Skinning

[David R Hilgendorf]

Hey, I am trying to avoid having my arcade cabinet look anything like windows. Can you add skinning so that we can eliminate the MCE appearance? Or is there arlready a way to get rid of the MCE look?

Thanks.

[Tom Speirs]

Hi,

GameEx can already be skinned to some degree by using themes, although not everything can be changed such as like with MAMEWah.

Looked in the pinned topic for sample themes.

Sorry, I had to edit your post.

Tom

[David R Hilgendorf]

Okay, I am playing with this now, but those skins apparently don't scale to match AVGA resolutions (640x480i or 640x288p)... So I cannot use them with my ArcadeVGA card, or am I missing something?

I managed to mostly hide the interface so it doesn't look like MCE (hide title bar helps).

Any other suggestions on skinning especially at the low resolutions inherent to AVGA?

How would I go about creating my own themes? I see samples, but no editor or anything. It would be nice to be able to control where things appear on the screen more.

_Dave

[Tom Speirs]

Okay, I am playing with this now, but those skins apparently don't scale to match AVGA resolutions (640x480i or 640x288p)...  So I cannot use them with my ArcadeVGA card, or am I missing something?

I managed to mostly hide the interface so it doesn't look like MCE (hide title bar helps).

Any other suggestions on skinning especially at the low resolutions inherent to AVGA?

How would I go about creating my own themes?  I see samples, but no editor or anything.  It would be nice to be able to control where things appear on the screen more.

_Dave

Theres no editor, just modify the Images and a theme.ini file.

I am well aware its limited, as in you cant change where things appear.

[Tom Speirs]

Hi I also wanted to say.

If skinning is extremely important to you and you can't wait for me to make improvments you might want to use MAMEWah as your front end instead of GameEx.

It's very highly thought of and it has a big user base also.

It is harder to configure than GameEx and lacks some features GameEx has, but is extremely customisable.

http://mamewah.mameworld.net/

[pavlov70]

Okay, I am playing with this now, but those skins apparently don't scale to match AVGA resolutions (640x480i or 640x288p)...  So I cannot use them with my ArcadeVGA card, or am I missing something?

Hi,

I created the themes Tom mentioned earlier. I'll be getting an ArcadeVGA card soon and will be creating a theme that works for it, if necessary. However, the Wells Gardner, Vision Pro, and Betson (my personal choice) monitors all support 800x600 so I'm not sure if modifying the themes are necessary. You should be able to run GameEx at 800x600 and the AVGA will switch to whatever resolution each game runs at.

Of course this is all theory to me until I get the card so someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Rob

[Toonces]

Hi Rob, I think the issue is that unless you have a monitor that does VGA or better, the ArcadeVGA card will only run those resolutions interlaced which makes it difficult to see and is hard on the eyes. I have a 29" low res monitor and 640X480 desktop is hard to stand for more than a few minutes.

[pavlov70]

Hi Rob, I think the issue is that unless you have a monitor that does VGA or better, the ArcadeVGA card will only run those resolutions interlaced which makes it difficult to see and is hard on the eyes. I have a 29" low res monitor and 640X480 desktop is hard to stand for more than a few minutes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh I see. Once I get the card and monitor installed, I'll play around with the resolutions and see if I can come up with a 640x480 theme.

[Toonces]

Oh I see. Once I get the card and monitor installed, I'll play around with the resolutions and see if I can come up with a 640x480 theme.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, we need a 640 X 288 which is the highest resolution that can display non-interlaced on a low res monitor.

Thanks!

Toonces.

BTW, love your themes.

[David R Hilgendorf]

I have actually been using mamewah for years. I love the skinning, but it's clumsy and not updated regularly and is missing some more advnaced features I want like good filtering (especially on mame). Someone Recommended GameEx and I have been torn between the two, GameEx is missing a few key things that mamewah has, and vice-versa.

I am no artist, so making decent looking skins is a challenge for me. The trick with ArcadeVGA is to make skins at 1 of two resolutions to work with 90% of the arcaade monitors.

640x480i (interlaced) which I actually prefer in the frontend as it's bigger OR

640x288p (progressive) which some like due to the flicker-free nature.

My 19" W-G monitor will not support anything higher than 640x480 so 800x600+ is useless to me. If you could create skins in the above sizes that would be awesome.

Finally is there a tutorial for commands that can be put in the themes.ini file? I noticed that the custom "arcade" themes I downloaded actually relocate and resize some of the default theme items, but i can't figure out how it was done.

Thanks,

Dave

[jr9770]

I have actually been using mamewah for years.  I love the skinning, but it's clumsy and not updated regularly and is missing some more advnaced features I want like good filtering (especially on mame).  Someone Recommended GameEx and I have been torn between the two, GameEx is missing a few key things that mamewah has, and vice-versa.

I am no artist, so making decent looking skins is a challenge for me.  The trick with ArcadeVGA is to make skins at 1 of two resolutions to work with 90% of the arcaade monitors.

640x480i (interlaced) which I actually prefer in the frontend as it's bigger OR

640x288p (progressive) which some like due to the flicker-free nature.

My 19" W-G monitor will not support anything higher than 640x480 so 800x600+ is useless to me.  If you could create skins in the above sizes that would be awesome. 

Finally is there a tutorial for commands that can be put in the themes.ini file?  I noticed that the custom "arcade" themes I downloaded actually relocate and resize some of the default theme items, but i can't figure out how it was done.

Thanks,

Dave

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was under the impression that the W-G monitor could do 800x600? It was like a hidden mode. Am I mistaken?

Jeff

[Tom Speirs]

I have actually been using mamewah for years.  I love the skinning, but it's clumsy and not updated regularly and is missing some more advnaced features I want like good filtering (especially on mame).  Someone Recommended GameEx and I have been torn between the two, GameEx is missing a few key things that mamewah has, and vice-versa.

I am no artist, so making decent looking skins is a challenge for me.  The trick with ArcadeVGA is to make skins at 1 of two resolutions to work with 90% of the arcaade monitors.

640x480i (interlaced) which I actually prefer in the frontend as it's bigger OR

640x288p (progressive) which some like due to the flicker-free nature.

My 19" W-G monitor will not support anything higher than 640x480 so 800x600+ is useless to me.  If you could create skins in the above sizes that would be awesome. 

Finally is there a tutorial for commands that can be put in the themes.ini file?  I noticed that the custom "arcade" themes I downloaded actually relocate and resize some of the default theme items, but i can't figure out how it was done.

Thanks,

Dave

I am improving on GameEx whenever I have time, so in the future I think it probably will have complete skinning, but this is no simple task and is a while off, if it happens at all.

There is no tutorial for theme.ini, but it uses exactly the same commands as GameEx.ini. You can use ALL commands. It acts as an overide if the commands are present, if not it uses GameEx.ini for the settings.

If you open up gameex.ini in notepad, you will see that it is incredibly well documentated, so you should be good to go

I understand about not being artist, I am not either, although can be pretty handy with imaging software. It may be enough for you though just to replace the background images with stuff you have found on the net. If its just a general wallpaper type background, you should not have to worry about resolutions at all.

Hope this helps, and if you doa anything cool, please share.

[David R Hilgendorf]

SHIT - I typed a TON of info here and clicked preview post, then I saw no option to post so I went back and LOST EVERYTHING I TYPED... ARGH!!!

Anyway to sum it up in 1/10 the space

1) my arcade monitor is super old WG19k7951, the WG9000 series supports 800x600, MOST arcade monitors max at 640x480 unless they are relatively new.

2) I capped my monitor and created my own control panel, click for PICS

(I also modded my own PS2 and there are other game pics there)

3) I am looking to skin to maximize the limited real estate available in 640x480i mode. Here is a screen of what I did in MameWah

I would love to see what you can do with the Themes feature, pavlov maybe you and I can have a dialog about how you made those themes?

I look forward to sharing anything I create with the group...

[pavlov70]

I would love to see what you can do with the Themes feature, pavlov maybe you and I can have a dialog about how you made those themes?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Easiest way to create a theme is to do a screencap of GameEx running at the desired resolution. Use that to help you determine the placement of the elements in your image. All the themes are are bitmaps for the various screen backgrounds and png files for the icons. Take a look at startbak.bmp in the media folder of your theme and you'll see what I mean. Let me know if you have any questions.

That being said, I'll try and come up with a 640x480 background this weekend, time permitting. What color were you wanting?

Someone else (toonces?) was wanting another resolution. I'll see what I can do about that as well.

Oh yeah, I'll also upload the original editable png files for people to do what they wish with. I'm too tired to figure out uploading tonight.

Rob

[Toonces]

Easiest way to create a theme is to do a screencap of GameEx running at the desired resolution.  Use that to help you determine the placement of the elements in your image. All the themes are are bitmaps for the various screen backgrounds and png files for the icons. Take a look at startbak.bmp in the media folder of your theme and you'll see what I mean. Let me know if you have any questions.

That being said,  I'll try and come up with a 640x480 background this weekend, time permitting.  What color were you wanting?

Someone else (toonces?) was wanting another resolution. I'll see what I can do about that as well.

Oh yeah, I'll also upload the original editable png files for people to do what they wish with. I'm too tired to figure out uploading tonight.

Rob

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Rob,

Yes, it was me that asked for 640X288. That is the highest Non-Interlaced resolution possible with an ArcadeVGA card and a Low Res monitor. Thanks for your work on the Themes! Great Stuff!

Toonces

[David R Hilgendorf]

The suggestion to use a screencap is a good one. My art skills are crap however and doing things like putting those joystick+buttons in the corner and the artificial scanlines in the image are cool.

My cab is primarily blue and purple in theme, so either color is adequate. You can see my pics on the sticky cabinet thread too.

-Dave

[pavlov70]

Hi guys,

I updated the BlueEx theme:

- addition of matching "Now Loading" screen

- addition of 640x480 resolution (appears to work at 640x288 but need confirmation)

- combined MCE, Arcade, and 640x480 resolutions into one package.

** Please follow installation instructions first as it won't work/look right otherwise **

http://uploads.tomspeirs.com/files/BlueEx.zip

Tom:

You can delete the old BlueEx MCE and BlueEX Arcade themes.

Toonces:

Using the 640x480 background and GameEx set at 640x288 appears to work (at least it looks right) on my LCD monitor. As I don't have my ArcadeVGA nor Betson arcade monitor hooked up yet, I can't tell if it truly works. Can you please confirm?

Thanks,

Rob

[Toonces]

Hi guys,

I updated the BlueEx theme:

- addition of matching "Now Loading" screen

- addition of 640x480 resolution (appears to work at 640x288 but need confirmation)

- combined MCE, Arcade, and 640x480 resolutions into one package.

** Please follow installation instructions first as it won't work/look right otherwise **

http://uploads.tomspeirs.com/files/BlueEx.zip

Tom:

You can delete the old BlueEx MCE and BlueEX Arcade themes.

Toonces:

Using the 640x480 background and GameEx set at 640x288 appears to work (at least it looks right) on my LCD monitor. As I don't have my ArcadeVGA nor Betson arcade monitor hooked up yet, I can't tell if it truly works. Can you please confirm?

Thanks,

Rob

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Rob,

Thanks! I installed the Theme per your instructions and it appears that things are the correct size but there are a few oddities.

1. the selected menu item appears to have a strange flash of something going on. as the blue scroll goes up it flashes a different color. I went through all of the graphics and found that the selected.bmp is green while selected1 to 20.bmp were blue. It's also the same way in your original BlueEx Arcade I had downloaded and tried before.

2. All of the unselected menu items have a scrambled blue bar over them that looks like the selected animation mixed with whatever is on my desktop. I checked unselected.bmp and it is solid black so I am not sure what is going on there. I took some pictures and a video to demonstrate what I am seeing. I tried to take a screenshot but was unsuccessful. Maybe GameEx captures ALT+Prt Screen? Anyways, here is a picture of the screen. I thought you might be able to see things better by looking at the video (sorry for the poor quality. It's hard to get it to synch with the screen). though so I posted it at the URL below.

640X288 BlueEx Video

Thanks for everything!

Erik

[Tom Speirs]

2. All of the unselected menu items have a scrambled blue bar over them that looks like the selected animation mixed with whatever is on my desktop. I checked unselected.bmp and it is solid black so I am not sure what is going on there. I took some pictures and a video to demonstrate what I am seeing.

This is issue with the ArcadeVGA card, probably the drivers. It may even be running out of memory. I've seen similar things before when I've tested GameEx on my Arcade Cab. There seems to be issues with it when drawing images with transparancy when the bitmap is scaled down when drawn on the screen.

Reducing the size of the bitmap seems to solve this. It could either be the background needs to be resized to be smaller (640 X 288), or unselected.bmp needs to be made smaller.

Perhaps you or Rob could experiment a little.

Hope this sheds a little light.

[Toonces]

This is issue with the ArcadeVGA card, probably the drivers. It may even be running out of memory. I've seen similar things before when I've tested GameEx on my Arcade Cab. There seems to be issues with it when drawing images with transparancy when the bitmap is scaled down when drawn on the screen.

Reducing the size of the bitmap seems to solve this. It could either be the background needs to be resized to be smaller (640 X 288), or unselected.bmp needs to be made smaller.

Perhaps you or Rob could experiment a little.

Hope this sheds a little light.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks Tom, I will try rescaling the backgrounds and see if that works. I have the older ATI 7000 based ArcadeVGA. Do you know if it still does it with the newer one?

Best,

Erik

[Toonces]

This is issue with the ArcadeVGA card, probably the drivers. It may even be running out of memory. I've seen similar things before when I've tested GameEx on my Arcade Cab. There seems to be issues with it when drawing images with transparancy when the bitmap is scaled down when drawn on the screen.

Reducing the size of the bitmap seems to solve this. It could either be the background needs to be resized to be smaller (640 X 288), or unselected.bmp needs to be made smaller.

Perhaps you or Rob could experiment a little.

Hope this sheds a little light.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ok, I have rescalled all of the backgrounds to 640X288 and get the same thing. I did notice that when I hit a game in the mame list that I had a video for, the blue backgrounds on all of the unselected lines would change to whatever the video is. I tried a few things like turning down the accelleration a notch but that didn't do anything. I also disabled alpha blending but again no change. The only way for me to update the drivers is to replace the card. Fortunately I have a new one coming in this week for a friends machine so I can at least test it. For now it's back to Default - Default which works with everything :-)

Thanks!

Erik

[Tom Speirs]

Ok, I have rescalled all of the backgrounds to 640X288 and get the same thing. I did notice that when I hit a game in the mame list that I had a video for, the blue backgrounds on all of the unselected lines would change to whatever the video is. I tried a few things like turning down the accelleration a notch but that didn't do anything. I also disabled alpha blending but again no change. The only way for me to update the drivers is to replace the card. Fortunately I have a new one coming in this week for a friends machine so I can at least test it. For now it's back to Default - Default which works with everything :-)

Thanks!

Erik

Try replacing Unselected.bmp with this version attached:

Unselected.bmp

[Toonces]

Try replacing Unselected.bmp with this version attached:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ok, I replaced the file. Everything looks great on loading and goes to the main menu without any problems or distorted graphics. However, when I try to go into a sub menu like All MAME Games or Laserdisk Games or anything else, GameEx crashes.

Here is the log file and my GameEx.ini. I am running 3.43 with MAME .94

As a side note, I also tried the new Video Fun Theme and had the same video in the unselected bars problem. When I went into a sub menu with video everything slowed to a crawl but I suspect it was resizing the video that may be causing that? It looks VERY promising though!

Thanks!

Erik

gameex_log_ini.zip

[Tom Speirs]

Ok, I replaced the file. Everything looks great on loading and goes to the main menu without any problems or distorted graphics. However, when I try to go into a sub menu like All MAME Games or Laserdisk Games or anything else, GameEx crashes.

Here is the log file and my GameEx.ini. I am running 3.43 with MAME .94

As a side note, I also tried the new Video Fun Theme and had the same video in the unselected bars problem. When I went into a sub menu with video everything slowed to a crawl but I suspect it was resizing the video that may be causing that? It looks VERY promising though!

Thanks!

Erik

Using that file obviously fixes it. GameEx is trying to draw it at the original size, that's why it crashing it. Now I know it works, I'll fix it in th next release.

Can you turn off the Alpha Blending, and let me know if that fixes the speed problem in the videos. ArcadeVGA 7000 series is not good enough for alpha blending (in GameEx). Although the 9000 is plenty powerfull enough.

[Tom Speirs]

Using that file obviously fixes it. GameEx is trying to draw it at the original size, that's why it crashing it. Now I know it works, I'll fix it in th next release.

Can you turn off the Alpha Blending, and let me know if that fixes the speed problem in the videos. ArcadeVGA 7000 series is not good enough for alpha blending (in GameEx). Although the 9000 is plenty powerfull enough.

Alpha Blend Videos is under 'Display' in config. According to your gameex.ini its turned on. I am sure that's what's causing the crawl, but please confirm.

Thanks.

Tom