The Real Ghostbusters (1987) (Data East)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UvuZh7AIyyXMWSmxvvJxTUwOCGVhZlzs/view?usp=sharing
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@HyperspaceMadness Thank you! I am happy to share the progress on the front end theme!
Building one of these cabinets can be difficult because buying one in flat-pack format is sold out from the one vendor that has them. But in my opinion, those are too small. They only support a 32 inch screen with a huge hard bezel cabinet, or a 40 inch screen pedestal. I feel these need a 43 inch for the cabinet and 50 inch for the pedestal. That’s why I’m trying to learn to modify some existing designs from vcabinet.es. Also finding a 4 x 8 CNC is somewhat difficult.
I thought about designing a custom Vigolix that can support a vertical screen. Then it might be easier to trace and cut by hand. But that is a skill I would need to learn. As I have no experience with CAD or Fusion 360 design. I was hoping that if I can get the front end software side in order, and make it easy for people to set up a vertical arcade system, more people with the resources could start developing cabinets around it. Maybe I could get it running on a Pi or something like that so the entry costs would be low and that might inspire designers and builders.
I have definitely been paying attention to your shader. I think it looks really awesome! The only problem is I am currently using MAME .lay files in retroarch. This method only supports single-pass shaders. So complex shaders like yours do not load. I found a tool I’m looking into from a different thread that might be able to convert mame layouts to retroarch cfgs.
I look forward to seeing your progress as well regarding future versions and performance gains!
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Great to see the work being continued! Really strange to see the mock ups on those cabs (I had to do a doubletake, I couldn’t remember those two CPO overlays sitting side-by-side like that in any of my pictures at that time 
) they were hanging on the wall in my old workshop, and now live apart as the one on the left was a present for my twin - it’s a nice memory to be reminded of so thanks.
And I totally agree with your thoughts on the close up displays, I’ve since built another two of these vertical cabinets and while I love the control panel overlays for a vertical set up without a cabinet (much like you currently have from your pictures) one that you would sit some distance from, the whole aesthetic is far more pleasing with a coin door approach or something similar when you have the controls Just there underneath it as mine are for sure, definitely good to have the choice!
The original idea to drop those CPO’s in took some convincing for all of us at the time to get it feeling right (there everyone is entitled to build their overlays as they feel of course!) but keeping a quality/visual consistency was key we thought. I’m really pleased you are looking at this, just like @ArsInvictus I’ve had my head more focused on my family and work but I’m super proud of everything that the community here did (and still achieves !) through lockdown and I hope to contribute more in the future to.
I’ll drop a link to the coin door PSD’s if that’s useful? I’m not sure which ones you are using but you’re welcome to make use of it and anything else I put together for these.
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Heya! @PapaShine ! I think you did a great job on those cabinet builds! I hope you don’t mind, and with your permission, I may do a couple more mock-ups based on those photos. Since I don’t have the resources to build one myself at the moment.
I am actually looking to modify that design, I wanted to add more room in the control panel as I feel it’s cramped. I also wanted to make it serviceable so you could lift it up or access it from underneath easily. I also wanted to add a section in the rear, or the bottom for a soundbar. As well as a rear ledge for any additional hardware like a computer, Pi, or power strip.
I would love to find a forum or a place where we could discuss physically building these things, as I would love to see your progress. Or get any tips or tricks for how you went about building it. Did you CNC yours or cut it by hand? I was looking at building the Upright v.3 myself. I have so many images I’ve collected over the Internet with ideas, and notes related to the conceptual build. It would be great to have a place to share it and learn from others to create the best open-source CAD files.
I was also thinking about building what I’m calling the “electronic poster version”. This would basically be a 50 inch TV hung on the wall in portrait mode, maybe with a light frame around it to house a small single-board computer. Then a wireless 2.4 GHz controller or wired one could be used. You could even place two of them side-by-side just like in your image, and if they were not playing video games they could be displaying movie posters, music posters, screensavers, or pictures of family. Basically whatever you wanted. The “electronic poster version” would exclusively use the CPO versions to really flesh out the aesthetic. I think this will be a very simplistic and inexpensive way to elegantly experience these vertical arcade games.
I think it would be great if you were able to supply your coin door! I like the Williams one that is used most for general purpose and consistency. It would be cool to be able to get rid of the Williams logo in the middle though. So if I need to bring the coin doors up it wouldn’t say Williams on every cabinet. As some control decks are quite high. It might look strange with so much blank space, so bringing the actual coin door up more into the frame I think could be a nice touch.
Keeping the torch going has really been @walter.farmacia ! As he has been consistently creating new CPO versions. I hope to create coin door versions of his in the future when time allows. Also, I wonder if he already had access to @ArsInvictus PSD files? I wonder if he could get even more ideas or tricks to add into his already fantastic work! It still blows my mind how amazing this community is.
I think what would be really cool wishlist item for personal use if the time ever allowed would be to have basically two general cabinets with a default “CPO”, one horizontal, and one vertical. Kind of like a re-purposed cabinet you might see at an arcade, so if you really wanted to play a game, you could just throw it in with the default CPO or coin door cabinet. As thanks to @ArsInvictus for sharing his PSD files. Rapidly producing marquees might be a little quicker now. 
Although I am curious what AI upscaling algorithm he prefers for creating the 4K versions of the arcade artwork. As they are definitely not all equal. Some are trained on better material than others so they produce better results for our application.
So all in all, I absolutely agree that consistency is key. The CPO and coin door versions both have their strengths and places. I’m still so amazed what this community has accomplished here. I really feel strongly that this project will have an impact on the future and presentation of these classic arcade games moving forward. To me this is something that nobody knows they wanted, and I think once this project gets more attention the format could become quite popular!
Thanks again for everyone checking back in. It’s so glad to hear you all are doing well!
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Yes I think this is very true, I didn’t realize this was such a great format until I saw ArsInvictus’ posts here.
Yeah, the easiest way to use the shader with these kind of graphics is to set up a master preset which scales and places the screen automatically based on the transparent area in the graphic. Then for each overlay with a different graphic you would make a preset which references the master preset, and sets the new image path, and you don’t have to set a custom aspect ratio. In terms of files I think this should be simpler than the overlay cfg + custom aspect ratio override. I set up an example with Magic Sword in the examples package.
If you’re interested in this we could work together to create the a set of presets for all of the overlays. I was thinking of doing this myself at some point anyway.
Yeah that’s very generous and would be awesome, your renders are really amazing, thanks! That Robocop overlay you did is still one of my favourites 
I’m happy to hear you’re doing well
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I was actually thinking of doing the same with @Orionsangel’s stuff after I get done with the Mega Bezel graphics, to get them to work with the current version of the Mega Bezel. Custom viewport coordinates shouldn’t be needed (Since the shader does the scaling.) so it should be fairly easy.
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@HyperspaceMadness and @Duimon I’m not sure if either of you have seen this tool. But it might be useful for what you’re trying to achieve.
It also has the ability to generate a config just from an image utilizing negative space, and It’s open-source so you might be able to modify it for your needs.
Here is another tool that might be useful for a 2 stepped approach, although I think this one is a manual approach, and for .lay files exclusively, but it may help to extract coordinates post process. https://medium.com/@ericmulvihill/generating-mame-bezel-layouts-with-python-317f9dda2e6d
Unfortunately, I can’t commit to any additional tasks because my limited focus is on finishing the front-end interface, learning CAD design, and getting some type of turnkey (bring your own roms) situation up and running on the PI. I will have to downscale everything to 1080P to get this going. But in my initial tests, I was able to get Street Fighter Alpha 3 FBNEO running with run-ahead on 2 frames and zfast curved at 60fps on a Pi4. The board was so hot I could have cooked my dinner on the thing after only a few minutes, so I will also have to look into passive and active cooling options But the results are promising.
I have looked into other single board computers like the odroid line as well, these have significantly more power, but the front end implementation is being themed in attract mode. And unfortunately, this has compilation issues on those boards still. 
MAME lay files are the bulk of my collection over the past few months and they seem to be crashing retroarch on the Linux side for some reason. So I will be forced to use the CFG method for loading them. I hope when time allows, to take a deeper look at the same tools I linked above to see if they can also help me to automate the conversion process for the PI image bezels.
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Ah that’s no problem
Yeah I think the Mega Bezel is probably not for the PI yet given that description of performance. I think right now at least it’s more suitable on a PC with more GPU power.
Yeah the MAME lay format is pretty cool. I was excited enough about the .lay format support being added to Retroarch that I contributed to the bounty, but it still only runs on the GL video driver :(. Given how much the Mega Bezel now does it really fits all the needs I wanted out of the .lay format.
I really appreciate all the work that Cosmo0 has put into these tools, I think it’s a really nice contribution to the community. 
One of the things that is different about the Mega bezel vs something like this is that it can place the screen dynamically, so you don’t need to run a batch process, or store any additional info anymore. Basically the shader reads the image as it loads it and can automatically place the screen dynamically depending on which graphics you give it.
So for a standard retroarch overlay you would need for each game:
-
For each game
- a .cfg file for specifying the Overlay
- an override file for specifying the custom aspect ratio
- Some shader assignment for the crt shader
For the Mega Bezel with automatic screen placement you would have:
- One Master Preset with your parameters set and reference to the crt shader
-
For each game
- a preset which has a reference to the Master preset and sets a new path for the graphic to be used
In the Mega Bezel you can also adjust the screen size on top of the automatic placement interactively with a simple scaling parameter, and you don’t have to tweak the custom aspect ratio resolution values by hand or save an override which is nice.
Anyway, I am really not trying to hard-sell the Mega Bezel 
, it’s just an option that is there if it suits your needs, I wish you luck whichever direction you decide to go, and look forward to see how your project comes together!
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Yeah, in the case of @Orionsangel’s overlays I think the overlay and configuration is really not needed at all. The background graphic can be moved to layer order 12 after the scaling is done.
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Yeah that’s right
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I’m ok with that @Duimon I’ll all for anyone who wants to do that side of the work where you have presets or a github etc. A place to store my work. I don’t have time with my real life job. Thanks to everyone in the community who’s helping out.
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@Orionsangel It won’t be any time soon but, your work is what inspired my project. I would feel honored to help make your current work more accessible. I would also like to increase the number of Mega Bezel Community offerings. 
Maybe I can work on it piecemeal. I’ll contact you privately and we can discuss things.
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Aliens (1990) Konami
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NRVnV8SLfeIf1AS5Nps2RCbl9WxBi7O-/view?usp=sharing!
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@HyperspaceMadness Sounds like a really awesome shader you have developed! I look very forward to playing with that in the near future. I will have to check out your official thread and download some of your presets to get up and running quickly.
A question I do have though, looking at the screenshots, is how does it handle some of the midway bezels (Mortal Kombat), Killer Instinct bezels, and Contra bezels which basically already have a hard shell for the CRT look? Also, do you lose an inch on all corners of screen real estate where your shell pops up to display the reflections? Also are there different sizes available? I guess I should check the thread.
I am having some issues using the supplied retroarch CFG overlay bezel releases from this thread. They just don’t display correctly on my setup at 1080P. The MAME lay files work perfectly and are hassle-free. It’s also really too bad I am unable to load .lay files in linux, they just crash. So I will need to figure this out for the PI version.
Also since the fire is burning slightly again here, I thought I would post a mockup of the front-end with both a 2 column and a 3 column display. A single column display is also available. You have tons of options with this theme in regards to backgrounds and colors. You can also do the fan-art thing. On the current setting, it takes an approximation of the screen monitor, and then blurs it out to create a background that is dynamic for each cabinet. I have sensitive eyes and use dark mode whenever possible so I like my setup a little more moody. This has pretty much been all zpaolo11x with very light input from me on making his theme fit the vertical arcade style.
It also supports searching by category, and letter and all those useful features. Plus after a few minutes a slideshow screen saver starts showing off all the cabinet screenshots at full screen. I will make a video soon showcasing all that stuff. I hope everyone likes the progress so far.
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Yeah go for it, there are lots of options
Really everything is adjustable, if you do have a graphic which already has a bezel that you want to use it’s possible to have the reflection show up on top of this and not generate a bezel.
I like the shots of the front end, looks awesome, I also always lean towards dark mode myself
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@HyperspaceMadness Now that’s really cool. I had no idea your shader could project into the existing bezel. How far can the light diffusion go? Also, how is this possible without bump/normal/displacement maps? Would you happen to have any screenshots of that or presets I could test? My goal is to get the lower-end Pi stuff running for various reasons. But I have a decent PC to play with. I would love to check that out.
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It turns out that just having an image mask on the reflection which matches the bezel image gives a pretty good effect.
Yeah, the Neo Geo preset in the examples (using both ArsInvictus and PapaShine’s great work) does this.
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I love all the discussion happening here and the amazing ideas in support of the packaging etc. I’ve just updated the name of this list to reflect the broader community contributions, hope it doesn’t mess up any of your bookmarks/links.
All this conversation is getting me excited and I think I will try to make some time as the weather here gets cooler to put some more overlays together myself again
Let me know if there are any other ways I can be of help!
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Guerrilla War (1987) SNK
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kIHw9sCuor7g1_MIPNdLCaj57cm_M3AA/view?usp=sharing
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Absolutely love this concept. Would be a dream to have here to home!
1 Like