Too funny, this came up on my background rotation, it seems some kid got more than he bargained for when he was playing where’s waldo 
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You guys are doing a wonderful job of capturing that unique texture that later Atari CPO surfaces featured (Crystal Castles, for example) – that kinda matte / grainy feel that diffused light so nicely. Just great.
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Thanks @benlogan! I’m glad it feels right to you, that’s certainly the goal. We’ve used a variety of different types of textures – the CPOs I do are in Photoshop, and often from scratch (I recreated the Crystal Castles CPO art from scratch as we didn’t have a great art source), and the textures vary somewhat, I don’t know that they are always super accurate as I’m seldom in the presence of the original cabinets. In the case of Crystal Castles, I think it turned out quite nicely. Our rendered CPOs sometimes accentuate the texture a bit more in order to catch the light better and “look” a bit more realistic, as you could miss the texture if it’s too subtle. At any rate, we certainly strive to capture the look of the cabinets and to make you feel like you’re standing in front of the real thing.
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A quick update on the Vertical Arcade site: I just posted a new update, which adds 16 new games (already posted here) to the collection, and you can now download a Zip file with just the latest update if you already have the rest. If you follow this thread, you may have already downloaded them all, but in case you haven’t, check out the latest at https://www.verticalarcade.com/overlays/latest-overlays .
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You’re always pointing out the hilarious and weird in the cabinet art, @HyperspaceMadness, thank you for that. 
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Awesome. Love that these are packaged as a update. Super convenient. Thanks!
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Hi ALL,
well it’s been awhile, thing got a bit hectic and still are, but hopefully will get back to some new overlays.
But first here is my collection of overlays that I already did and give a bit of an update to fit in with the new style and look that the team is working on. I will give a link to the main folder where you can just grab what you need.
little sample pic:
some of you might notice a few new overlays hidden in there, so hope you enjoy those.
get overlays here (and if you feel something is not working, please PM me)
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Agreed with Walter. Beautiful! Thanks so much for including both MAME and RetroArch. These are incredible. You guys have been so generous with your talents. Amazing thread. Much appreciated, Briball.
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Friends, what is the best way to use the Vertical Overlays with HSM’s Mega Bezel?
First, I assume I should ditch MAME for RetroArch
Second, I should choose the best MAME core for RA. And here it’s where I’m lost, because I always used standalone MAME… I did some research, the core that seems to be the most recommended is the “MAME 2003-Plus”, but after further investigation, it doesn’t even support CPS3.
So, for those using the awesome overlays from this thread with the also awesome HSM Mega Bezel Reflection, how are you doing it? ty!
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I switched to MAME recently, but was having good result with 2016 core if I remember correctly. Would still use RetroArch if resizing window were less labor intensive. Perhaps spoiled of me to say so, I admit!
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someone correct me if i am wrong, but I thought the core had to do with the ROM version, not so much the shader.
What I remember from when I set mine up, You need to have the correct video driver, Vulcan seemed to work for me, after that it’s just setting the shader and screen position and tweak to your liking. just have a look at the HSM shader or Duimon’s thread for more info.
I love the HSM shader, but it’s still in flux(beta) and meant a lot of work on our side to keep up with the releases and changes to the shader configs. But once it’s finalized I am sure I will add it in again. it really adds that extra layer of immersion.
Really hope you get it working!!
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Hey @Bullfrog
So the core will be independent of the shader, I’ve heard that a lot of people try to use Final Burn Neo for everything they can, and the things they can’t they use one of the other Mame cores. The main Mame core stays up to date with mame, and requires a synced rom set (I’m pretty sure…). Some other Mame cores do not require a synced set, like Mame 2003-Plus I think doesn’t, I use Mame 2016 and it is also flexible with the Mame Romset. Also some mame cores support save states and some don’t, I think Mame 2016 does support them.
Edit: Final Burn Neo has a high resolution mode for vector games which I think no other cores have. This really improves the look of vector games.
In terms of the shader @Briball is correct that it has been in flux and has required a bunch of presets to be redone when it changes.
This will for the most part be fixed in the next release which will be after the next retroarch release as I’ve added a few features to Retroarch to make it so that after the update new presets won’t fail to load. You will also be able to load a preset make adjustments to the scaling then save it and only have these few adjustments in your preset as well as texture path updates if you are using it to add the textures rather than standard overlays. This should help with @benlogan’s issue that Retroarch is frustrating to set custom resolution in because the scaling of the screen can be done in the shader.
Anyway a Mega Bezel which doesn’t break is coming…
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Hope I didn’t come across as a complainer, hyperspacemadness! Your work is absolutely appreciated. Thanks so much for upcoming features.
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Thanks for the helpful info @hyperspacemadness. One thing I was wondering… Is it possible to create game specific preset files that are merged into the parent shader preset automatically? I was thinking for distribution, we could then just include a game specific preset file with the proper screen coordinates set, which would then override (or extend) those settings in the base shader preset file. This way each user could have their own preferences in their own personal configuration file and our distribution only supplies the configurations specific to the dimensions of the particular overlay.
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No, definitely not 
It’s something that I know was a real problem for a while so I really wanted to fix it. So I learned some C and dug into Retroarch and fixed it and with some help with one of their really nice devs I got it cleaned up enough and got it merged 
I’ll try to answer this by how it would work right now with my shader save/load changes. So if you distributed a preset which referenced the root MegaBezel-Guest-Venom preset, this preset would have one line which gives a path to the root preset and it would have the paths to your textures as well as the adjustments you made to the shader, perhaps only the position and scaling and bezel width and height.
So then if the user loads this preset and adjusts the screen size and saves it as a per game preset it will save a file the same as your distributed preset, with the texture paths, and other properties which differ from the root preset.
The thing which it doesn’t do right now is do a preset which references another preset with a reference in it, so you can’t have a preset A reference a preset B reference a preset C. I still have to think out how this might be able to work, and still be able to have people save their own presets without losing the second reference. If we were to be able to do this, then the user’s presets would have the least changes in, possibly only screen scaling and position.
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Thanks again @HyperspaceMadness. I think I understand your explanation, so you are saying I could create a game specific preset and distribute that with the overlay, and as long as it references a predefined root preset, the user wouldn’t have to do anything to set up the overlay. The downside is that as it stands, the user wouldn’t be able to specify their own core level preset for instance, and have that inherit the changes from the preset distributed with the overlay. We basically have to ignore the Retroarch global and core level shader overrides and only use presets stored at the game level.
I guess ideally, in my mind, we would still be able to have levels of presets, global, core, and then the game level would inherit those, only applying the unique settings contained in the game level preset file, overriding the parent values. I’m guessing this kind of integration with the RetroArch engine would be a bit more invasive and challenging to implement than what you have right now.
I think what you’ve got sounds workable, if a bit inflexible. Longer term I can see us creating a third distribution of our overlays with the HSM preset files all included and the overlays tweaked to eliminate the embedded black bezel mask we have now. That would be the ideal solution for @bullfrog’s request.
Oh one more question, can the shader scale the screen coordinate settings? So if someone uses a 4K overlay on a 1080p display, it just works without creating additional 1080p specific preset files?
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The thing with distributing presets is that the only really safe thing is to distribute one of the “simple presets” which will have a reference to the core preset which defines all the passes and any of your parameter adjustments. This way you are always shielded from changes from the root preset.
So right now the global vs core vs game presets work such that Retroarch uses the most specific preset available. So are you thinking about something where the game preset references the core preset which references the global preset? I think this might be a tricky to manage 
So would it work for you to work like this: distribute a preset which references the core preset and sets your textures and placement of the screen. Then the user can load this preset then make any adjustments then save this and have only their adjustments saved.
Yes it scales to whatever resolution you’re at, so the same preset file will work at both resolutions.
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Yes, that will work We’re forsaking the shader preset hierarchy built into RetroArch, but I think it’s a perfectly acceptable way to simplify the consumption of these for the end user.
I was more thinking that RetroArch would load the game preset, then also load the core/global preset if they exist, then overwrite any of the core/global values found in the game preset file. I’m guessing this is a completely impossible thing to do with how RetroArch loads presets today so I totally understand your reaction
I think what you have will be totally fine for most users, so no worries!
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Knights of the Round (Capcom - 1993)
Another classic Capcom beat em up, which took a number of cues from the movie Excalibur and blended them with Final Fight style arcade action. This is another game produced in the large marquee format on the Dynamo/Big Blue cabinet line and I purchased, scanned and restored the marquee for this overlay. The CPO was also not readily available so I recreated it in vector format based on reference images.
It’s unlikely you would find a cabinet for this game with this set of artwork in the wild, so I’m happy to be able to replicate that experience with this overlay. Hope you enjoy!
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