Bezels with mame question

[danwelsh]

Hi guys.....I'm wanting to use bezels with mame, not through rl but through mame, I have a 1680x1050 monitor.....I had used metalzoics bezel pack with rl but I noticed it stretches the bezel and just doesn't look correct.....will I have to redo all the bezels with the correct resolution to work with mame? Will they even work if I do that and turn them on in mame, I know I also would have to do a lay file for each one......I'm using mameuifx 172. Any help would be appreciated.

[bleasby]

If you want to use mame bezels, you need to learn how to create layout files. 

This is a good starting point to understand them: http://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/LAY_File_Basics_-_Part_I

 

About RL bezels, RL never stretches a bezel image made for MAME. I specially designed it to never do that.

The way bezel works on RL is:

1) It stretches the background image to fill your monitor area behind the bezel.

2) it scales your bezel image keeping the aspect ratio to show as big as possible in your monitor.

 

Therefore, only the background image is stretched.

If this happens for what you assume that should be the bezel image, it means that unfortunately the bezel wasn't made following the developer recommendations. 

[Metalzoic]

I had used metalzoics bezel pack with rl but I noticed it stretches the bezel and just doesn't look correct.....

The backgrounds and bezels in my pack are sized correctly for any 16:9 monitor to display the art in the correct aspect ratio and the game in the correct ratio (4:3 or 3:4)

If your monitor isn't standard 16:9 then like Bleasby said it is probably stretching the background to fit your screen, whatever ratio your screen is.

Even if you ran them through MAME they wouldn't be designed for an off ratio, so I'm guessing they would still stretch in the same way. However I never run bezels directlythrough MAME so can't say for sure.

My pack is structured to make changes and find image types easily though. For example all backgrounds are called "Background - CreatorsNameHere Hzt" for horizontal games & "Background - CreatorsNameHere Vrt" for vertical. So it is simple to pull them all up in a windows folder search, then you could possibly drop them into a conversion program like Fotosizer (found here in Downloads) to mass-change them to a different aspect.

[danwelsh]

Okay awesome thanks guys......I'll use that program and change them. My monitor is 16:10.......that or I'm going to have to use a program to force my monitor to the correct 16:9 ratio.

[Metalzoic]

Yeah, if your monitor is 16: that would explain it. Why a 16:10?

Get fotozizer. Windows search for "Background" in the bezel folder and it should find all 2200 background images (or however many I have now), but leave all the bezel images.

Fotosizer has a drag-files-to-change-here feature so maybe you can select-all of them from the search window and drag them to the fotosizer window...

Not sure how weird the results might turn out though. Good luck.

[danwelsh]

Yeah, if your monitor is 16: that would explain it. Why a 16:10?Get fotozizer. Windows search for "Background" in the bezel folder and it should find all 2200 background images (or however many I have now), but leave all the bezel images.Fotosizer has a drag-files-to-change-here feature so maybe you can select-all of them from the search window and drag them to the fotosizer window...Not sure how weird the results might turn out though. Good luck.

It's a 16:10 because I got a good deal on it......and liked the size (22")...... But this was before I started my build last year and never did enough homework I guess and well now I gotta live with it haha.

[danwelsh]

Thanks a million Metalzoic for directing me to that fotosizer program. I also used it to resize my marquee images to the correct size. Had to go to work so didn't have time to test the backgrounds yet but I will tomorrow

[danwelsh]

Okay....so I used the pic resizer program and resized the backgrounds like you said Metalzoic and that fixed it but I'm noticing it seems slow overlaying the monitor bezel......do you know how I can speed this up? I have a pretty beefy computer with a good video card, but I'm using a sata HD...... Would an ssd speed this up?. I notice the bezel art itself is pretty much instant and the game loads up fast but the monitor bezel kinda sucks hind tit.....

[Metalzoic]

Could be RL itself causing the problem. That started happening after the April RocketLauncher update. It caused other bezel issues too, but they mostly fixed the other problems.

It's one of the reasons I reverted to the prior version if RL where you can cycle through bezels as fast as you want with zero delay or lag and will avoid updating it in the future.

Sent from my SM-G935V

[danwelsh]

Could be RL itself causing the problem. That started happening after the April RocketLauncher update. It caused other bezel issues too, but they mostly fixed the other problems.

It's one of the reasons I reverted to the prior version if RL where you can cycle through bezels as fast as you want with zero delay or lag and will avoid updating it in the future.

Sent from my SM-G935V

Ahh I see.....so I wonder if I get RL again and just not update it if that'll fix things.....or do you know if the DL now would be already updated?

[danwelsh]

Or maybe I'll head over to rlauncher and ask for assistance there since that's the issue

[Metalzoic]

It could be something else, but it could be what I said.

Re-downloading it will probably just give you the latest version. If you didn't keep a backup of the prior version I don't know if you can go back.

 

Here's my thread there about it.

http://www.rlauncher.com/forum/showthread.php?3233-Bezel-trouble-after-newest-update&p=27668#post27668

[danwelsh]

Okay.....well I posted a question over at Rlauncher but I was reading around and I'm not sure if I have troubleshooting/debugging enabled or not. I'm at work so won't be able to check.....apparently with that disabled takes away alot of I/O calculations and if default is enabled well I'll disable it and see what happens tomorrow when I wake up.

[danwelsh]

It could be something else, but it could be what I said.

Re-downloading it will probably just give you the latest version. If you didn't keep a backup of the prior version I don't know if you can go back.

 

Here's my thread there about it.

http://www.rlauncher.com/forum/showthread.php?3233-Bezel-trouble-after-newest-update&p=27668#post27668

Lol....that's what I was just reading

[danwelsh]

One more thing I noticed Metalzoic is some of the games the score board/insert coin is right where it should be but others it isn't, you can see with the attached pics what I mean.....1943 is perfect, Ms PAC man not so much.....how can I fix this?

[Metalzoic]

I just use adjustments to HLSL and GLSL to get the sizes to fit how I like. Don't remember how exactly though... maybe it was horizontal/vertical stretch to make midro adjustments to games that needed it? Been awhile since I did it.

You could also adjust the bezel.ini's to squish the game area down a bit more, but that would require re-working the entire pack and I didn't want the games reduced from full-size as default.

EDIT: I believe it is horizontal & vertical stretch adjustments, just like on my real arcade machines.

[danwelsh]

Okay thanks man....I'll mess with it tomorrow