HELP! Can't get GameEx Bezels to work in MAME

[JohnH]

All right, before I take a sledgehammer to my arcade cabinet, I've decided to see if anyone had any info on how to use the GameEx bezels in MAME. Not only the vertical bezels, but the game info bezels that run along the bottom.

I searched the forums and tried a few things - turning off bezel support in MAME, turning it on and/or off in the GameEx Advanced Configuration, etc. Nothing is working. I'm running MAME v0.102 and have all the extra media that goes with it. I can get the game-specific bezels to show up if I enable bezels in mame.ini, but I can't get the GameEx bezel to show at all. What am I doing wrong? Am I missing something simple? I usually do.

[headkaze]

Mame 102 uses the old bezel format. You need Mame 107 or later to use the newer bezel format that the game info feature requires.

[JohnH]

Mame 102 uses the old bezel format. You need Mame 107 or earlier to use the newer bezel format that the game info feature requires.

Did you mean "or later"?

Does this also apply to the vertical game bezel? Because that would make me cry. That's what I really want, is the vertical bezel. The info bezel would be nice, but I could live without it. I really don't want to update to a newer version of MAME. Not until I get a new PC, anyway, and that's a bit down the road.

[headkaze]

I believe GameEx supports both formats for the vertical bezel so you should be fine using that.

Yes I did mean "or later"

[JohnH]

I believe GameEx supports both formats for the vertical bezel so you should be fine using that.

Yes I did mean "or later"

I thought so.

So how can I make MAME use the GameEx bezel? I found the settings in GameEx, but it never shows up. Am I right in understanding that the bezel needs to be in <installpath>\GameEx\Media\Bezel, or do I need to move it to MAME's artwork folder? Are there command-line switches I need to set up for MAME? A quick wakthrough would be most helpful. Like I said, I'm probably missing something small.

[JohnH]

Anybody? Anybody?

Bueller?

[JohnH]

No one at all?

Not even Tom? The guy I gave money to?

[headkaze]

I thought that GameEx supported both bezel formats for the vertical bezel so it should copy the bezel into the artwork folder when you run a game. Double check your bezel settings in the GameEx Setup Wizard. Easiest way to do that is to use it's search function and type in "bezel". Then in Mame's artwork folder check that it's copying the bezel files (named after the game your playing). Is it copying them? Can you run Mame outside GameEx with the bezel file and have it show the bezel? Do you have bezel's turned on in Mame?

[Tom Speirs]

The info Bezel only shows up when using the screensaver. Both types of Bezel are supported in GameEx as far as I know, however the old types of Bezels for vertical games I dont think are supported in the screensaver. In addition Bezels dont work when using ArcadeVGA because of the resolution.

[JohnH]

I thought that GameEx supported both bezel formats for the vertical bezel so it should copy the bezel into the artwork folder when you run a game.

Hmm. I have a fully populated artwork folder that matches my ROMset; should I *not* have bezels in there for the vertical games, I wonder...

I've quadruple-checked the bezel settings in the Advanced Configuraton several times; even went so far as to manually edit GameEx.ini, playing with the bezel settings; none of it seems to help. I'll try your suggestions and report back with what I find.

As a side note, if I run a game and look at the batch file GameEx uses to launch it (can't recall the filename at the moment), there's no -bezel argument in the command line. Shouldn't there be?

The info Bezel only shows up when using the screensaver. Both types of Bezel are supported in GameEx as far as I know, however the old types of Bezels for vertical games I dont think are supported in the screensaver. In addition Bezels dont work when using ArcadeVGA because of the resolution.

I don't have an ArcadeVGA, so that's not a problem. I'm running everything @ 1024x768, so resolution in general should be good. I will try the above.

Thanks for replying.

[JohnH]

OK, here's what I have.

I went through the setup wizard, searched for "bezel". Found two sections relating to bezels. Made sure they were both enabled. Took my MAME artwork folder and renamed it to "artwork_backup". Made a new artwork folder under MAME and left it empty; theoretically, GameEx should copy bezels into here, right? Opened up MAME.ini and turned on bezels. I get no bezels. If I move my MAME artwork back to where it was, I get bezels.

So what's happening, as far as I can tell, is GameEx is configured to use bezels, but isn't actually using them at all. I'm wondering if I should take more drastic steps, such as completely removing GameEx and installing the newest version, because I just can't seem to find anything else wrong with my config.

I'll attach my mame.ini and gameex.ini, as well as runitgame.bat from the GameEx\Data folder for you all to look at; maybe someone else will see something I'm missing.

P.S. Now here's something. I was running MAME from a command line, trying different games, looking at bezels, with my MAME artwork folder restored. I load up Astro Blaster (astrob), and I get the MAME/GameEX bezel! WTF! When did that get copied in there!? <throwing hands up in air> It's stuff like this that makes me want to stuff it all and start fresh, but I'd certainly like to avoid that if I could.

gameex.ini.zip

mame.ini.zip

runitgame.zip

[JohnH]

Bumpage.

[JohnH]

Bumping again. Surely *someone* knows how to get this to work.

[Tom Speirs]

Just a quick thought, but you know the GameEx bezel feature is different from standard MAME bezels, and that will override the MAME ones.

I dont know off hand to fix this, but the easiest way as far I can see would be start afresh with a different MAME install.