How to add Zoomed Artwork to MAME games

[secret80sman]

Guys, some games in MAME have zoomed artwork which is great for the horizontal games because when a bezel is present you have the choice of either the whole bezel and the screen is tiny or full screen where none of the bezel is visible.

With the vertical games if you zoom in you still see bezel on the sides and it really adds to the experience. It would be cool to be able to zoom in on the bezel so some level of it is visible as well.

I know this would involve altering the dimensions in the .lay file of the per game artwork. Can someone detail the process for me step by step and if you have any suggested dimension sizes it would be helpful. Thanks!

[Howard_Casto]

Please learn how to use mame.  Setting artwork_crop to 1 crops artwork. 

[secret80sman]

I figured out how to do it last night by decompressing the artwork zip, editing the .lay file and rezipping the file. If your suggestion is an easier way I will attempt that.

Can you point me towards some good resources so I can brush up on my MAME skills then?

[Howard_Casto]

lol, I think changing a setting in your mame.ini from 0 to 1 is easier than re-editing all of your artwork files. 

As for brushing up on your mame skills.... mame.net, reading the ini, reading the text files in the "docs" folder, using "mame.exe -showusage"  at the command line.  Mame's settings are 90% self-explanitory.  You just need to RTFM.

[secret80sman]

Thanks man, it seems I skinned the cat with a pocket knife instead of a machette. 

I was heavily into MAME some time ago and life got in the way but I am attempting to get back on the horse and relearn what I've forgotten so will use some of the holiday down time for just that.