality, not too bad for the neogeo images but it is quite noticeable on the capcom theme (to me anyway) due to the smooth gradients - this is because the compression works by converting to an indexed image of only 256 colour but preserves a full alpha channel.
It's possible the lag is has more to do with the resolution so reducing the images to 720p may work better but obviously at the cost image sharpness.

Stuart2773

Here's something i threw together for my self, using the "cannonball emulator"

alt text