MAME Artwork Bezel Project

[Agrajag]

Well I'm currently using a 16:10 (1920x1200) monitor with my PC, but in anticipation of building a cab with a 27" 16:9 screen (and also having it connected to my TV) I set it to 1920x1080 and have HyperSpin running windowed at 1440x1080 for arcade systems and 1920x1080 for home systems.

I can do tests at various aspect ratios and resolutions if needed, although it might take me a while as I'm a bit short of time at the moment.

[rfancella]

Ron, quick obvious question.

Can an xml based on bezels and then added to perhaps the genre list? That may be good for testing and just for fun

Yep, got it licked.

So, here is the procedure.

Create a new text document in your ...\HyperSpin\HyperLaunch\Media\Bezels\MAME directory. Paste this into it:

@echo off

echo ^<?xml version="1.0"?^>
echo ^<menu^>
for /D %%f in (*) do (
       if exist "%%f\Bezel*.png" (
       echo ^<game name^="%%f" index^="" image^=""^>
       echo ^</game^>
       )
   )
echo ^</menu^>

Name it bezels.cmd

This will scan every directory below it looking for a file called "Bezel*.png". If it finds one it will output the name of the directory to the console.

Open a command prompt (dos box) in that directory (...\HyperSpin\HyperLaunch\Media\Bezels\MAME) and run the command like this:

bezels.cmd > bez.xml

That will create a basic xml file with every directory name in it as the game name.

Now, run the HyperTools "Filter HyperList.exe" program.

Select MAME in the HyperSpin Wheel drop down.

The HyperSpin Source XML is your MAME.xml in your ...\HyperSpin\Databases\MAME directory.

Under Optional Settings, put the bez.xml file in the HyperSpin Output XML slot.

This will tag the new list to be output.

If you have and want to use a mamelist.xml file, select or generate it.

Hit Scan. It may take a while.

On the results screen, down at the bottom, click the "Export Output List" button.

Give it a name like Bezels.xml and make sure it's in your ...\HyperSpin\Databases\MAME directory.

Last thing to do is add it to your ...\HyperSpin\Databases\MAME\Genre.xml file like this:

<menu>
 <game name="All Games"/>
 <game name="Bezels"/>
 <game name="Action Games"/>
 <game name="Ball & Paddle Games"/>
 <game name="Baseball Games"/>
...

Let me know how you make out.

Thanks,

Ron

[EDIT]

Side note. You must not have "Wheels Only" enabled in HyperHQ for this to work. Or you must create a Bezels wheel image for the Genres.

[/EDIT]

[rfancella]

Well I'm currently using a 16:10 (1920x1200) monitor with my PC, but in anticipation of building a cab with a 27" 16:9 screen (and also having it connected to my TV) I set it to 1920x1080 and have HyperSpin running windowed at 1440x1080 for arcade systems and 1920x1080 for home systems.

I can do tests at various aspect ratios and resolutions if needed, although it might take me a while as I'm a bit short of time at the moment.

Very cool!! I have a 16x10 set for my PC and 4x3 on my cab. Gig and Potts have 16x9 setups. I was mostly hoping for someone to test the instillation of this setup. The bezels themselves have been tested to our linking. So, input on the instillation for all aspect ratios and input if you like them or not would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Ron

[knewlife]

I want to have this bezels... Also some 16:9 game bezels as an alternative (some of this bezels are too small)... But don't want the transparent bezel for every game... I will like to have the default mame 16.9 bezel - vertical or horizontal - for every game that don't have its hown 16:9 bezel... Will have to make a script for my own case :-o...

Anyone knows if the structure bezels\mame\gamename\horizontal or vertical \bezel*.* will work? If not I am in trouble for reaching my goal.

[rfancella]

I want to have this bezels... Also some 16:9 game bezels as an alternative (some of this bezels are too small)... But don't want the transparent bezel for every game... I will like to have the default mame 16.9 bezel - vertical or horizontal - for every game that don't have its hown 16:9 bezel... Will have to make a script for my own case :-o... Anyone knows if the structure bezels\mame\gamename\horizontal or vertical \bezel*.* will work? If not I am in trouble for reaching my goal.

Knewlife,

The way it works is, it first looks in MAME\{game name}

There is no need for a horizontal or vertical if there a bezel for that game. It's either going to be horizontal or vertical. If there is no a bezel in the Game Name folder, it goes to _Default. If it's a vertical game it will use the bezel in MAME\_Default\Vertical.

In your case, just copy the content of the FTP into your ...\HyperLaunch\Media\Bezels\MAME directory. Then go into the _Default directory and remove the 4x3 background file.

That should be all you have to do.

Thanks,

Ron

[knewlife]

Yeah what i want is something very specific, i want to change between:

(default 16:9 mame bezel OR game specific 16:9 bezel) AND (the game specific bezes of this pack)

And by OR : i refer to have One OR Another bezel.

i have do the script already... if someone understand what i wanted to do just ask me and i will help you haha

[gigapig]

Yeah what i want is something very specific, i want to change between:

(default 16:9 mame bezel OR game specific 16:9 bezel) AND (the game specific bezes of this pack)

And by OR : i refer to have One OR Another bezel.

i have do the script already... if someone understand what i wanted to do just ask me and i will help you haha

You need to put the default 16x9 bezel in the game name folder, then cycle through the bezels until you get the one you want (the bezels are chosen at random.)

As Ron has just said, Hyperlaunch looks for a game name folder first, if it's found then those are used.

There are some 16x9 bezels in AlexDC22 folder on the ftp which are very good, I have these mixed in with the Mame bezels we converted.

You could perhaps create a script to drop a default 16x9 into each of the folders?

[knewlife]

I did just that, but also the script checks if exists an Alex bezel for that game, that is copied, if not the default, vertical or horizontal based in mame XML, is copied.

[Agrajag]

OK I had a little bit of time today. I haven't done any re-installing for different resolutions, this is just my first impressions after starting with 10yard and working my way through about 20 games from top of the list (plus Popeye!)

1 - First of all, this is great! I rarely bother to enable bezels in MAME as it's too much hassle, so this project means I actually get to see a load of original bezels that I would otherwise have missed. The first thing I noticed though was that the bezels are only for the parent roms. This may or may not be a problem for some people, but in my case it prompted me to enable the Parents Only wheel filter for MAME in HyperHQ - something I probably should have done a long time ago. (Now I have to sort out getting Pac-Man to appear as well as Puckman, but that's another matter!)

2 - In the long run I'll probably switch to full screen to actually play the games but it's nice to see a proper bezel when I load games that have them. However, as the bezels are loaded at random, it will load the transparent full screen one quite often. I'm not going to remember which games have bezels, and don't want to keep pressing the Next Bezel button every time I load any game on the off-chance that it has a bezel, so it would be nice if it would always load a proper bezel where one exists rather than the transparent one.

3 - In reality, some games had the bezel on glass at the front of the cabinet and you looked though this to the screen beyond. Overlaying the bezel on top of the MAME window means that some bezels cover up part of the game, unless the window is made small enough. Popeye is the worst example I've seen so far - all 4 corners are cut off, plus part of the bottom and left side. Others are more acceptable, such as Alcon (only a small bit of one corner is cut off). There's a good compromise for Afterburner II by having two versions of the same cockpit, one which partly obscures the game and another which has the game in a small window in the middle, so I'd like to see variations like this wherever applicable.

4 - I'm not a big fan of the bright red bezel all the way around NEO GEO games. How about having one with just the sides?

5 - Two problems:

25pacman is not listed in the HyperLaunchHQ game audit - I only have 25pacmano. This is with Jumpstile's 0.153 database without casino & mahjong.

I can't get intructions cards to appear (have tried 19xx and aerofgt so far). No idea what I've done wrong so will have to troubleshoot this and come back to you.

More to follow when I have time.

[gigapig]

Great feedback Agra.

Point 2.

Do you have any bezels in the default folder? They should show if no game specific bezel is found, you would then know which game has a bezel. Other than that, maybe bleasby would have to add that so it always shows a bezel not the transparent one.

[bleasby]

I already gave some thoughts about the transparent bezel thing.

I come up that the best way to deal with this is to just add an extra bezel option, something like "Enable Extra FullScreen Bezel", that would have the same behavior of the transparent bezel image without really requiring the transparent bezel file.

So on any game that you have enabled this option, you would have this "full screen bezel" as an extra bezel. This would avoid the need for multiple transparent images on different folders, and I could also modify the code to make this fake bezel to not be chosen when I aleatory choose the bezel to show at the beginning.

This is in my todo list, but I don't know when i will have the time to implement it. If you have any toughs about it, please let me know so we could try to improve as much as possible these things.

[rfancella]

Wow! Agrajag, a full an proper review!! Thank you so much for taking the time. I'll address these and hope Gig jumps in too.

OK I had a little bit of time today. I haven't done any re-installing for different resolutions, this is just my first impressions after starting with 10yard and working my way through about 20 games from top of the list (plus Popeye!)

1 - First of all, this is great! I rarely bother to enable bezels in MAME as it's too much hassle, so this project means I actually get to see a load of original bezels that I would otherwise have missed. The first thing I noticed though was that the bezels are only for the parent roms. This may or may not be a problem for some people, but in my case it prompted me to enable the Parents Only wheel filter for MAME in HyperHQ - something I probably should have done a long time ago. (Now I have to sort out getting Pac-Man to appear as well as Puckman, but that's another matter!)

When we started going through these, I thought the same thing. What do we do about the clones? Any clones I play, I made a copy of the directory and renamed it to match. But in my case, I don't play the clones very often. But, the clone bezel is probably in the parent directory. That's why some of them have more than one bezel. That and I just made a couple variations.

2 - In the long run I'll probably switch to full screen to actually play the games but it's nice to see a proper bezel when I load games that have them. However, as the bezels are loaded at random, it will load the transparent full screen one quite often. I'm not going to remember which games have bezels, and don't want to keep pressing the Next Bezel button every time I load any game on the off-chance that it has a bezel, so it would be nice if it would always load a proper bezel where one exists rather than the transparent one.

I agree. I wish there were some way to designate in the file name, the default bezel to start with in this case. In most cases (and the design intent) it's probably best to have it random. So, I removed all my trans bezels from my cab. Figured it would be all or nothing at this point.

3 - In reality, some games had the bezel on glass at the front of the cabinet and you looked though this to the screen beyond. Overlaying the bezel on top of the MAME window means that some bezels cover up part of the game, unless the window is made small enough. Popeye is the worst example I've seen so far - all 4 corners are cut off, plus part of the bottom and left side. Others are more acceptable, such as Alcon (only a small bit of one corner is cut off). There's a good compromise for Afterburner II by having two versions of the same cockpit, one which partly obscures the game and another which has the game in a small window in the middle, so I'd like to see variations like this wherever applicable.

When we started this, the intent was to stay as close to the bezel interior as possible. I agree and have made that mistake on quite a few of the ini's myself. I guess this is the case of personal preference. I had planned two changes on the bezels I did.

1). Go back through them and copy the bezels to have two options. One really tight and the other as tight as possible without compromising the emulator window.

2). Go back through my IC's and make a smaller version of each as Gig did with many of his. The smaller IC's look better one a 4x3 for sure.

4 - I'm not a big fan of the bright red bezel all the way around NEO GEO games. How about having one with just the sides?

LOL... Gig even questioned if it should go in the project at all. He just kept telling me it was crap. But I could not make one better. Another example of this is the Nintendo ones. The art for MAME is not good to start with. Example: run goonies. But it's what there was.

5 - Two problems:

25pacman is not listed in the HyperLaunchHQ game audit - I only have 25pacmano. This is with Jumpstile's 0.153 database without casino & mahjong.

I can't get intructions cards to appear (have tried 19xx and aerofgt so far). No idea what I've done wrong so will have to troubleshoot this and come back to you.

More to follow when I have time.

This, I think, we are going to run into. I do have 25pacman on my setup, both cab and desktop.

For the IC's not showing. Almost all the IC's we made were for the following positions: bottomCenter, topCenter, rightCenter & leftCenter. Make sure you have all the available positions in your Global list of positions. Also make sure your Left & Right Menu Positions have the appropriate ones in there.

So, I think we need to start a list. With the following things to be worked on:

Bezel ini's that need to be adjusted.

Clones to be added. Meaning, pick out the clone bezel from the parent and put it in the correctly named directory.

IC's that need to be reworked.

Any others to add?

Thanks,

Ron

[rfancella]

Great feedback Agra.

Point 2.

Do you have any bezels in the default folder? They should show if no game specific bezel is found, you would then know which game has a bezel. Other than that, maybe bleasby would have to add that so it always shows a bezel not the transparent one.

Nice Gig. You posted while I was writing.

I already gave some thoughts about the transparent bezel thing.

I come up that the best way to deal with this is to just add an extra bezel option, something like "Enable Extra FullScreen Bezel", that would have the same behavior of the transparent bezel image without really requiring the transparent bezel file.

So on any game that you have enabled this option, you would have this "full screen bezel" as an extra bezel. This would avoid the need for multiple transparent images on different folders, and I could also modify the code to make this fake bezel to not be chosen when I aleatory choose the bezel to show at the beginning.

This is in my todo list, but I don't know when i will have the time to implement it. If you have any toughs about it, please let me know so we could try to improve as much as possible these things.

Yes! I do like that feature as well.

Thanks,

Ron

[gigapig]

LOL... Gig even questioned if it should go in the project at all. He just kept telling me it was crap. But I could not make one better. Another example of this is the Nintendo ones. The art for MAME is not good to start with. Example: run goonies. But it's what there was.

Thanks,

Ron

I have a big dislike for that sea of red, I can't really claim that we were trying to be true to the original artwork, because there isn't much.

Maybe this is better.

And then just use the IC's for some extra sizzle

[Agrajag]

Trying to get an early night as feeling lousy but just had a quick skim through the replies and like what I'm seeing! Will take a proper look tomorrow and try to sort out my IC problem. Thanks chaps.

[gigapig]

Trying to get an early night as feeling lousy but just had a quick skim through the replies and like what I'm seeing! Will take a proper look tomorrow and try to sort out my IC problem. Thanks chaps.

Hope you feel better in the morning. I need an early night, there's just not enough time for all these things.

[knewlife]

I already gave some thoughts about the transparent bezel thing.

I come up that the best way to deal with this is to just add an extra bezel option, something like "Enable Extra FullScreen Bezel", that would have the same behavior of the transparent bezel image without really requiring the transparent bezel file.

So on any game that you have enabled this option, you would have this "full screen bezel" as an extra bezel. This would avoid the need for multiple transparent images on different folders, and I could also modify the code to make this fake bezel to not be chosen when I aleatory choose the bezel to show at the beginning.

This is in my todo list, but I don't know when i will have the time to implement it. If you have any toughs about it, please let me know so we could try to improve as much as possible these things.

maybe also allow you to select a bezel file as Fullscreen bezel... So in 16:9 you can select one bezel that fills the blck bars at the sides.

[brolly]

25pacman is not listed in the HyperLaunchHQ game audit - I only have 25pacmano.

25pacman is marked as not working properly on MAME, thus why it's not in the database. This is one of those rare cases of a game where the parent rom is marked as not working, but it's clones work. There aren't many, but there are a few, Alligator Hunt comes to mind.

Now it's possible the game works properly on other MAME builds, but the official XML is made around MAME so it will use whatever info MAME spits out, so if MAME says that game isn't working then it won't be on the XML.

[Agrajag]

Great feedback Agra.

Point 2.

Do you have any bezels in the default folder? They should show if no game specific bezel is found, you would then know which game has a bezel. Other than that, maybe bleasby would have to add that so it always shows a bezel not the transparent one.

Well that's one mystery solved, thanks. I had moved out the files that were already in the default folder when I was setting this up! I've now put one back in and removed the transparent one, so now if I don't see a bezel I know I need to press the button to bring it up.

[Agrajag]

I already gave some thoughts about the transparent bezel thing.

I come up that the best way to deal with this is to just add an extra bezel option, something like "Enable Extra FullScreen Bezel", that would have the same behavior of the transparent bezel image without really requiring the transparent bezel file.

So on any game that you have enabled this option, you would have this "full screen bezel" as an extra bezel. This would avoid the need for multiple transparent images on different folders, and I could also modify the code to make this fake bezel to not be chosen when I aleatory choose the bezel to show at the beginning.

This is in my todo list, but I don't know when i will have the time to implement it. If you have any toughs about it, please let me know so we could try to improve as much as possible these things.

This would be a nice addition when you have the time (Gigapig's advice has now made it less "urgent" though). Perhaps we could have a way of choosing a specific bezel, for those games that have more than one, rather than them being loaded randomly?

[Agrajag]

Wow! Agrajag, a full an proper review!! Thank you so much for taking the time. I'll address these and hope Gig jumps in too.

No problem. I actually wanted to go more in depth but ran out of time. I'm going to keep working my way through the list of games whenever I get a chance, and will make a note of anything that I think needs tweaking. This reply is turning into quote hell, so I don't think you need to reply to all of it in return...

When we started going through these, I thought the same thing. What do we do about the clones? Any clones I play, I made a copy of the directory and renamed it to match. But in my case, I don't play the clones very often. But, the clone bezel is probably in the parent directory. That's why some of them have more than one bezel. That and I just made a couple variations.

I was thinking the same thing last night - if you want bezels for clones you just have to copy and rename the parent one, and perhaps use different ones for a bit of variety.

I agree. I wish there were some way to designate in the file name, the default bezel to start with in this case. In most cases (and the design intent) it's probably best to have it random. So, I removed all my trans bezels from my cab. Figured it would be all or nothing at this point.

Well it looks like we could end up with a neat solution from Bleasby, but at least I now have it set up properly thanks to Gig's advice so it's easy to see if there are bezels available.

When we started this, the intent was to stay as close to the bezel interior as possible. I agree and have made that mistake on quite a few of the ini's myself. I guess this is the case of personal preference. I had planned two changes on the bezels I did.

1). Go back through them and copy the bezels to have two options. One really tight and the other as tight as possible without compromising the emulator window.

2). Go back through my IC's and make a smaller version of each as Gig did with many of his. The smaller IC's look better one a 4x3 for sure.

Sounds like a good plan to me!

LOL... Gig even questioned if it should go in the project at all. He just kept telling me it was crap. But I could not make one better. Another example of this is the Nintendo ones. The art for MAME is not good to start with. Example: run goonies. But it's what there was.

I see what you mean about goonies. Ye gods that's bad! I think in cases where the MAME bezel is awful there's a strong argument for scrapping it and starting from scratch. We strive for top quality artwork when it comes to themes, boxes etc after all. Gig's new version of the NEO GEO bezel looks much better.

This, I think, we are going to run into. I do have 25pacman on my setup, both cab and desktop.

I fixed this by renaming the bezel to 25pacmano after reading brolly's post (thanks brolly!).

For the IC's not showing. Almost all the IC's we made were for the following positions: bottomCenter, topCenter, rightCenter & leftCenter. Make sure you have all the available positions in your Global list of positions. Also make sure your Left & Right Menu Positions have the appropriate ones in there.

I'll take a proper look at this later, thanks.

So, I think we need to start a list. With the following things to be worked on:

Bezel ini's that need to be adjusted.

Clones to be added. Meaning, pick out the clone bezel from the parent and put it in the correctly named directory.

IC's that need to be reworked.

Any others to add?

Let me get back to you on that!

Thanks,

Ron

No, thank you...

[rfancella]

Ok, I'll start the post here and link it back in the first post? Gig, can you put a link in the bottom of your post for this WIP??

Bezel ini files to be tweaked:

Popeye

[rfancella]

Clones to be separated from the parents:

25pacman

[rfancella]

I have a big dislike for that sea of red, I can't really claim that we were trying to be true to the original artwork, because there isn't much.

Maybe this is better.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]41730[/ATTACH]

And then just use the IC's for some extra sizzle

[ATTACH=CONFIG]41731[/ATTACH]

Gig,

Where are these and can you make a 4x3 version of them too? I'll write a script to replace the ones already there, with these.

Thanks,

Ron

[gigapig]

Gig,

Where are these and can you make a 4x3 version of them too? I'll write a script to replace the ones already there, with these.

Thanks,

Ron

I shall hopefully sort something out tonight.