RetroManager - overlay manager

Tarrasque · November 20, 2019, 11:55pm

Hi all.

I developed a little utility to massively manage overlays and other config files for RetroArch.

Current feature list:

It can detect the “viewport” area inside the overlay and generate RetroArch config files so that a game runs (almost) perfectly inside it.
It can resize overlays to the desired size keeping the aspect ratio.
The resize operation can be based on the full size of the overlay or the viewport, thus maximizing the game playable area and cropping “excess” overlay.

You can find it on GitHub. It’s a command line utility written in Python so it should easily running any system, provided you have Python 3.* installed.

It’s still very rough and I’d like to have feedback to fix and improve it.

github.com

tarrasque73/RetroManager/blob/master/README.md

# RetroManager

## Simple utility to manage RetroArch overlay images and related config files


###Installation

Download the zip file and uncompress wherever you want.

The program is written in Python3 so you'll need the Python language 3.* installed on your system. The program is then OS independent and should work fine on Linux, Mac or Windows.

###Configuration

Rename the default configuration file to "config.ini". The file contains the basic paths for the utility to work.

The "realoverlaybasedir" key MUST point to the path where RetroArch will look for overlay files. This is most important because it's the path that will be written into the configuration files. If it's incorrect RetroArch will not be able to locate and show the overlays. If you see the game running in a small box in RetroArch surrounded by black you probably put an incorrect path in this variable.

All "output" directories will be created automatically if non existant. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL FILES EVENTUALLY EXISTING WILL BE DELETED.

Every basic command that needs input files has it's own "input" keys in its related section. Currently the "overlay_*" and "config_*" commands need to scan the directory containing the original overlays. More on this later. Nothing in this folder will be menipulated or deleted (unless it's an output folder for some other command).

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Tarrasque · November 21, 2019, 10:12pm

Some examples of overlay manipulation, using one of the excellent overlays made by @OrionsAngel.

python retromanager.py overlay_resize "MAME 2016" dkong

Basic rescale, using the original (1920x1080 in this case) dimensions. Used this way the overlay image is simply copied to the destination folder with no processing altogether.

python retromanager.py overlay_resize "MAME 2016" dkong -tx 960 -ty 720 -bc FF0000

Rescale to 4:3 (960x720), using an ugly red to showcase the backgroud filling.

python retromanager.py overlay_resize "MAME 2016" dkong -rm inner -mx 30 -my 30 -tx 1440 -ty 720 -bc FF0000

Rescale to HDReady resolution maximizing the viewport area and leaving some margin around it.

Tarrasque · November 21, 2019, 4:29pm

Running the above examples substituting “generate_all” for “overlay_generate” will also create the config files needed for RetroArch to configure the viewport size and, if you want them, a basic crt shader preset.

They are created under the output folders and must be copied to the folders where RetroArch expects them (default is \config<core>)

The file created for command python retromanager.py generate_all "MAME 2016" dkong is:

aspect_ratio_index = "23"
custom_viewport_height = "859"
custom_viewport_width = "657"
custom_viewport_x = "629"
custom_viewport_y = "109"
input_overlay = "C:\Emulation Stuff\Retroarch\layouts\\dkong.cfg"
input_overlay_enable = "true"
input_overlay_hide_in_menu = "false"
video_shader_enable = "true"
video_fullscreen = "true"

The file for other commands differs only in the calculated custom-viewport_* entries.

Here’s a screenshot of the game running with the following shader.

#reference "..\..\shaders_cg\crt\crt-geom.cgp