Using MAME Overlays/Bezels and shaders with RetroArch in RetroPie

[Floob]

Just had a quick scan through the latest posts here, and yes as pjft has said the integer_scaling will apply a multiple to the resolution you have, and is why is clashing with the overlay. The video output area and the overlay are wholly independent of each other, its up to you to size as appropriate for the overlay you use (if any).

@pjft Pretty sure you cant set an overlay to be outside the viewable area.

Some interesting chat about it here as well:
https://forum.recalbox.com/topic/3494/overlays/41

It would be interesting to work on a project that comprehensively manages all of these custom settings, a bit like the video manager tool but that is much more flexible.

[Manguan]

How can I crop 1920x1080 MAME overlays to 1680x1050 maintaining the original proportions of the image with Retroarch? Sorry for my english and thanks in advance.

[pjft]

@Manguan

Off the top of my head, in principle you would remove 15px on top and bottom, and then 120px left and 120px right.

Would double check in action to make sure things fit - it might be the case that for some resolutions the Integer Scale causes it to be one integer less than in 1080p, and so the screen will actually be smaller than expected. In particular, if the integer scale multiplication of the vertical dimension resulted in a value between 1050px and 1080px, that won't work as intended. But I hope that would not be the case, as it's such a tiny difference. :)

Let us know how it goes.

[Manguan]

@pjft Of course... :-) What I ask is if it is possible to do that in Retroarch (like the crop in-game menu video options in MAME) or I have to edit image in Photoshop. I have donwloaded John Merrit overlays pack and find out the game does not match in overlay window. Sorry but I am new in Retro arch. Thank you.

[pjft]

@Manguan

Ah, got it.

Unsure about how to do exactly that in Retroarch.

What you may try is what I recommended earlier on scaling the overlay accordingly. I honestly don't know how it's currently working on your resolution (I'm assuming it doesn't take up the entire screen real estate, but rather has scaled proportionally to its original size, restricted by your screen's resolution).

Open the Retroarch menu, > Settings/Options > Display Overlays

Then turn on/off the option that shows/hides the overlay in the menu so that you can see it.

Then change the scaling factor (which is currently at 1.00x I imagine) until it stretches to fit your game area as intended.

I don't recall the exact option names, but hopefully this helps.

[Manguan]

Not exactly. This is my problem...

[pjft]

@Manguan

That's... weird. When the overlay is not showing, is the game screen not centered?

I suspect that may be because of you using the current config files which are configured to screen resolutions of 1080p. It seems there's an offset to the play area that would be the right one for those screens.

You may need to open the config file and figure out what the right numbers would be for that, and multiply by that formula for the X and Y coordinates - and then maybe apply some scaling.

For now, if you want to test it out manually in concept, turn on the overlay in the menu, and then go to Settings/Options > Video

There should be something with Viewport X and Y. Note down those two values.
Then Reduce X until it looks fine - the viewport (play area) should start to move to the left. Take note of the new number when it looks fine (to compare with the original one, and see what a formula might be to convert between the resolutions).

See if it needs to be tweaked on the Y axis as well. Do the same - take note.

See if the overlay is hiding any of the play area, and if so, now go scale it. Take note of the new number.

In this particular case, I suspect the viewport X needs to be subtracted by either 120 or 240, and Y by 15 or 30 (depends on how it actually works).

You may try to adapt the previous script shared by Rion with that formula - instead of multiplying, subtracting - to batch fix that.

You may need to add the line to scale the overlay, if needed. I don't recall the exact parameter, but you may be able to get it from one of the original retroarch.cfg files.

Have a great weekend!

[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

Overlay