SITE UPDATE - December 15, 2018

In-Game Artwork: 198 sets new or updated

Everything old is new again... sort of.

Took a break from "old MESS" stuff to reorganize things a bit here; main goal to get rid of the separate "Other Artwork" section, by combining everything into one database:

• 185 files; 306 pieces of artwork; combine everything into the existing files


• Playtest everything, to ensure everything was done correctly


• And good thing I did; needed to fixed a lot during playtesting


• Rename all the screenshots

This is something I have been wanting to do for a while now, as it really was a bit of a pain actually using "Other Artwork" and keeping it all separate. This makes it easier for me, and makes it easier for the MAME user, so win-win. With that, everything from the "Other Artwork" page is now part of "In-Game Artwork," with the exception of Monaco GP. As this is not emulated by MAME yet, it has been moved to the Unemulated Artwork page for download. The artwork file does work with HBMAME.

Not content with this being the only thing in the update, I had to put some new stuff in, seeing as I am still behind and playing catch up:

• Originally, I planned to add in the LCD handheld stuff next; I started with tsharr2 and kblades. The interesting thing about how the artwork for the LCD games works, is the backdrop artwork has to be setup as an overlay. This has the side-effect that, if only setup as an overlay, you don't see the entire backdrop on screen. I figured out a workaround for that, which is included in these two games, but I do not have the patience right now to setup every game that way. Next update, I am going to simply add everything else in as they are already setup, for the most part. Huge thanks to hap, SeanRiddle, and others that have being doing a ton of work getting these preserved. (For credit, far as I can tell, hap has done the artwork cleanup on almost all of them, along with the LAY files, while SeanRiddle did most of the scanning, but I am pretty sure other people contributed, also. If some kind soul knows who did what for each game, and would like to post a summary on the MW artwork forum, it would be appreciated. Otherwise, I guess I will have to read through that 300 page thread and make notes). Nevermind... I can see now that hap put notes in every single file... I just was not paying attention very well.


• Added the bezel form the Euro version of Black Widow, cleaned up by lamprey, based on pics from Alpha1


• Added marquee, speaker grill, and cpo artwork for Crystal Castles, cleaned up by Nightvoice; I adjusted the colors so all three pieces matched the original cabinet


• Added bezel and inner artwork for Dog Patch, cleaned up by Comboman; colors adjusted as needed


• Added bezel and marquee for Outzone; bezel scan supplied by Smitdogg; artwork cleanup by udb23


• To test out some of the layout changes Vas Crabb added in 0.200, updated the artwork for aim65


• Fixed the gearshift in chasehq; thanks to ArcadeShadow for the heads up


• Just for fun, added some widescreen artwork to the four Gradius games and Space Harrier.

The Generic Artwork has been updated with instructions on how to use fallback and override artwork, thanks to the update added in 0.194 by phulshof. The artwork example used on that page is based on the Lagoon Nebula photo from HubbleSite, just because I thought it was a cool photo. These are now also part of In-Game Artwork, listed as genhorizontal and genvertical.

Other site updates and fixes:

• Fixed a bug on the In-Game Artwork page, where the screenshot view links for some games were listed in descending order, rather than ascending order


• Fixed a bug on the In-Game Artwork page, where sets that had more than one category-type artwork showed as two separate entries on the page.


• Updated the totally out of date Compiling page, and moved it to the MAME section of the site menu. For now, it simply points to the Tools page of MAMEDev.org, as that documentation is already well-written.


• Moved the Other Artwork page to the MAME Artwork section of the site menu. Added pages with more info on Game Compilation, Widescreen, and Other Artwork.

I know I said it last time, but next update really will be adding in all of the handheld artwork that hap and Sean Riddle have been working on. After that, I need to get better at time management, so that I can clear the backlog of need to do stuff; I still have artwork that has been sitting here for years that still needs scanning.

Quote:

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The interesting thing about how the artwork for the LCD games works, is the backdrop artwork has to be setup as an overlay. This has the side-effect that, if only setup as an overlay, you don't see the entire backdrop on screen. I figured out a workaround for that, which is included in these two games, but I do not have the patience right now to setup every game that way.