Vectrex Overlay Artwork

caver01

@mediamogul said in Vectrex Overlay Artwork:

Well, these turned out alright. It's much more appealing to play these games with the intended overlays. I had forgotten how fun 'Armor Attack' is. It's even a step up from the Atari 2600 'Combat' in a few areas.

I like what you are doing here with the overlays, but poor Armor Attack has jaggies on the vector lines. Have you tried the Arcade version in AdvanceMAME? It looks fantastic. Vector really needs to run at the native resolution of your display. The rectilinear shapes look fine (square corners) but anything diagonal is going to benefit from high-res.

EDIT: Maybe there's a way to specify the resolution of the emulation?

mediamogul

@caver01

The arcade version is most certainly superior. Playing the Vectrex version of any arcade title to me is more about the novelty of the experience, in much the same way that I have a lot of fun playing some of the technically inferior raster graphic arcade ports on something like ColecoVision. I've made good use of the vector emulation techniques from your excellent thread and the results are truly spectacular. One of these days, maybe Vecx will recieve a little more development love and a more authentic look can be applied there as well.

caver01

@mediamogul Yeah, I hear ya. That makes sense. I was always fascinated by the whole plastic overlay thing, so I guess this feeds a lot of that curiosity! It definitely has me inspired to mess with overlays. I'd like to try some things with the curvature effect to simulate a bezel. I am not going all out with a fake TV set or anything, just some proper gradients to look like there is a bezel in the corners.

mediamogul

@caver01

I think that would look great.

celly

@mediamogul I can't seem to get these to work. Placed your files in the vectrex folder in the roms folder, I made sure all the .cfg files where named to my rom names, nothing. It's probably just some Monday detail I'm missing...

mediamogul

@celly Could you have possibly left off the one of the extensions? If your rom is name named 'spinball.vec', the config file would then be 'spinball.vec.cfg'.

celly

@mediamogul Yup! That was it. Wow, I knew it was going to be something stupid like that. Thank you for the help!

mediamogul

@celly No problem.

d8thstar

I'll have to give this a try.

Curious if anyone has gotten vectrex overlays to display in mess (which I prefer over vectrex).

Thanks!

Rion

@d8thstar said in Vectrex Overlay Artwork:

I'll have to give this a try.

Curious if anyone has gotten vectrex overlays to display in mess (which I prefer over vectrex).

Thanks!

I like to know this to.

@mediamogul Any insight into this?

mediamogul

@Rion

I can't say for sure, but they should likely display in 'lr-mess' without any trouble.

Rion

@mediamogul

I made a request to John Merrit and my wishes came true

Libretro Arcade Overlays post 163

mediamogul

@Rion

Very nice! Those look fantastic.

d8thstar

Yes they look great but how to implement? Can anyone write up a step be step to get them running in mess?

Rion

@d8thstar said in Vectrex Overlay Artwork:

Yes they look great but how to implement? Can anyone write up a step be step to get them running in mess?

If you are referring to the ones on Libretro then they are not done yet.

If you mean the ones posted by @mediamogul then just read the thread and the explanation is here :)

mediamogul

@d8thstar

Out of curiosity, what are the benefits to emulating the Vectrex in 'lr-mess' rather than 'lr-vecx'?

d8thstar

@mediamogul

I don't think there are any. I was hoping that vec overlays would be easier to implement under mess, the way they are on the pc.

From what I've read on overlays with vecx, each game needs its own config file and to be honest, I don't think I'm that smart :)

mediamogul

@d8thstar

If you want to use the pre-made files I posted above, it's pretty easy. All you have to do is:

Unzip the file
Put all the resulting config files and 'overlays' folder in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/vectrex/.
Rename the config files to match your rom names. For example, if your the rom is named 'scramble.zip', your config file would be named 'scramble.zip.cfg'.

d8thstar

Wow thanks! Been a while and I've forgotten how to switch the emu back to vecx. That said, your overlays work just fine under mess, nothing special done, just dropped everything into the rom folder as instructed.

I did have one question, the hyperchase overlay doesn't look to be opaque at all, nine of the game graphics come up. I also duplicated all files to make a dark tower overlay but the same thing, no opaqueness. Wondering what setting / cfg file needs to be edited to make these opaque.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!

mediamogul

@d8thstar

The opacity setting for 'Hyperchase' is located in the .cfg at /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/vectrex/ and should look like the following to match the others:

input_overlay = /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/vectrex/overlays/hyperchase.cfg
input_overlay_enable = true
input_overlay_opacity = 0.375000
input_overlay_scale = 1.000000

custom_viewport_width = "846"
custom_viewport_height = "1080"
custom_viewport_x = "0"
custom_viewport_y = "0"

aspect_ratio_index = "22"

video_scale_integer = true

To duplicate one of the existing overlays for 'Dark Tower', you'll need to obtain the image file and resize it to 1920x1080. Next, name it 'darktower.png' and place it in the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/vectrex/overlays folder. While you're in the 'overlays' folder, duplicate one of the other .cfg files, name it 'darktower.cfg' and edit it to the following:

overlays = 1

overlay0_overlay = darktower.png

overlay0_full_screen = false

overlay0_descs = 0

Now, duplicate one of the existing .cfg files in the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/vectrex/ folder and rename it to match the name of your rom file. Finally, edit the .cfg to the following:

input_overlay = /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/vectrex/overlays/darktower.cfg
input_overlay_enable = true
input_overlay_opacity = 0.375000
input_overlay_scale = 1.000000

custom_viewport_width = "846"
custom_viewport_height = "1080"
custom_viewport_x = "0"
custom_viewport_y = "0"

aspect_ratio_index = "22"

video_scale_integer = true

Edit: As you are using these for 'lr-mess', you'll likely need to change all the relevant paths accordingly. I can't really advise further than that, as I am not familiar with those variables. Seeing as how you've said there's no benefit to running these games in 'lr-mess', you can always change back to the default and make things easier.