[RESOLVED] larger bezel images?

[Venomouse]

So Im running a 24" widescreen in my mame, Got the Bezels etc working and have all settings in gameex for video to default.

When I have the bezel artwork (ie same as default gameex one). It works, But I obviously have a black gap between edge of screen and bezel (about the same thickness as the bezel art itself).

How (if possible) Can I create a larger image to fix this?

I tried making one 1024 x 480 and updated the bezel.lay file to 1024 instead on 640 for position. The image is in the right place, but the game moves from the middle toward the left and behind bezel...if that makes sense

heres the bezel I was trying to use.

Again, you guys rock

Thankyou

295167-tempest.zip

[Adultery]

I stretch MAME instead to get around this:

-noka

[Venomouse]

when you say stretch, similar to trying to watch a 4:3 movie in 16:10?

[Adultery]

Yeah pretty much. You're essentially stretching your games to fill the whole screen. It doesn't stretch vertical games to the edge, it stretches everything a little (including the bezel). It really doesn't look to bad on my cab.

Of course, I like using the whole screen, You may not feel the same.

[Venomouse]

nah im slightly anal in terms of res I want to keep it at native game res... I think it should be able to be done since I got the image to sit right, its just a matter of the bezel.lay file settings being right perhaps?

[u-man]

you need to crop your artwork. put that lines in you mame.ini and test it:

#

# CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS

#

artwork_crop 1

use_backdrops 1

use_overlays 1

use_bezels 1

use_cpanels 1

use_marquees 1

you will keep the aspect ratio from game but it will be zoomed and bezel will fill the entire screen. try it and see if this is what you like.

[Venomouse]

Cheers, I assume this means use the 640 x 480 bezel also?

[u-man]

i use the original artworks for MAME. this is for more arcade feeling and is nice, as you have many different Bezels. usually they have enough resolution to look very nice, even on a Full HDTV. downside is, if MAME doesnt find a artwork, you will have no one.

it would be a nice plugin, if there would be something like "if there is no artwork, use a premade standard-bezel or even better make it randomly choose.... that would be nice.

a combination of Bezel and HLSL and with a little tweaking, you can achieve good results, close to a real CRT-Monitor

[Venomouse]

Excellent, more tweaking tonight

What folder do the game bezels go in? I tried getting metal slug x to work..and It doesnt

[u-man]

bezels are going into your artwork folder, which is in your Mame Installation folder. if you dont have one, create one. to use MAME game artwork/bezels, you need to do three things:

1. you need to have or to download game artworks/bezels. you can do that easily on Emumovies. Start the Download service utility in your GameEx folder, create a account, setup the pathes in the utility, download artwork for MAME, you are ready to go.

Beware that artwork/Bezelz are big and you can reach your download-limit very fast. Depending on how many Roms you have for Mame, it can take days .

2. enable artwork in your mame.ini, which you did allready.

3. in your GameEx Setup-Wizard, in the Advanced Mame Settings, use the "Dont Use Bezel" option. this option is only related to the GameEx Bezel (or your own created Bezel, that you renamed and put in the Media/Bezel or Media/BezelV2 of your GameEx Installation folder).

if you use the GameEx Screensaver and want it to use the game Bezels too, put a "NO" in the "Show MAME Bezel" option in the Setup-Wizard Attract / Screensaver section, again this option is only related to the GameEx Bezel (or your own created Bezel, that you renamed and put in the Media/Bezel or Media/BezelV2 of your GameEx Installation folder). keep in mind, that you will miss that icon and info field showing in the screensaver if you use MAME game bezels.

so all the Bezel related options in the Setup-Wizard are only related to the GameEx Bezel, if you want to disable the Bezels at all, you need to do this, with your "mame.ini" too.

hope it was clear enough, feel free to ask

[nullPointer]

u-man is definitely on the right track there. Just a brief note (or is it an endorsement?) in support of our good buddies over at EmuMovies. Signing up for a paid membership is easy, (relatively) cheap, and a great way to support the hobby. You also won’t have to worry nearly as much about the download limit (you may not have any limit at all depending on your membership level). To my mind that makes it highly worth it, but OTOH I can be a bit impatient about that sort of thing. When I want my artwork I want it now, rather than slowly building up my set.

[Venomouse]

awesome thankyou all.. iving it a shot today

[Venomouse]

Thankyou all, got it half working with all the info you guys continue to provide.

ended up being able to live with the black bars, not a big fan of some of the artwork (cause its makes the window smaller in some games, and I dont want to have to pull my kb out every game to turn bezel off or on as I go.

Saying that... I have eveything working now and I will post a vid of my finished cab... thankyou all again so much......GAME NIGHT TONIGHT

[u-man]

then you have not cropped your artwork or i didnt understand something in your description.

what aspect ratio are you trying to use in your cab? 4:3 or 16:9

i dont get it really..... i mean if you use a Arcade / TV- Screen in a Universal Cab, then why you will use bezels anyway?

a arcade display is low-res and i wouldnt spend a single pixel for bezels and use everyone for the game

i never have black borders on my 16:9 27" Full HD TFT PC-Monitor. in most cases the games are fullscreen, with bezel on the left / right sides. in some rare cases, i have tiny bezels on top and bottom and i mean tiny.

as i said.... no black borders.

if you plan to use a real cab, i recommend you NOT TO USE bezels in any case, only exception would be a TFT-Display in your Cab ( and even then, it depends on your resolution you are intending to use).

happy gaming.... u-man

[Venomouse]

Here are some pics to show whats happening at the moment

Pic one, shows a vertical game with the bezel (640 x 480, as you can see theres still black area on the screen, and I dont want to stretch)

If I go into the video settings and change from 4:3 in mame it just stretches and removes the bezel.

Pic 2, shows a normal horizontal game being 4:30 on the 16", again rather not stretch)

I guess now I'm asking, can I get bezels for the horizontals also?

And for the verticals how does one make the bezel the full screen, again without stretching.

again thanks for sticking with it

[u-man]

ill communication

what is in your cab? a TFT or CRT?

if TFT, how many pixel have this TFT? your resolution so to say (and i dont mean the game or MAME )

tell us your hardware specs of the PC, including grafics-card.

in your first picture, i see a custom-made bezel, may be the mistake is in the bezel itself.

it is hard to see any border on your display, it is to dark, at least for me.

make a copy of your MAME.ini (as a backup) and try exchanging these lines, in the right place:

#

# WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS

#

video d3d

numscreens 1

window 0

maximize 1

keepaspect 1

prescale 1

#

# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

#

hwstretch 1

#

# DIRECT3D-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

#

d3dversion 9

filter 1

#

# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS

#

screen auto

aspect auto

resolution auto

view auto

screen0 auto

aspect0 auto

resolution0 auto

view0 auto

#

# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS

#

triplebuffer 1

switchres 0

dont delete other lines, just exchange these ones. save the mame.ini

in the setup-wizard go to the Advance MAME Settings and put only this line in MAME Options:

-readconfig (nothing else here, just this)

dont use MAME between the changes of the mame.ini and the setup-wizard.

and last, post your bezels from the folders Media/Bezel and Media/BezelV2 of your GameEx Installation folder

try this and tell us what happened

[Venomouse]

My bad, too short with info, too excited to get back to cab and play more

Ok so running a TFT - Samsung Syncmaster S22A350H (I think, would have to pull cab apart to confirm, just google image searched similar models and thats what mine looks like, IT is however a samsung syncmaster 21.5" (supports up to 1980 x 1024 (which is what I have set in windows, havent changed any res settings in mame or gameex, so they would be defaults)

Vid card is nvidia geforce 210.

Changed as per above post and still same results

Again, thankyou

[Necromancyr]

...shit. I had a 4 paragraph response typed and clicked on your image above and accidentally deleted it.

Few things.

1. GameEx doesn't support bezels for horizontal games I don't think (based on config wizard). (Null can confirm this).

2. For vertical games, the bezel file MAY need to be the same aspect ratio as your monitor to be useful/fill in the gaps. So, my suggestion would be to make a 1980x1024 bezel and see how that looks first. It may need to be changed to suit the resolution MAME is running at for you, but the aspect ratio should, most likely, need to be maintained.

3. If that fails, you can design a Bezel for MAME, and set up mame to use bezel art and zoom to crop (both under video settings in the menu you can access via tab). That will do max zoom for the game and fill in the rest of the screen with your custom bezel. Big issue is making a custom bezel for every...single...one...of your mame roms. You can prob. automate that naming with a bat file or something...not totally sure how off the top of my hear myself though.

[Venomouse]

Dont you hate that

Thanks for replying after that...usually I call it a day at that point

Made this file to help me line up / see whats happening

ok so the bezel ive left at 480 height, since its only for vertical games anyway.... (tried higher but scales and top and bottom show over game)

Here is the result, I think im on the right path, its about positioning and I think the bezel.lay will fix it, (should I change the positioning.....)..maybe

Heres the default... / results...As you can see its been moved to the right a little and would also appear to be stretched / shrunk)...

Good news, the right side goes all the way to edge of screen... now for positioning?

Bezel.lay file atm..

<mamelayout version="2">
	<element name="bezel">
		<image file="mame.png" />
	</element>

	<view name="Bezel Artwork">
		<screen index="0">
			<bounds left="140" top="0" right="500" bottom="480" />
		</screen>
		<bezel element="bezel">
			<bounds left="0" top="0" right="640" bottom="480" />
		</bezel>
	</view>
</mamelayout>

Notes: tried changing the 640 to 1024 (which is the width in this case of the test bevel file, same issue)

Using 1920 x 480 resulted in a bunch of diagonal lines, not even looking like the pic

[nullPointer]

Few things.

1. GameEx doesn't support bezels for horizontal games I don't think (based on config wizard). (Null can confirm this).

This is correct. The 'Use Bezel' field under Advanced MAME Settings in the Setup Wizard contains the following choices:

• Use Bezel for vertical Games (Default)
  
• Dont Use Bezel
  

I totally agree with Necro's assessment regarding points #2 and #3. I'm a big fan of MAME's built in bezel support, so that's what I use on my own rig.

@Venomouse: Yeah I think at this point it may be down to some good old trial and error (i.e. make an adjustment, test, repeat, until you get it right). At least once you get it dialed in you'll have a usable template for your setup.

[u-man]

yes trial and error.

and for the fun:

http://www.imagegene...-game/bezel.htm

[Necromancyr]

Venom, I think the bezel just needs to be the same aspect ratio as your screen and you should be good to go. Just have it originate from 0,0.

[Draco1962]

Venomouse - you may want to grab a copy of this image so that you can have it as a reference for the various aspect ratios and the corresponding pixel sizes attributed to each. When creating an image for display, should you create one larger than your screen displays, that will be no problem provided that your image's aspect ratio is the same as your screen's maximum.

An example would be working with a 1920 x1200 image and displaying on a 1680 x1050 screen. Since the proportions of height vs width are the same, there will be no distortion when the image is shrunk as both share the same aspect ratio of 16:10.

The same would hold true if you reverse the example pixel sizes - creating a 1680 x 1050 image and upscaling to a 1920 x 1200. The proportions (height vs width) are still the same. The caveat to upconverting is that, unless the image is scalable (i.e. a scalable vector graphics - SVG - format) you will encounter pixlation of the image.

[u-man]

a very good and professional description , i like it.

i tried it the funny way, as the link provided make it very simple to create a template and has 140 arcade bezelz to choose from.

[nullPointer]

That really is a pretty cool service. For whatever reason that link was broken when I tied it last night (possibly my ISP). It worked today though, so I had a chance to mess around a bit. Thanks for the share u-man!