MAME side art

[spisi]

I'm not talking about artwork for the cabinet. What do you call the artwork that fills in the dead space to the left and right when you play a vertical game on a horizontal screen? Thanks.

[Thenasty]

Monitor Bezel

[PL1]

I'm not talking about artwork for the cabinet. What do you call the artwork that fills in the dead space to the left and right when you play a vertical game on a horizontal screen? Thanks.

It's called bezel artwork.

Many of Mr. Do's artwork packs already contain bezel art that you can enable in the MAME Video Options menu.
https://www.mameworld.info/mrdo/mame_artwork_ingame.php

If you don't like the artwork, you can edit the images and/or make a custom .LAY (layout) file.


Scott

[spisi]

Thanks guys!

[HitmanHart]

Yeah...this will be fun once you get it in place.  It's a bit "fiddly" and you have to experiment with them, but once you have them right they just "pop" from the screen.  I spent a few nights a couple of months ago experimenting and figuring them out and once I got them right they work great and look fantastic.

Mame supports them by default, but you have to have them in ZIP files with the correct config files in the files so that Mame knows which ones to display.  For example, you have to use different config files for vertical screens versus horizontal screens.  Mame's documentation is good once you learn to interpret it, but basically the config files specify the art file and the coordinates on the screen (and proportion) to put the game screen under the bezel art.  With some experimentation, you'll have it working in no time.

For me, once I got a vertical game configured (1942 in my case) and a horizontal game configured (Shinobi in my case), I just used those two config files and replaced the artwork in the files for each other game.  Again, once you get it, it makes sense and it's easy to replicate across your games.  If you don't want to do custom for each game, then you can also just set default generic bezel art and go from there (still cool, but not as good as having custom bezel for each game).

Also note that if you are using Sinden light guns that you have to use the correct video mode in Mame, or the bezel art will pop up in front of the Sinden border.  Make sure you set your video mode to BGFX for your games (both in the general settings and in the video mode for game) and make sure it's not "auto" to avoid this issue from happening to you.  Took a couple of hours of experimenting for me to figure that one out...

Good luck!