Absolute classic, one of my favourites and so much more enjoyable with this overlay-playing it with the two joysticks on my cab feels just as frantic and fun as it did on the original!
@ArsInvictus if you want to tweak the lighting at all (and I think this looks awesome as it is), I think the 4k CPO PSD I sent you should have a mask on the darker layer that you can tweak and just paint out the mask to reveal more of the brighter lit render underneath, that should do it!
I brought it up because It was the first thing you mentioned it in your initial post. So I looked for it, didn’t see it, and still don’t. All I see is a huge white hot spot being thrown from a phantom white screen. But as you pointed out additionally, not a big deal.
Sinistar would be an example of that lighting rendered absolutely perfectly. Joust as well. Here’s a picture I found of a bunch of William’s cabs. The Rototron is a bit dimmer than the others but you get an idea of what the look is like on several cabs. It’s so hard finding dark pictures of cabs. Everyone wants to use a flash, or turn on all the lights in the arcade.
So you can see that the light fades on most at the line of the joysticks and is strong up until the line of the bezel glass. Currently we see no light up to the bezel glass line on Robotron, but on the others you did it’s faithful to the way the cabs actually look in dim lighting.
Very cool ref photo!, I’m also happy my marquee lighting looks very close to that!
I hadn’t seen a Bubbles with this format, would be cool to do that cab with the same lighting too 
I’ll try to work on the lighting for Robotron in the next couple days. Thanks @dreamstate!
No worries. Just giving you options. Here’s something. Look at this snapshot. See how the cpo glare fits this? Rototron doesn’t look like this. It’s mostly black with a smattering of colors. Over all brightness level, maybe 20% peak brightness. The way the cpo looks on your render fits this screen that’s probably 100% peak brightness. What I’m saying Is that it really doesn’t fit the amount of glare you’ve put down. It’s WAY TOO BRIGHT man. If this were bubbles, then sure that amount of screen glare on the cpo would be fitting. Even then though, the game doesn’t always look like that and during gameplay the cpo doesn’t change with the game. But, artistic license and all. Ok. But this is way over the top to the point that it looks seriously off on this game. 
I’ve got your snapshots of your overlays as cycling backgrounds on my desktop portrait monitor, and Joust just came up, Wow it looks great! Feels like the real thing, but no cigarette burns! 
Awesome! So when are you getting a vertical cab setup???
That’s still a ways off, this is just a 27inch desktop.
I’ve still got to get the right monitor, figure out my plans and then build my beast, I’ve got a box of controls in the other room waiting to be installed in something 
I can’t wait to see it when you get done! We’ll have a ton of great overlays waiting for you 
Totally agree about the success of that Joust overlay. They all look amazing, but this one is extra special.
Blaster
And here’s Blaster, another Williams classic, though not as well-known as some of the others here. I remembered this game from seeing it on the early 80s TV show Starcade (which you simply must watch) but I don’t recall if I ever played it. Another Eugene Jarvis creation, it continues the Robotron story and essentially rolls Robotron, Defender and Galaga together into a first-person space shooter. it’s surprisingly psychedelic and trippy, I can only imagine playing this game on shrooms.
This overlay uses a photographic CPO (a 3D rendered one is on the way, I will update the thread here), and I also made the default view a bit lighter than some of our recent work (the image here looks darker than it does on a cabinet), as I know some have been too dark for some people’s taste – in MAME you can choose the dark version if you like that better. I’m still fine-tuning my overall brightness level in these, so let me know how it looks on your cabinet.
Dark and light versions are always appreciated. If one or the other must be chosen. Choose neither and make the lighting fairly neutral please. That way it’s simple for us to darken or lighten on our end. If the image has bright highlights it usually requires many hours of alteration. Mostly it’s impossible to make a super highlighted area look neutral or dark once it’s rendered like that. I’ve been doing neutral lit/unaltered and darkened versions of all the cabs in my MAME artwork files. It’s nice being able to look at the art both ways.
I love most of what Eugene Javis has made (with he possible exception of the Crusin USA series and some of his recent RAW THRILLS cabs) and this completely passed me by till earlier this year! thanks for the Overlay, great work as always @Thoggo, hopefully, I’ll have time to get that 3D render done in the coming weeks for this too
@Dreamstate, with all due respect I have to politely disagree with you on Robotron, I don’t think its seriously off on that game, and it’s not over the top - if we’re only ever going to compare this stuff to the photo’s taken in arcades in lowlight then sure, but we’re always looking at something subjective - in lowlight in a dark arcade you would see far more of the CPO in the marquee lighting which is really what we’re trying to show there (and i agree, it could be toned down, feathered back a little) - and I have seen a whole row of these with my own eyes - I’m only stating this as the issues you raise are (again) subjective and if you really have a problem with the light on a control panel, etc please reach out and I can hand you render to tweak it to save you the hours you have to spend fixing them. These CPO’s are layered PSD’s with 3 lighting passes to make it simple for the artist to configure, the fall-off is done using a mask on the bright-lit layer so to push it back, shift the fall off, remove it or tone it down takes seconds (and again, with the greatest respect 
) I’d rather tweak it for you then have you toil over the PNG with (as you rightly say) limited results and create any frustrations 
.
With all due respect I disagree. Ars mentioned the lighting being the same on Rotobron with regard to the cpo. The cpo on this is clearly over the top in reflected light from the crt and doesn’t remotely resemble the previous cabs that have this lighting effect from the marquee. These cabs are intentionally made to look like they’re in a dim arcade yes? Ok well the only time the cpo on that particular cab looks that bright is when it’s in a room with all the lights on. While the rest of the cpo and entire cab look like they are in low light.
So I completely disagree with you and my reason is clear. The full white screen shot i provided looking completely suitable with the cpo reflecting that much light. Robotron doesn’t look like this. If this is artistic license. Cool. Then why mention it’s lit like the others in this series? Clearly, it’s not and that’s why i mentioned it. Because he did. I’ve noticed that the cpo reflections from the crt are getting steadily brighter and brighter. As others have noticed that the art is getting darker. They don’t like it and I’m voicing my opinion that I’m not fond of this increased brightness on the cpo. When you make things extreme one way or another with these it makes it almost impossible to make it look different. Very dark art with harsh shadows and reduced color are impossible to make neutral or bright. Conversely, bright art with huge highlights, massive brightness, reflections that make things look like they’re wet or made of glass, that look like there’s floor to ceiling windows at mid day behind the player make it hard if not impossible to make neutral. When you combine these on one cab it looks off. Way off. JMO.
Others who shall remain nameless have also commented to me that they don’t like bright reflections on art provided here either and prefer more neutral art. This person is one of your team. So, take my comment with a grain of salt and I don’t want it to sting. Opinions change and maybe my own will as well. But until then you’ve heard my own.
I appreciate your honesty and of course always welcome feedback and opinions, sorry if I caused any offence @Dreamstate - just offering a solution to you, will take that all onboard 
No offense taken. We have different opinions and yours is as valid as my own. Your art is yours. But when you provide it for public consumption you will get people commenting on it, negative or positive. Some like myself will alter it. Some will use it and claim it as their own. This Is the way things are. It’s all good.
A further clarification of my point as I re read your post again and missed some stuff on my first read. You said on this that you’ve tried to make the light brighter from the marquee on the cpo. I think If that was the intent and it’s not supposed to be from the crt, that hasn’t been successful. To me, most of the top of the cpo looks like it’s reflecting light from a fully lit crt, like in the capture I provided. The light from the marquee in previous cabs was different. It didn’t look like it was from the crt. It wasn’t a harsh white reflection from the direction of the crt on a glossy cpo coating. The lighting on the ball tops was from above on the other cabs. On Rotobron it’s from directly in front with a diffuse glow. The cpo texture was lit from above on the others, the Robotron it’s lit from the front with a harsh shadow on the opposite side of each and every little bump. Both of these are tell tale signs that the light is coming from the crt and not from above. Joust on the right, Rotobron left. One has a light source from the top, the other from the front. If light were coming from the marquee you would see it right up to the top of the cpo touching the bezel as you do on joust and you see in each and every picture of these cabs online. When you see light coming from the crt it’s missing from the top of the cpo because light cant get there as there’s usually a gap between the top of the cpo and the crt. That gap is reflected like a mirror when you have light coming from the crt as you can clearly see on the robotron cpo It’s clearly missing light from the marquee.
As I said previously, the Sinistar and Joust cabs display the lighting from the marquee beautifully. Spot on. It looks like literally every photo I’ve seen in lower light conditions. If trying to simulate a realistic low light look on this cab was your intention then I’m going to have to say that the top of the cpo didn’t end up looking like it belongs with the rest of the cab… unless it’s being lit from a fully white crt screen. In the end it is what you made it and I’ll try to change it to suit my needs on my end. Thanks for taking the time to comment and not ignoring me. It’s greatly appreciated and so Is your masterful work.
Thanks @Dreamstate, I appreciate the kind words 
and believe me I see plenty of opinions on my art everyday from the public through work so it’s expected!
On the light, I didn’t mean brighter by design (again, very easy to adjust here), just that it’s only really meant to be that marquee Light and not the CRT on this, if it’s too bright it’s just a mask over the layer so the light can be painted back in over the top, super easy! have you got photoshop?
Hi all,
There’s been a fair amount of “passionate” dialogue here of late and I felt that it’s something that should be addressed and discussed in a direct, and (hopefully) constructive manner. This might get lengthy, but I think it’s important to level set in terms of expectations for how we work together as a community going forward.
First, I want to say that I am immensely grateful for all the contributions from everyone on this forum, whether it is in the form of actual artwork or just valuable suggestions and healthy constructive feedback. I started making these things because I’m a lifelong fan of these games and I do enjoy having some nice artwork to enhance the experience. There really wasn’t much being done in 4K when I started and I really felt the higher resolution made a huge difference in the quality of the artwork. So, this is something I figured I could do myself, just to fill the gap and have some nice graphics for my own cabinet.
I have no background in graphic design or any of these tools btw, my day job is as an IT executive at a large financial institution. So I have to say I am at best an amateur or just a dilettante when it comes to this kind of work. But, I’ve found that I really enjoy it and love learning new tools and techniques to improve. And despite my illiteracy in this space, I’ve gradually learned and evolved my techniques and style over time and also made the switch to the vertical format, which had a dearth of overlays available but has seemed to have developed a lot of momentum in the emulation community recently!
My point in all this is that 1) I’m doing this because I love these games and 2) because it is FUN!
I’ve also been fortunate enough to have found a great group of talented artists, all of whom have more background in graphic design than I do, who want to work together as a team and make great art. Since they’ve joined the quality has gone far beyond anything I’d expected to accomplish and at this point, I think these overlays have achieved a level of polish and quality the surpasses anything else I’ve seen, even from the game companies themselves, to be honest.
But as we go forward, I want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the fact that this is for FUN, and that we also respect one another, both from the perspective of the work, but also as individuals and artists.
So here are a few additional thoughts about how we work together and the design and stylistic choices we’ve made on these things:
And lastly, we expect to (and do ourselves) treat each other with respect and both accept and give criticism in a way that is considerate of each other’s feelings and the hard work that goes into every one of these things. We expect the same from this community. The tone and tenor of the words we use is important, and nobody should feel dismissed or devalued because of their opinions or preferences. So please consider your words carefully when providing suggestions or observations.
I’ve spent countless hours and thousands of dollars of my own money to find, restore and provide the highest quality artwork for these overlays. And without the work of myself and the others working on this artwork, we wouldn’t have any overlays at all, and I for one would much rather have an imperfect overlay than no overlay at all!
Apologies for the lengthy post, but I felt it was important to provide some context to everyone in terms of what we are doing and why we are here.
Thanks!
Ars
Beautifully communicated, Ars. You are as talented a writer as you are graphic designer. Totally agree with sentiment expressed. I’m on board
Cool speech Ars. 
