AdvanceMAME Bezels

Meneer Jansen

My Raspberry Pi 1B burned down so until today I did not have a Pi any more to test. Bought me a 2nd hand Pi 1B+ and my old SD card still works with it. It's been ages since I fiddled w/ Retropie and my SD card became corrupted a while ago so I copied its contents w/ the dd command (Linux) to a new one. However, this left me w/ a crippled Retropie installation. All my games stull run fine, but the setup script doesn't run anymore, etc. So I cannot check everything. I don't even know, or care for that matter, which version of Retropie I'm running.

Anyway, the links in this thread provide a link for bezels for AdvanceMame version 0.94, which is what I'm running. You, on the other hand, are using Advancemame version 3. That probably uses bezels/artwork in a different format. In my notes I found this about artwork and AdvMame:

For the old artwork that works w/ old Mame versions (i.e. Raspberry Pi, maybe Android etc.):
http://mrdo.mameworld.info/old_artwork.php
For new Mame versions:
http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_artwork_ingame.php?p=12#here

So you probably have to download your artwork from: http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_artwork_ingame.php?p=12#here

Good luck! :-)

caver01

@meneer-jansen No, advmame 3.x still uses romset .106 just like advmame 1.4. MAME development did not move to the new way of building artwork until just after .106. That means you need to use OLD artwork and your second link above is misdirection.

@illando I may have misled a little--I have not built an artwork from an existing. I have only modified existing for the games that they are intended. An example is one for Asteroids Deluxe. I unziped the artwork .zip file, adjusted the background brightness setting in the .art file, rezipped, and observed the results. It is much easier to see the vector line with the background turned down a notch.

My suggestion is to try this with an existing game. Get the artwork for Asteroids Deluxe as an example and make sure t works as-is. Then, try tweaking the settings a bit using the .art file and see if that works.

Have you had an existing artwork file function yet or have you only been looking at ones you are trying to build?

Alturis

@water-white I am also looking for some generic overlays for my console roms.

early 80s or late 70s tv set for atari2600
mid 80s tv set for nes
late 80s or early 90s tv set for snes
would also love to find gb, gbc, and gba overlays that fit well with the full framed emulation to the top and bottom of the screen. Not looking to make it look exactly like a game boy advance for example, just a hinted look that brings back the same feel.

caver01

@alturis Unless you are using AdvanceMESS (part of AdvanceMAME) to emulate these console systems (and I don't know why you would) any steps here will need to be ignored. I would expect you to be using a libretro core to emulate those consoles, so you might find more info about using retroarch bezels/overlays in another thread. The beauty of the libretro cores is that if you find threads discussing the configs for getting arcade games working with overlays in something like lr-mame2003, the technique is identical for console libretro emulators. Having said that, AdvanceMAME artwork won't help you at all, as this version of mame does things differently.

Alturis

@caver01 Yep I know what you mean. Sorry if I posted that in the wrong thread. When I said "looking for some generic overlays" i meant just the artwork. Not the specific setups for a particular emulator overlay system.

caver01

@alturis I figured. You are definitely picking up a lot of details quickly from all over the forum which is great.

UDb23

@alturis said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

gba overlays

Have you seen this thread ?

alt text

Alturis

@udb23 Yeah I saw those overlays in your github thank you! But I wanted to find ones that still allow the game to fill the frame of the display and not be so restrained in the middle like that.

Edit: I will probably just take those as a starting point and crop and clip to make them fit right for what I am looking for.

UDb23

@alturis On arcade games I too prefer "full height" game area; stretching GBA's version of G&W "Fire" (reason why I created these GBA overlays) would generate a very "blocky" image.
As you said, cropping that ovl could be a quick solution.

Alturis

@udb23 said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

@alturis On arcade games I too prefer "full height" game area; stretching GBA's version of G&W "Fire" (reason why I created these GBA overlays) would generate a very "blocky" image.
As you said, cropping that ovl could be a quick solution.

Yeah I can see what you mean there. With game boy roms full height could be just too pixelated for sure. I will have to look into how to actually get the emulator to squeeze it down and see how that feels.

Alturis

@alturis said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

I will have to look into how to actually get the emulator to squeeze it down and see how that feels.

And there is the answer!
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Smaller-RetroArch-Screen

illando

Hi @caver01

I used the original artwork file from form the website linked before with Asteroids Deluxe as you suggested.
As I can see.... artworks are enabled (correct retropie folder, correct artwork version) but AdvanceMame is showing only backdrop and not bezel. I tested also other games with the relative untouched artwork bot no bezel can be displayed.

Is there something I should check in the advancemame.rc file apart:
display_artwork_backdrop yes
display_artwork_bezel yes
dir_artwork /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame/artwork
?

caver01

@illando no, that should be enough. Do you possibly have another entry in the .rc file that overrides? For example, advmame will let you duplicate any setting with a rom prefix to override for that rom, or for a certain resolution, or for vector, or for vertical, etc.. A search for bezel will answer this quickly I suppose.

illando

@caver01
No other in the entry in the advancemame.rc file about " bezel" :-(
I tried also to update advancemame3 from binary and from source.
Nothing.

I don't know what to think.
Maybe in the next retropie release.

Meneer Jansen

I'm re-installing Retropie because my old SD card crashed. Copied all its contents to a new SD card but the damage was too great. I'd rather poke myself repeatedly in the eye than to redo all the settings... WHAT A PAIN! Retropie is a big mess if you ask me.

Anyway to get my bezels (read: artwork) back I had to set in "advmame-0.94.rc":

display_artwork_backdrop yes
display_artwork_bezel yes
display_artwork_crop no
display_artwork_overlay yes
display_aspectx 16
display_aspecty 9

Caveat: where does your advmame-0.94.rc file reside? It's in two (!!!!!) places:

/opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/
/home/pi/.advance/

That last dir is "hidden" in Linux (because it starts w/ a point). I changed the one in the home dir. Good luck. :-)

SunnyMo

is there any way to make bezel suits 1920 * 1080 fullscreen without blurry? i use advmame3.8 and made a 1080p MAME bezel png file and .art file, but after starting the game, i found the bezel is blurred just like it is downscaled first and then resale to fit the screen, it's totally blurry. i used the same png file in lr-mame2003, it works well. thanks. @UDb23

UDb23

@sunnymo Unfortunately advmame 3.8 has issues with displaing bezels correctly on the Pi.

SunnyMo

@udb23 thanks for the reply. what a pity, advmame 3 is the best emulator i can find to play Ninja Baseball Batman at better speed on pi3b+, hope advmame can be improved for this problem in the future.

Meneer Jansen

@udb23 said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

@sunnymo Unfortunately advmame 3.8 has issues with displaing bezels correctly on the Pi.

If I'm not mistaken then the newer versions of Mame use a different format for the artwork. So AdvMame 3.8 might not have issues, it might need differently formatted artwork.

mediamogul

@meneer-jansen said in AdvanceMAME Bezels:

it might need differently formatted artwork.

I believe it's just an issue with timing. Currently, the artwork is being scaled to the native resolution of the video, which is then upscaled for display. If it were scaled to the adjusted display resolution, it should look great.