Bezel Project! A custom bezel for every ROM!

[CoinJunkie]

Hello everyone,

 

The Bezel Project was created with the goal of making a custom bezel for every ROM with an easy install script for the raspberry pi.  It has been ported over for Odroid, and Mac and I would love some help getting it over to LaunchBox for more people to enjoy!  We’ve made thousands of them for multiple consoles and there has been a lot of demand to get them working on PC, but I need help.

 

Here is more information about us from our GitHub page if that helps.    Thank you and we appreciate it very much.

 

https://github.com/thebezelproject/BezelProject

[ninja2bceen]

eh can I use this somehow on pc on my mame cabinet? What do I download?

[ALIE]

What do you need help with ?

[scooter1974]

If it is graphic related, I could help out.

[CoinJunkie]

What we would like to see is our bezels be easily used on PC with Launchbox. With Retropie there is a simple script you run from command prompt and it installs the option in the Retropie menu to download and install all the individual bezels.  Right now we don't have a way for PC gamers to use them as easily, and that's where we're stuck.

And yes we also could really use help making them too Scooter!  Here's a link to our Facebook group where we make them 

https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=169088950389693&ref=content_filter

[CoinJunkie]

21 hours ago, ninja2bceen said:

eh can I use this somehow on pc on my mame cabinet? What do I download?

That's exactly what we're trying to figure out, how do we get these thousands of bezels easily into your games on PC.  Here is a link to download them if you want to check them out and mess around https://github.com/thebezelproject

[ninja2bceen]

Right on I’ll try downloaded these tonight. If I can get them downloaded I can get them on my system no problem if they are named half way decent

[Lordmonkus]

53 minutes ago, CoinJunkie said:

What we would like to see is our bezels be easily used on PC with Launchbox.

Right now there is no direct support for bezels within Launchbox, people either have to use them directly through the emulator like Mame or Retroarch or they have use outside software such as RocketLauncher. I did see a thread the other day about a plugin that is being developed by a user that could add support in but Jason has no plans at the moment to do this himself.

[scooter1974]

1 hour ago, CoinJunkie said:

What we would like to see is our bezels be easily used on PC with Launchbox. With Retropie there is a simple script you run from command prompt and it installs the option in the Retropie menu to download and install all the individual bezels.  Right now we don't have a way for PC gamers to use them as easily, and that's where we're stuck.

And yes we also could really use help making them too Scooter!  Here's a link to our Facebook group where we make them 

https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=169088950389693&ref=content_filter

Joined, awaiting approval  

[Ateb]

Just a little quick little video of random NES bezels (from the bezel project) in my BigBox setup as configured thru Retroarch.

I think they are great.

 

[MADMAN]

Ateb, can you explain what you did to make these work? Meaning, which files you downloaded, where you placed them for each game to pick the corresponding bezel automatically, what about the cfg files, and lastly regarding coordinates of the emulated screen.

Thanks in advance!

[dragon57]

Assuming you are downloading the bezel packs from their Github page, you will have to mass edit the cfg files for the games using something like Notepad++ so the paths are correct for your installation. The same goes for the platform cfg files, if you use them. I haven't had to adjust the coordinates.

[Ateb]

11 hours ago, MADMAN said:

Ateb, can you explain what you did to make these work? Meaning, which files you downloaded, where you placed them for each game to pick the corresponding bezel automatically, what about the cfg files, and lastly regarding coordinates of the emulated screen.

Thanks in advance!

I replied to your PM.

But dragon57 is correct.

I wrote a little program that "converted" all of the config files from the Bezel project to work in the windows version of RetroArch.

 

 

[MADMAN]

Awesome, thanks for the pointers guys.

Ateb, I PMd back. Could you share your converter proggie?

Appreciate it...

[qzizzleferreal]

I'd love to have the program as well if you wouldn't mind sharing. Thanks!

[CoinJunkie]

12 hours ago, Ateb said:

I replied to your PM.

But dragon57 is correct.

I wrote a little program that "converted" all of the config files from the Bezel project to work in the windows version of RetroArch.

 

 

Ateb if you have a solution to getting this to work that's why I made this thread and would love to see what you came up with so that we could get more people using them.  Can you fill me in?

[dragon57]

If you are looking at a purely scripted solution on Windows, I created this as a proof of concept. I still use the Notepad++ "Find in Files" solution when I make my edits because it is so much faster.

Here are the steps I use.
1. I download all the bezel files from Github I am interested in.
2. I extract them all.
3. I consolidate the directory structure from each extracted directory into one common hierarchy.
4. I drop the two scripts attached below into the new retroarch\config directory.
5. I double-click the Loop_Bezels.cmd file and wait.

After all the edits are complete, I move the contents of the new config and overlay directory contents to my existing retroarch structure. I only move/copy the directories. I don't move the platform cfg and png files found under overlay, except for FBA and MAME related files. This is a personal choice. Do what you want to do for your installation. Note: the new cfg files under the config directory MUST match your rom file names LaunchBox sends to retroarch, so you might need to run one of the popular file renaming utilities to make the cfg files match your rom sets.

Loop_Bezels.cmd

replace.vbs

Edited September 25, 2018 by dragon57

[voicesinthedark]

Please forgive me for the large amount of stupid that this question is, but couldn't @jasoncarr just add a bezels section to the GamesDB and do some sort of administrative bulk file add so that we can download the bezels along with all of the other game art, etc. even though they technically aren't supported by launchbox/bigbox and then people could use whatever program it is to load the bezels and point its file location to the bezels folder within the launchbox directories?

[Ateb]

I didn't realize there would be interest in how I did it.  I honestly thought this thread was more about the artwork and thought I'd share what it can look like in BigBox/LaunchBox.

It wasn't really meant for public consumption.  That being said, here is my console application and C# source - in all its glory.  ?

Not much to it.   I did take some time to clean it up a bit, but it's still rough around the edges.  (phrase for:  not much in error handling ?)

Very very similar to @dragon57 solution.  That one is better from a scripting perspective, indeed.

I can imagine that being ported to a PowerShell Script, which could be invoked manually or from a plugin to download and configure these bezels and configs automagically.

 

USAGE:  RABCC <path to overlay config folder> <path to core game config folder>

Example:

RABCC D:\Downloads\bezelproject-NES-master\bezelproject-NES-master\retroarch\overlay\GameBezels\NES\ D:\Downloads\bezelproject-NES-master\bezelproject-NES-master\retroarch\config\FCEUmm\

There is a sample batch file included in the archive, please read.

The converted files will be placed in a new folder called "Converted" under each source folder, something like this:

D:\Downloads\bezelproject-NES-master\bezelproject-NES-master\retroarch\overlay\GameBezels\NES\Converted\

D:\Downloads\bezelproject-NES-master\bezelproject-NES-master\retroarch\config\FCEUmm\Converted\

 

Any who, I take no responsibility for inadvertent usage or data loss.  In other words, use at your own risk.

 

Oh, and RABCC stands for RetroArchBezelConfigConverter.

And you will need .NET 4.5 or above to use.  Which you should have if you're using LaunchBox.

 

Have fun!

 

RABCC-v1-1.zip

Edited September 26, 2018 by Ateb
Updated attachment with a little fix for MAME cores.

[dragon57]

Very nice, @Ateb, thanks for the code and explanation.

Just fyi, I had planned on pulling parts of the original bezel update script from Github and creating my own version for my Windows machines. I had originally planned on keeping it to myself because I figured other official team members would eventually port it if demand was high enough. Also, since I have the Linux subsystem installed on all my Windows 10 machines or Cygwin on my Windows 7 machines, I thought about just porting direct RetroPie bash shell code to an equivalent bash script I could run on  Windows. What do the people here think would be best? A true console batch file that does not require Cygwin and/or the Linux subsystem on Win10, or a direct port of the bash script to a Windows Retroarch installation?