Reevesad Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Hi All, So having stumbled recently into Mame Bezel artwork I thought mmm....this looks much better than having those annoying black overscan borders on every game. So after surfing the net I found that theres quite a lot available but then so many titles are missing, some are oversized, some are undersized, some are bad, some are excellent, but most of all they are not the correct format for using direct with Mame as no "Lay" file. Now I know that some people use retroarch/Rocketlauncher, and can setup the bezel artwork really well on it without the need of a "Lay" file. But hey I set my Launchbox/Bigbox up to play direct through Mame and don't want to change anything now as I like the setup (apart from the obvious.... borders lol). So after watching numerous youtube videos I finally got the bug after watching a great tutorial video on Bezel artwork from Derek Moore (using the free art package GIMP). I like the way his bezel templates have been formated, in line with the 4:3 Horizontal and 3:4 vertical aspects of arcade games and I especially like the Original Glass CRT screen look which had a nice reflection/scratched look about it. Off and on over the last couple of weeks I've been alphabetically going through my mame games list of roughly just over 1900 and using existing bezel artwork, artwork on the net, box art ect ect to make my own bezel art for each and every game on my list in the format that I like and which can be dumped directly into the Mame artwork folder. I've just finished A-C (including numeric games) roughly about 380 bezels. Now some games have hardly any artwork to use or the artwork available is just naff, so I came up with some standard looking bezels (see attached examples H&V), I did using someone elses bezel idea but I just tweaked it a little and I made a few rather than just the same one. My artwork like Derek Moore' has just artwork at the sides rather than top and bottom as this would have taken an age to do for each title. I've saved original bezels that I obtained from the net along with the two versions that I created (Clear Glass and Real Glass effect) in individual folder names (mame rom list) with a standard "Lay" file. so it will be a case of dropping them into the Mame artwork folder and just tweaking the horizontal and vertical tabs in mame to fit perfectly within the window. Anyway after all that waffle my question is, does this interest anyone at all? Just thinking once I'm all finished I may upload these to emumovies or somewhere so people can take them, use them or even add their own ideas to them. Regards, Adam 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spycat Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I also use bezels in MAME and I like the ones with side art, no top or bottom art and a tv style frame. I don't use the cab style myself, although these are nice, especially the upright screen one where it looks like others are gaming either side of you. So far I've had no problem finding ones for most of my 100 or so arcade games. The images usually come with cfg files but using them with a lay is no problem. A big problem I have is finding game bezels for the software systems side of MAME and I usually have to put together my own. Sometimes the arcade one can be used, but othertimes not, as some arcade games that were 3:4 would have been ported to the consoles as 4:3 making the arcade bezel useless. Also, some games were console only releases. But I plod on as I like having different bezels for different games in a software system just like with the arcade side. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 Hi Spycat, same here, I've just created 6 Horizontal and 6 Vertical Cab Styles like the pics above just for games in Mame where theres no real artwork readily available on the internet due to the age of these games. I rather use these instead of having a blank screen either side. These ones seem to work perfectly with Mame 4:3 and 3:4 ratio games with just a tiny adjustment within mame. I've made a few of my own ones so far and tweaked others that have been posted up to go with my bezel. I'm making 2 bezels for each game a clear glass and a real glass look with a nice reflection. here's one I made earlier for Bubble bobble Lost cave. only took about 5 minutes to do but really can't spend too much time on each one as it will take way to long. when you mention software system side of mame do you mean like the Neo Geo games? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JRPGod Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 I think plenty of people would be interested! No need to place them on emumovies as far as I see it though, submit them here and contribute to the awesome repository of overlays and bezels we're starting to pull together here at Launchbox. ^^ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 MAME previously had a sister project called MESS that supported consoles old computers and even simple things like old calculators at one point they rolled both projects together so by software side he is talking about consoles that MAME supports ranging from Colecovision up to Sony Playstation. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bleu_Skie Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 Looks cool. I use an ultrawide, so I imagine it wouldn't work right for me, but neat. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 7 hours ago, JRPGod said: I think plenty of people would be interested! No need to place them on emumovies as far as I see it though, submit them here and contribute to the awesome repository of overlays and bezels we're starting to pull together here at Launchbox. ^^ JRPGod, okay will probably try to upload a set later on this evening as a test. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 how easy is it to upload files to Launchbox? each folder is named the same as the rom title. and usually contains 3 .png files (original artwork from internet and then 2 from me real clear glass and real glass) plus a lay file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro808 Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 About as easy as it could get. Just head to the downloads section and choose "submit a file". The first window will have you select the location to upload. Under platform media there is a bezels/overlays section. Next screen will allow you to drag and drop your file. You can upload a full zipped file or individual files. Then the remaining fields will then show up. You can add screenshots that will display in the forum upload as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 I was just sent a Mega download Link from a person at Emumovies. which is not readily available unless your aware of an FTP site. It has about 1600 folders with multiple bezel artwork for each one. The only thing is they all seem to be just clear screens, no glass effect. have asked how easy it would be to add this effect to them or woulld it be a case of cutting and pasting as I've been mostly doing. These other bezels may not be set up for a 16:9 ratio tv screen. (I maybe talking waffle cos tbh I'm a complete noob to all this) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orionsangel Posted June 29, 2018 Share Posted June 29, 2018 You're welcome for the side cabinets ? 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted June 29, 2018 Author Share Posted June 29, 2018 Hi Orionsangel, I hope you don't mind me using your side cabinets. but they were spot on to be used as bezels for games with no artwork available. Apologies for not asking permission in the first place. Regards, Adam 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orionsangel Posted July 1, 2018 Share Posted July 1, 2018 I don't mind. I was just being silly, but on a serious note I do think we should all credit the original source of the work we use. Especially if we know who the originator is. It's only fair. Btw nice work! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted July 2, 2018 Author Share Posted July 2, 2018 Fair enough. Personally, If someone was to take the bezels I created and changed them and uploaded to the community of launchbox, emumovies ect without crediting me, It wouldn't bother me at all. If I didn't want others to use them then I would never have uploaded them. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItchyRobot Posted July 11, 2018 Share Posted July 11, 2018 (edited) Hey @Reevesad I like your approach better than Orions. Not to belittle his work, truely amazing and great. But I like a bigger playing field. Unfortunately I have to start all over now that I found yours =( I just finished setting all his stuff up and tweaked/stretched to fit my TV. It took a lot of work since a decent amount of it was not sized correctly, or at least for my 1080p TV. I also noticed that a lot of his bezels did not function correctly, creating a weird diagonal line with blurry pixels through the screen. This limited the amount of usable views he has that worked correctly. It sounds like a recent MAME bug since it only started happening on 198. He said he has same issue, but it work fine with older builds. Do you have this problem with your bezels in 198 MAME, or newer builds? Also, question about cfg files. From what I understand, all the X/Y screen stretch parameters are stores in the romname.cfg files. This is also where the game/machine control settings are stored for each game that I have tweaked. Unless I understand how MAME works, this kind of puts me in a dilemma. When I start bringing in your bezels, I will need to keep my old cfg files so that my controls work correctly ... i really dont want to go through that again. But that means I will have to re-stretch and position my screen setting to match your bezels. Do you know any tricks to make this easier? If not, I guess I will have to just reconfigure my screen stretch/position settings once I replace Orions artwork with yours. Edited July 11, 2018 by ItchyRobot 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted July 11, 2018 Share Posted July 11, 2018 If you use NotePad++ you can download the compare plugin and probably compare the two and copy and paste in what you need for the controllers to the one with his bezels or vice versa. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted July 12, 2018 Author Share Posted July 12, 2018 Hi ItchyRobot, Thanks for the positive response. I think it's amazing what all the emulation community have created so far, and to share their work for everyone to create amazing frontend/emulation systems for themselves. I to will be eventually be using a 16:9 tv so found that the bezels available covered too much of the playfield, that's why I started converting them and then ended up making my own ones as loads were missing. To be honest I'm not that great when it comes to the Tekky side of emulation. I only got into emulation about a year or so ago and only by way of watching youtube tutorials. gave up for a year after failing miserably with Hyperspin, then came across Launchbox which is brilliant for the non tech person. Amazing work by these guys. I think I'm using Mame .194 but my rom set is from a Final Burn Alpha download plus some roms downloaded from emuparadise. I say I think I'm using version .194, as I made a fatal error the other week. After I finished all these bezels I uploaded them into mame had all of them setup apart from the dual screen bezels (still trying to figure out how the lay file works for these) and then sorted all my 3d Box artworks so it all looked good in Launchbox/bigbox. Was just waiting for a price to get my SSD and HDD backed up and sods law, my HDD died on me. My local pc guy was unable to get any data from it and have had quotes from people to extract the data is going to cost 275 pounds that's without the cost of a new 3 tb hard drive. So I'm starting it all again from scratch. luckily I have most of my roms on a back up disk and all my artwork on another PC. Gutted though cos I'd just finished setting up Future Pinball to launch via launchbox. Getting back to Mame. I just dropped all the bezels into mames artwork folder, launched each game from launchbox and just changed the Horizontal/vertical layout to .966 for each games (this works for most games, with a few tweaks here and there). I really don't know if there is a quicker way to do it. regards, Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItchyRobot Posted July 12, 2018 Share Posted July 12, 2018 (edited) Man, that sounds like a nightmare. Sorry to hear that. I too am not that techy, and am wading through the MAME setup myself. I think it will be worth it in the end though. That way I will know how everything works and ties together so I can fix stuff myself later on. Have you seen Derek Moore's YouTube channel? He does a bunch of MAME bezel tutorials, and has a very good eye for clean, quality work. He doesn't have a ton of bezels, but the ones he does are spot on and really a great example of quality work for other to aspire too. He has a couple templates that you can download and use to create your own. I think I will eventually create my own using his templates once I get a free laptop from work; I am currently using an old laptop that barely gets me by... actually very aggravating to use, but I dont have a choice right now. Its good enough for building my MAME collection and loading up my hard drives. Here is Derek Moores YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/oldstarscream Here is his bezel art collection, along with blank templates: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_kYDaRET47FaG9hS1Rjdnh4clk Here are his tutorials on making bezels: Edited July 12, 2018 by ItchyRobot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reevesad Posted July 12, 2018 Author Share Posted July 12, 2018 (edited) His video got me into making the bezels to begin with. i used his templates to create mine and for all the ones I found on the internet to re configure to fit. As they were all set up for 16:9 ratio tv. Great tutorials and to begin with mine were quite basic and then got slightly better the more I did them. and not forgetting the great free artwork package called Gimp which is so easy to use. Edited July 12, 2018 by Reevesad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItchyRobot Posted July 12, 2018 Share Posted July 12, 2018 (edited) Awesome. Good to hear you are working by his example. The only thing I do not like about some of Derek's recent bezels are the animated controls. While neat, I find them pretty distracting; and make some of my game choppy on my old ass laptop (more my fault for using such a piece of crap machine). Do you know how to strip out the animated controls out of his bezels and leave the main artwork? Do I just delete the extra small control over images, or do I also need to amend the LAY file? Also, you don't happen to have a single file I can download of your set do you? I accidentally deleted them the other night and have to re-download =( Edited July 12, 2018 by ItchyRobot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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