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

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"

bboy486

I want to make sure I understand the lists. I have used Simple Arcade filter which allows me to exclude mature, clones etc. It does not look like that is built into this program but rather you have curated csv files based on different filters. Where I am not following is on the github you wrote: Filters - fine-control filters if you have started with a large set and applied many filters.

However, since there is not a filter option in the software, I want to make sure you mean to run a csv list after an existing list is used. Ex. if I use set-noclone-noconsole.csv run it and save it into a folder, then I want to run filter-nonworking.csv and save into the same folder, wouldn't it add to the folder I used for set-noclone-noconsole.csv? Or do I need to Copy Rom first, then run delete roms from the destination foldeR?

cosmo0

@bboy486 Hello

As I understand, you want a romset without mature/clones, and with only working games?

Start with a complete romset, let's say in c:\roms\complete
In Arcade Manager, go to "Manage Games List" > "Download a pre-built games list" > select your emulator (MAME 2003 or 2010) > download:
- set-noclone (or noclone-noconsole if you don't want NeoGeo)
- filter-nonworking
- filter-goodclones
Go back to "Manage games list" > "Remove games in a file that are listed in another"
"Main file" = set-noclone, "Secondary file" = filter-nonworking, "Target" = selection.csv. This creates a file without clones and without non-working games.
Go back to "Manage games list" > "Add games from a file to another"
"Main file" = selection.csv, "Secondary" = filter-goodclones, target = selection.csv (not sure if it can overwrite a source file, maybe you'll have to rename the target). This adds clones that work when the parent does not.

You can now check if the list looks like what you're expecting. You can fine-tune it: you may want to use the quality-xx lists to remove crappy games (quality 10 to 40), use controls-analog and controls-alternative to remove games unusable with a simple pad, etc.

Alternatively, you can go to http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame.php?lang=en , use "additional filters" to create a selection you like, then click on "export the results", select "CSV", then the version that matches your MAME version (in case the rom has changed name since).

Then copy your selection:

Go back to home then "Manage roms"
Copy listed roms > use set-noclone and use the selection.csv file to copy into another folder, like c:\roms\selection

I'll try to make a pre-built list that matches what you need. I guess many people want that, and I forgot to create it ^^'

Let me know if you have any more question :)

jdruding

Hi, I just recently started a rebuild of one of my Raspberry Pi/Retropies. I installed the overlays and I've noted that the game screen is off-center (shifted left) and overlaps with the bezel by 1 inch or so. Any thoughts on what could cause this? Raspberry Pi 3+ with Retropie 4.7.1.

cosmo0

@jdruding Can you tell me which game has this issue please, and are you using "realistic" or "artwork" overlays?

I have updated a LOT of the bezels recently (like several hundred), and I have noticed a few of them have issues, and there might be a bug during overlay installation, but I have trouble reproducing it.

jdruding

@cosmo0 I’m using the artwork ones. The ones I looked at were Pac-Man, Gyruss and Donkey Kong.

cosmo0

@jdruding hmm, being clipped isn't surprising, bug shifted to the left is weird. Could you provide me with a picture of the problem? Thanks!

jdruding

@cosmo0 Here you go. It actually looks like it might be all games. I tried a few others and they seemed to have the same issue.

cosmo0

@jdruding Thanks! What's your screen resolution? Is it a regular 1080p screen?

jdruding

@cosmo0 It is 720p. (in case you ask, I did select 720p resolution on install, I even did it over again just now to make sure I didn't misclick)

cosmo0

@jdruding Ok! There might be a bug with converting the values to another resolution, then. Can you output to 1080p (even just to try) or is it a 720p screen?

jdruding

@cosmo0 Unfortunately, it is a 720p TV.