When enabling bezels in LaunchBox and Mame standalone, the image changes to dots/grainy image on the screen, need help to remove the dots

[Arty80]

Hi there, I hope you're all well.

I have an issue when I enable bezels in Mame. I downloaded the bezels through LaunchBox and since worked out that you need to turn bezels on in Mame for them to work. However, when I turn the bezels on, it changes my image and has dots/a grainy look running throughout the image. I have enclosed two pictures, one without bezels enabled and no dots/grainy image and how I would like my image to look with bezels on, and one with bezels enabled and dots/grainy image running throughout the image. Any help would be appreciated to get rid of these dots/grainy image. I checked the mame.ini file but couldn't see anything obvious in there that may have turned on somehow. 

EDIT: It looks like the bezels add their own shader to the existing image

Thank you very much

Edited May 29, 2023 by Arty80

[Headrush69]

Maybe it's my bad eyes but I can't see the dots/grainy you are referring to. Could you circle an area where it happens. It's also hard when the images aren't the exact same. Maybe pause the game and use a screenshot at the same time.

Is it possible just the dithering in the game appears more pronounced when the non-dithered bezels are around the game play screen?

[Arty80]

40 minutes ago, Headrush69 said:

Maybe it's my bad eyes but I can't see the dots/grainy you are referring to. Could you circle an area where it happens. It's also hard when the images aren't the exact same. Maybe pause the game and use a screenshot at the same time.

Is it possible just the dithering in the game appears more pronounced when the non-dithered bezels are around the game play screen?

Hi. Thank you for your reply. The grainy I am referring to is throughout the entire image. If you're on a desktop you can certainly see the difference. It also darkens the image as well. Not sure why it does that and still trying to work out why it does it. 

[neil9000]

I have to say that i cant see any difference either, and i am on a desktop, and on a 55inch OLED to boot. It is a little darker, so i guess there could me something over the "TV" part of the image that isnt 100% transparent, but your images are so similar it really is difficult to spot any differences at all. And yeah as Headrush69 said there is dithering in the image, but thats intentional from the game artists and it will very per sprite as its "drawn" into the sprite itself usually.

[JoeViking245]

It looks like maybe an applied filter or the bezel has an innate filter over its transparent area.  Looks like a vertical running-bond (like a sideways brick wall) pattern.  

But that's more than I know about using filters.  If "filter" is even the correct word here.

[spycat]

@Arty80

I use the same bezel image as you for the Alien Vs Predator game and can't see any difference whether the bezel is active or disabled in MAME.
Have you checked your lay file to see if it's enabling another image as well as the game's bezel png?
 

[Arty80]

12 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

It looks like maybe an applied filter or the bezel has an innate filter over its transparent area.  Looks like a vertical running-bond (like a sideways brick wall) pattern.  

But that's more than I know about using filters.  If "filter" is even the correct word here.

Thank you Joe, I am glad you noticed it. It's awful lol.  Would dearly love to use Bezels but not happy to have my image changed into a darker, brick wall overlay. I am not sure how to fix it at this stage :( 

[Arty80]

7 hours ago, spycat said:

@Arty80

I use the same bezel image as you for the Alien Vs Predator game and can't see any difference whether the bezel is active or disabled in MAME.
Have you checked your lay file to see if it's enabling another image as well as the game's bezel png?
 

Hi Spycat. Apologies but I am still new to this and emulation, what is the 'lay' file exactly? I went over the mame.ini file where I have made all my changes and I could not see any changes to settings there. Ask soon as I remove the directory path for the artwork directory, everything goes back to normal. It's really got me stumped. The other thing I did was restore my original mame.ini file and tried using bezels and it did the exact same thing.  

[Retro808]

5 hours ago, Arty80 said:

Hi Spycat. Apologies but I am still new to this and emulation, what is the 'lay' file exactly? I went over the mame.ini file where I have made all my changes and I could not see any changes to settings there. Ask soon as I remove the directory path for the artwork directory, everything goes back to normal. It's really got me stumped. The other thing I did was restore my original mame.ini file and tried using bezels and it did the exact same thing.  

In your \Mame\Artwork folder is the bezel/overlay media for each game. It contains the png files and the lay file. The lay file will tell Mame what images (png) to use. You can right click and edit it with Notepad or NotePad++ to see what it is using.