@Dreamstate ok, had a little time to do this one for you, so try this out, wanted to try the cpo in this fashion, but can also do the top down if you prefer.
@Dreamstate did a small addition to the marquee so spot the difference time. @Dreamstate i have tried something new, check it out I wonder if you notice.
Hey @Briball, I was also working on a version of Vanguard with the assets from @Dreamstate for this one.
This is not the final version, I was thinking to do multiple versions with different screen sizes. But here is a larger screen version I was working on:
I’ve been avoiding working on overlays you have already done, from an efficiency standpoint. But we also have slightly different styles and I still want to do versions in my own style for some of these, such as Scramble. I’m not sure how we do this in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the community with options. Any thoughts on this?
not sure about the game, but what a bezel.
BTW anybody have any bezel ref for gunman (a boothill and gun fight, alternative version from Tiato) I can’t find much, I was wanting to do boothill then found some alternate version and would want to try doing them all to complete the set.
I don’t know those games at all, but the coin doors look familiar 
ok back from hols and just wanted to get something out, Frogger Zaccaria style but Finding any good ref was impossible, if anybody can point me to good ref for this, bring it on. if you see the ref I used you would be amazed i got this out of it. (if i say so myself)
that coin door does shine nice work @PapaShine
heres the example
Now this is an Oldie, but I played this to death at my bowling alley waaaay back in the day.
To get this to work in retroarch, I think you just have to set the overlay opacity to .7 or what you feel is best, you loose some brightness, I hope someone can tell me a better way. I will put the configs and shadre files in here too, might save some hassle once i get it in. And If anybody wants to do a MAME version PM me and I can send over the files, backdrop and overlay.
here it is:
and get it here boothill PNG
back from hols and just had to do this (was in the works) after seeing what @ArsInvictus and @PapaShine have been up to, hope it’s close to as good as theirs, but don’t get as much time as I would like. And i hope I do this one justice as it’s a classic.
anyway you can find it here: dotron
you’ll probably need to set the screen opacity to .7 or something as retro arch doesn’t have backdrops, like in mame, if you want I can do a mame version with the back drop separated.
and a sample of the overlay:
This looks beautiful @Briball! Great job! I think @HyperspaceMadness was looking for this one…
Is it not possible to just set the partial opacity in the play area in the overlay itself and it would render transparently? I haven’t experimented with it myself.
Thanks Arsinvictus, I tried that, but never got it to work, I thought it would but not sure how the png store the transparency or retroarch interperatres, as when it’s shadows it seems to work but when color images it doesn’t. i tried on a space invader mame overlay conversion but it just didn’t show any transparency. it was driving me nuts.Also on the boot hill I tried.
So if someone knows more please inform us.
If Hyperspacemadness was wanting this, I am glad to have done it, as it’s a small way to give something back to all his hard work!!
Thanks @Briball for the info!
@hunterk, can you provide any guidance on the overlay opacity question here? It seems odd that RetroArch would only interpret 100% opacity correctly and ignore color information for partial transparencies. Is that by design?
Thanks, it’s looking great! 
About the transparency issue, Semi transparent bezels should work fine, and they used to when I was using them. I think that to really get the background image to display properly with the game you would need to have a shader to do it or use the new layouts feature in Retroarch, which I think only runs in gl :(.
The only way I think you could sort of do it with an overlay would be to convert all brightness shading into transparency and have the actual pixel colors be the colors with no darkness, this has the partial effect of a sort of additive blend. This is what I was doing with the bezel highlights in the mega bezel before the bezel was autogenerated.
If you are interested I can add an option in the mega bezel for applying the game image overtop of the backdrop additively which I think is probably what’s needed here.
Also if you can give me a version with the background (Blue buildings) and mid ground (Black with red lines) separate I can do some tests with this…
I’ll get them to you tomorrow.
I used your cpo in place of the original one I was using and it looks great. Do you plan on uploading a higher res version so the detail is crisp and the instructions are legible? I tweaked all the lighting In the rest of the pieces to give it a black light glow and repositioned the bezels and got rid of some stuff in the way. Painted the mask to match the actual cab. I think it looks pretty good. Thoughts?
I didn’t know you had made one already, the marquee looks good, I think i saw this one, but had issues, although yours looks touched up(so if you could share that I can replace). there are a few things with the bezel. the back drop is back lit in the cab by white light so I wouldn’t use the black light effect there and the red inner bezel is also lit from the top with a white fluorescent light. I was copying the stand up cab which i noticed didn’t use the extra green grid graphics (which I personally found distracting and a bit to much and almost doesn’t fit in with the cpo graphics to me.) I will do a touch up round on the CPO.
Yep, it’s the environmental artwork not the upright. The environmental cab inner red bezel is lit by a black light not a florescent bulb.
When I took a look at the backdrop it looked to me like the original looked much as I altered it to look. Like a black light painting. I would bet that the original looked like this and that it changed when it was made translucent so it could be lit from behind with a white bulb. Then you scan it and it ends up looking pretty drab. So, I altered it and I think it looks pretty cool. I’ve lowered the brightness on the green outer bezel since it’s not lit up in the cab. Thanks for the suggestion on that. Cool. I await the high res version.
yep your right the inner is blacklight. but there is a strong fall off on these which is really noticable on the red bezel giving that orange to red. don’t see it that much UV effect on the backplate. that light is also controlled by the game to come on. (which would be cool as I think mame might be able to trigger that)
Yep, what i’m saying is though I didn’t go ultra realistic to what the cabs looked like regarding the background. I think before It was made translucent and then scanned it looked much as I modified It to look. I saturated the colors, deepened the black levels. I left all the buildings intact and didn’t do a massive crop and darken them to the point they disappeared. I didn’t put in a hot spot where the bulb went either. I think it looks cool and I’m actually tempted to do an alternate view where it’s modified to look exactly as it does in the real cabs. Your background differs from the one I have. Mine has a blacked out area where the bottom of the playfield is. I also had to modify the dot mask under where the game discs appear outside that box since they would appear see through If I didn’t darken the background image where they appear.
The orange color you’re seeing is probably room light coming in the cab directly being thrown on the bezel. In a dark arcade you probably wouldn’t see this color shift.
So I scrapped the low res marquee and used the one from Arcade Artwork. Still not the greatest but it’s an improvement in resolution and it’s an actual scan. I messed around with the mask and arrived at something that lets the artwork show through and gives the playfield contrast so it doesn’t look see through. Adjusted the brightness on the bezels. I also removed the playfield grey floor that I’ve always hated. Simple adjustments in MAME contrast to 2.0 and reduction in brightness to 0.72 made is disappear.
Can you post a screenshot of your art during gameplay? i’m super curious to see what yours looks like. Man, this game has held up pretty well for it’s age. It’s still really, really fun to play and I’m still impressed with everything about it. Sounds, graphics and i think the cabs are a masterpiece. I played this in the environmental cab In the mid 80’s. I remember it all like it was yesterday. The feeling I got when i was in that cab. The bright colors from the black lighting, the strobing and flashing of the multitude of other lights in the cab. The surround sound. Really hope I can play in one someday again. I wasn’t too bad at It either. I think I could easily get to level 10 every time I played. Seemed like I could get a good half hur out of one credit.I see what you’re doing, and I noticed my background was missing the black floor shadow thing, but wanted to see how this looked. As i saw on a video the back of the inlay and it looked like there was a black piece stuck on to make the shadow from behind. I see that I do need to add that in.
Anyway here’s a phonecam shot but it gets over exposed the second shot shows it better and how it is in my pin cab.
