Game is full-screen behind Overlay?

Installed Retroarch and using MAME 2016 core. The game overlay appears, but the game video is not fitting inside the Overlay. I copied the (game).cfg file into the Config folder, but Retroarch seems to ignore it? Not sure what I’m missing. Please help!

The overlay system is intended for touchscreen controls that appear over the screen, but people have adapted this functionality to make bezels and borders and whatnot. In short: RetroArch doesn’t resize the game image to fit inside overlays because it’s not intended to do so.

However, you can shape RetroArch’s game image however you like in settings > video > scaling. Set the aspect ratio to custom and then use the height/width/x/y settings to move and shape it to taste. Then, go to quick menu > overrides and save a game or core override (as needed) and it will load those settings up whenever the game/core is active.

1 Like

Thank you for responding. I’m trying to use Orion Angel’s “My Realistic Overlays”. Following the steps, I thought Retroarch would read the (game).cfg and automatically resize the game screen to fit his overlays. Will I need to resize each and every game to fit their custom overlay? His Realistic Overlays come with their own config settings already set. I’ll try doing it with the aspect ratio way you mentioned.

Yes, you have to do it manually. However, I know some of the bezels are also available in MAME’s artwork/lay format, which RetroArch can load via the ‘video layouts’ menu if you’re using the GL video driver, and these can resize the viewport automatically.

1 Like

Yes, I believe that is what I’m using. There is a Overlays directory and a config directory that has all the images and cfgs for each MAME arcade game pre-sized for each game. Testing with Berzerk, I copied the berzerk.cfg into the config directory … it looks like this:

custom_viewport_height = “563” custom_viewport_width = “788” custom_viewport_x = “557” custom_viewport_y = “258” input_overlay = “:\overlays\arcade\berzerk.cfg”

However, loading Berzerk shows the Overlay, but the Berzerk.cfg file seems to get ignored and the screen is full-size behind the Overlay. Any ideas?

That’s not the MAME artwork/lay format, which would be a zip file with the assets and an xml file inside.

If there’s already a Berzerk.cfg, that’s supposed to be a config override, so you would need to place it in config/[corename]/ and it should start being picked up automatically when the game launches.

1 Like

Yes, thank you. I put the berzerk.cfg in the MAME 2016 and MAME 2015 folders inside the config directory. When I load Berzerk, the overlay shows and the text “Configuration Override Loaded” shows at the bottom - however the game screen is still full-screen behind the bezel/overlay.

I greatly appreciate your patience and help with this issue. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Does the berzerk override include a line about the aspect ratio? If not, make sure you add this to it:

aspect_ratio_index = "23"

which is the code for custom aspect ratio. Or else set your global aspect ratio (by visiting settings > video > scaling with no cores/content loaded) to ‘custom’.

1 Like

That worked! You are a genius! Thank you! Thank you! I’ll test with another game to make sure.

Also, how did Orion Angel get the video to slightly curve around the bezel? It makes it look so real.

I’m so happy right now!

Presumably using a shader. There are some, like crt-geom, crt-lottes and crt-royale (among others) that have a built-in variable curvature effect.

1 Like

It’s all working perfectly now! Thank you so much for all your help!

1 Like

np, glad you got it going :slight_smile:

1 Like

One more thing, tweaking a game to use a certain shader … how do I get Retroarch to save those settings so I don’t have to re-do them each time I load a MAME game?

Thanks again.

quick menu > shaders > set your shader of choice, then go to the ‘save’ menu and you can save a core preset there.

1 Like

Thank you, sir! Everything is working great now.

1 Like