Help..Emulation station game description fonts and Menu are huge on my 4:3 arcade monitor

ChristianG

Decided to build an arcade cabinet with my Pi3. Everything is going smoothly except for the fact that Emulation Station's menus are huge (looked good on my 16:9), and the game title fonts are too huge now and they overlap with the descriptions.

Everything else works well but Emulation Station seems not to be adjusting to the 4:3 vertical monitor. Everything is there but just too big.

Are these two separate issues or can they be corrected at once? I am running the TronkyFan theme if that matters.

TMNTturtlguy

@ChristianG try running the carbon theme. A lot of themes are not made for 4:3 ratios. Without knowing what other settings you have modified that is my first recommendation.

ChristianG

@TMNTturtlguy Thanks. This fixed the game title font sizes and they seem to look pretty good now.

The Emulation Station menu is still ginormous. So big the words get cut off like the words "video player settings" can only be seen as "video player sett"

Is this normal?

TMNTturtlguy

could you provide more information regarding your setup? See the forum rules/read me first. Please provide any information you can on modifications you may have made. Have you changed your resolution settings through the retropie menu? Have you edited your boot.cfg file?

ChristianG

Thanks for the input. Currently I am running HDMI out to a VGA converter cable to the VGA in of the arcade monitor. I am using the monitor vertically because I am more of a Pacman, Galaga type of gamer.

I modified the config file to allow this VGA converter to work and it did.

hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=16
hdmi_drive=2

Then I added a rotate comment so that the screen would work vertically. So far thats about all of the modifications I have made.

Like I mentioned everything works fine except for the Emulation Station menus being gigantic.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Chris

TMNTturtlguy

@ChristianG pretty sure your issue is the rotation, ES does not handle rotation well and the Themes are not made/supported for rotation. The roms should run fine, but the front end will have issues.

ChristianG

@TMNTturtlguy Makes sense. Its funny but I just assumed this would work. I have a Ms. Pacman sized cabinet and just figured i would go with the traditional old school game screen layout (upright). Not sure if I am the only one doing this with retropie. Just seems like the normal thing to do. Donkey Kong, 1942 etc play great with this screen layout and side scrolling games like Contra work pretty good, just a little smaller condensed screen. I was having a hard time finding others who do this.

I wanted to ask you if you have a write-up of how to install your Comic Book theme. Will it work on my setup? Very cool..

TMNTturtlguy

@ChristianG While it is possible to run retropie in the vertical orientation, Emulationstation is just not built to handle it well. That is why you will not see much information on this setup. To many drawbacks. I have an original Donkey Kong 3 cabinet and I put a 21" 4:3 LED monitor in it. It works really well. There is a way to have Bezel Overlays on your vertical games, search the forum and you will find a lot of "overlays".

I have a 4:3 version as well as the standard version of my theme and a splash screen as well. They will not run well on the vertical orientation either, but will work with a 4:3 or 16:9 setup. To install my theme go to the retropie menue, ES themes. scroll down to find the ComicBook theme near the bottom. Install. Reboot system. press start, go to UI Settings. Go down to theme and select the Comic Book Theme.

edmaul69

@TMNTturtlguy you shouldnt have to reboot. Themes are recognized the second they are put in the folder. I do this when manually dumping them on or editing my own theme.

ChristianG

How do you create a happy medium between classic arcade games which work better vertically and fighting games that work better on a screen layed out horizontally? Just put a big screen in your cabinet so the vertical games look bigger?

TMNTturtlguy

@ChristianG Yes! Put the largest screen in your cabinet that fits. If your cabinet has an old bezel in it, remove the bezel and buy or create a new one that will work with your new monitor. I recommend that you get a 4:3 monitor for the cabinet, it will give you the largest vertical size you can get for your vertical games and will give you a true full screen for all of the fighting games which native format is 4:3.

ChristianG

@TMNTturtlguy Thanks!! I just posted a help topic maybe you can help me on. You seem to know all there is to know on Retropie. Any help would be appreciated!!

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11107/deleted-tab-command-to-configure-mame-game-controllers-how-to-get-it-back-help

TMNTturtlguy

@ChristianG ha! That is far from true.....I just try to learn as much as possible. Take a look at some other threads were I am asking others for help with coding and scripts.

I will have a look at your other thread.