Using overlays as borders

RetroArch Nintendo consoles
#24

Ok, here it is: https://anonfiles.com/file/eb16598707ca88845f30d3191a5d9f0f

105 borders from Super Game Boy.

The list goes like this:

A Bugs Life Adventures of Lolo Aladdin Animaniacs Aqualife Arcade Classics Arcade Classics 4 Blaster Master Bomberman Collection (2, Normal and Unused) Bonk/Genjin Collection Captain Tsubasa Castlevania Legends Chase HQ Desert Strike Detective Conan Donkey Kong (Game & Watch Style border) Donkey Kong Land 1 Donkey Kong Land 2 Dragon Quest (4 Borders with different styles) Galaga & Galaxian Game&Watch Gallery 2 GB Donkey Kong GB Toshinden Goemon Harvest Moon Hercules Killer Instinct (It’s quite cool) Kindaichi King Of Fighters ‘96 (4 Borders, different colors) Kirby 2 (2 Borders, Japanese and International) Koguru Konami Collection (6 Borders, Antartic Adventure, Castlevania, Contra, Frogger, Gradius, VicViper) Lil’ Monsters Lodoss War Mach GoGoGo! Mario Picross 1 Mario Picross 2 Mega Man V Mickey Mouse Magic Wand Millipede Mini4Boy (2 Borders, Normal and Unused) Molemania Money Idol Mulan Nettou Real Bout Nettou Samurai Spirits Nettou World Heroes One Piece 1 One Piece 2 Pac-In-Time Page Master ( I find it really ugly, but whatever) Pocahontas (Ugly too) Pokemon Red Pokemon Blue Pokemon TCG (3 Borders, Japanese with “Pocket Monsters” in the border, the US/EUR one without text, and one unused) PuyoPuyo 2 Quest : Fantasy Challenge/ Quest RPG: Brian’s Journey (I didn’t knew that there was a GBC version, I hope it’s any good!) Revelations: The Demon Slayer Rock’n Monsters (Cool title xD) Same Game Small Soldiers Space Invaders Street Fighters 2 (9 Borders, based on the stages of each of the playable characters) Tetris Attack Toy Story Urban Strike Wario Land 2 (9 Borders, from each of the worlds of the game) Yu-Gi-Oh Capsule Monsters

I added others that I can’t relate to any game: Handheld (The border is like a handheld console or some kind of Pokedex) Unknown (It’s a border with fossils) Spaceship (It’s quite nice)

I tested every one of those in my Wii and I didn’t have any problems, I hope everything is correct for all of you and.

Well, that’s it. And of course, the borders are ready to be used so no worries, and enjoy them.

By the way I tried to not include any border that was previously made by Seam or Vague Rant because I didn’t want to disrespect their efforts , although I have the impression that one of the Pokemon TCG borders may be already done…

Sorry for that if it’s the case, I hope it doesn’t presents any problem.

PD: I really don’t know if “Presents a problem” it’s correct, but whatever, it’s not like my english is good to begin with xD.

#25

Awesome job, thanks to everyone!!

#26

Thanks very much guys, these are lovely!

#27

No need for any concern, I don’t make any claims over the borders I ripped, they of course belong to the original authors and/or whoever they were contracted to at the time of their original creation. This is a lot of work you’ve put in, very admirable and will certainly go some way toward making Super Game Boy games more enjoyable in RetroArch. Thanks for the Herculean effort!

#28

No need for any concern, I don’t make any claims over the borders I ripped, they of course belong to the original authors and/or whoever they were contracted to at the time of their original creation. This is a lot of work you’ve put in, very admirable and will certainly go some way toward making Super Game Boy games more enjoyable in RetroArch. Thanks for the Herculean effort![/quote]

Of course, but you put time into making those, and is the least I can do : respect what was already done. Besides, you people created the configs, did the research needed and made them first. I just came and repeated the process beyond boredoom, lol.

Anyway, let’s not get corny. I’ve looked at the GBA borders and I must say that a few of them are quite ugly or just painful to look at (That black one with flowers, my god). So I tried to make a couple of them to test when my stupidity decided to show up once more.

I spent about 8 minutes comparing the borders that you have in your DropBox link and the screenshots I made for testing, and I didn’t understan why they couldn’t fit. Until I rememberd that you and SuperrSonic explained all just below, AND the correct borders were two clicks away from me.

I have to give myself a Promotion for such incompetence.

After reading again those posts I made three, and they work wonderfully. But now i’m pondering about the idea to make one border for each core in case someone don’t want the infamous black borders in their Tv’s. But i need to look for the correct resolutions of each system, and even then I have my doubts ( For example Snes uses both 256x224 and 256x240, maybe just doing one for each will be the best fix). Maybe a Retroarch styled border, with the Space Invader. But for now it’s just an idea.

For now I’ll put this here: 3 GBA Borders for Retroarch (Stone, GCNON & Planets). All credit goes to you all, I did literally nothing but copypaste… https://anonfiles.com/file/173d3fdae25baa8b5d0554d95796ea79

#29

Hi, I’ve been looking to use many of the great overlays that have been shared in these boards, but I can’t seem to understand exactly how to acquire a smaller picture that stays at the center of the screen and fits inside the borders themselves.

Specifically, I’m using a CRT TV for Retroarch and I’d like to achieve a picture that doesn’t feature any pixel-warping whatsoever and keeps proper proportions. Could anyone please give me some accurate indication in order to do so, namely what settings I have to change? I’ve tried messing around with the custom aspect ratio option, but to no avail: the picture doesn’t get centered within the border.

Thanks in advance for any help. This emulator is truly wonderful, but sometimes it’s really hard to grasp which option produces which result.

#30

Generally, you just need to enable integer scaling and then choose your overlay. However, if you are playing on a CRT, integer scaling at native resolution for most home consoles–such as SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, etc.–will probably still fill your screen unless you are emulating a handheld device, such as NeoGeo Pocket, which has a lower native resolution than a 480i TV.

#31

Hello, i wanted to give Gameboy Classic and Game Boy Color borders a shot. I tried to download the packs from the anonfiles links provided in the previous posts but they are down. Does anyone have a border for GB Classic and one for GB Color? Not game specific, but something like this and this:

Those two are all i need. I use a CRT TV btw, 4.3PAL Wii connected with SCART if it makes any difference.

#32

You could try the dropbox link in the op, there you’ll see a folder named /misc gfx/RA ready/ and you’ll see the borders for GB, GBC and Game Gear VC. In the root folder are the originals, which you can use to fit your screen’s needs. The already made ones are 456 lines long without filtering and fit the GB© display iirc as 320x288(2x). It’s all ripped either from the game data or raw screenshots.

You should use the build of gambatte in this folder: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pleveuq50h3lub5/u8uJI-qmqF I replaced the grayscale palette for nicer looking colors much alike to the image of Kid Icarus you posted.

Try it with this config: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ev25vk9lvugzxfb/GameBoy.cfg

Right now using overlays as borders for the Wii/GC version is not properly implemented(because of the multiple resolutions) so it needs a lot of fiddling to get right which is why I stopped using it, but the borders are still useful for whatever else you need; the GBA ones are GC/Wii specific so it might be a bit weird to use elsewhere without editing.

#33

Thank you very much SuperrSonic! I’ll try them ASAP and report back.

=EDIT= After tinkering with .cfg and the png files i now have borders for GBA, GB, GBC & GG. Thanks once again man! I have a little space (vertical line on the right) in the blank center of the overlays but i know it is due to me using CRT and the overscanning it. Still, it looks much better now!

#34

I’m curious about that, could you explain in more detail? Does it happen with every overlay? If the blank space is inside and the game display is not filling out then it’s an issue with either the wide resolution(GB, GBC and GBA should be using 608x480) or “overlay0_rect” was not set properly which wouldn’t be an issue if “overlay0_full_screen” worked.

EDIT: I just checked that config, it seems I forgot that I never got overlay rect to look right with Game Boy borders, sorry that’s the reason you see a blank space.

#35

Really? I thought those links would live a little longer. Wait and I’ll re-upload the big pack.

-Edit- Here it is, DropBox link:

And the 3 borders of GBA:

…And I even managed to recover some weird borders I made back then, with Nes, Super Nintendo and Genesis/Mega Drive controllers:

They’re not that great, but maybe someone gives them use.

#36

Thank you Maeson, some of those look great! Also, have you considered a Sega Master System border?

#37

These not be of any use for the Wii version?..

http://retroarchborders.blogspot.co.uk

#38

Yeah, back then I wanted to make a border of each console supported on RA Wii, but I stopped after those three because I thought they weren’t that great and people most surely wouldn’t use or like them…

I’ll look at this later, I have some borders half done.

I have no idea those existed, I’ll take a look at them. The CFG is different, but I guess that it’s possible to make it work, alttough you may need a BIG screen (Or make the game resolution small) to see most of the border.

#39

The configs are useless because “overlay0_full_screen” does not work in the Wii/GC version yet. The only way you can make borders work is to manually use the rect function and ‘guess’ until it looks right.

The borders would also need to fit 640x480 or using anamorphic widescreen is also possible to get a wider border(e.g. Kirby’s Dream Collection does this automatic with an 832x456 image).

#40

I can use this on my 4:3 CRT? btw, can someone upload the overlays with cfg on dropbox? anon files dont work for me =| Edit: tutorial to make the cfg files? :slight_smile:

#41

Yes.

Not worth the trouble if you ask me. I would wait until overlay0_full_screen is supported.

See https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/w … figuration and check the bit where it says “Full-screen vs. full-viewport overlays”. Enabling that would simplify and perfect the usage of overlays as borders but it may be a long time before it happens since the Wii port doesn’t get version specific work done as it did before. Basically we didn’t get this option because the width resolution can be changed at anytime.

You can follow the info on this thread to figure out how to do it but don’t expect quality.

#42

Yes.

Not worth the trouble if you ask me. I would wait until overlay0_full_screen is supported.

See https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/w … figuration and check the bit where it says “Full-screen vs. full-viewport overlays”. Enabling that would simplify and perfect the usage of overlays as borders but it may be a long time before it happens since the Wii port doesn’t get version specific work done as it did before. Basically we didn’t get this option because the width resolution can be changed at anytime.

You can follow the info on this thread to figure out how to do it but don’t expect quality.[/quote]

Thanks for the aswer, I tried the ones of Maeson and they look nice! :slight_smile:

#43

Well since you act like you’re still not sure how it works, I’ll give you a quick run through.

In the opening post there’s some info on the subject but at the time I wasn’t exactly clear on what I had to do to imitate the GBP or anything else, so there’s some stuff you should probably not follow.

At the bottom of that post I left a link to a dropbox folder with a bunch of ripped borders. And if you look at the fourth post you’ll find info on how to make the overlay cfg file.

Make a text file and copy this:

overlays = 1 overlay0_overlay = name.png overlay0_full_screen = true overlay0_rect = “0.2,0.3,0.5,0.4” overlay0_descs = 0

It’s fairly simple to make out what each function does. Just focus on overlay0_rect, if it’s an SGB border use “0.0,0.012,1.0,0.976”, if it’s a GBA border use “0.049,0.0,0.902,1.0”. As previously stated overlay0_full_screen does not work, but if it did you would not need rect or to use RA’s scale setting.

Maeson’s pack simply offers both .png and .cfg but it’s made out of the same info you find here (the border pack, and the rect numbers).

You should also follow the horizontal reso of the border with the x480 screen resolutions if you can. Additionally some GBA games can get pretty bright so you can take advantage of the overlays and edit a border so the inner bit is a block of pure black with around 20% transparancy.

That’s about all that comes to mind, if there’s something you don’t understand just ask and I’ll try to answer.