Square themes

[artyfarty]

Hi all,

I built an arcade cabinet that uses an lcd monitor in portrait orientation, with the display set as 1:1 square 1080x1080 resolution.

I've been using attract mode with the halation-crt layout, which works fine but is fairly basic.

Just wondered if there are any recommendations for any fancier themes that work in this square format?

[verion]

square screen? this is new (to me). I'm assuming that this is a 16:9 screen that is partially masked by a bezel - so there is only a square part of the screen visible - right?

And do you play your games stretched/squished to the square format - completely filling full (square) screen, or with black bars?

[artyfarty]

Yes, the 16:9 screen is masked by a real bezel, only a square in the centre is visible. The Windows display/desktop is set to be 1080x1080, and I run MAME "full screen" within this resolution.

I have the MAME option to display the bezel artwork, and the games are displayed within this - there is a slight black bar left/right for vertical games and top/bottom for horizontal games within the bezel artwork.

I've attached an example of how it looks. The build thread for the cabinet is at BYOAC http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=147713.0

[xbs]

How did you set the windows resolution to 1080x1080?

The cabinet looks amazing, well done!

[artyfarty]

I'm using an NVidia GTX 750Ti graphics card, and there is an option in the NVidia Control Panel to create a custom resolution.

I've heard other people have used a utility PowerStrip to do something similar, but haven't used it myself.

[verion]

Looks really good. I was thinking about square display before - as it is equally good for vertical and horizontal games. But I know I couldn't stand black stripes so it means I had to design custom bezel for every game. And even for my small collection of 150 games it is unrealistic - and it makes it more like a "fantasy project" to me.

[xbs]

Using a custom res doesn't make the image quality worse as it's not the monitor native res?

[artyfarty]

I'm using a 1080p panel (1920x1080), so setting the resolution to 1080x1080 is actually a 1:1 pixel mapping. With the monitor rotated, there is just an unused part of the screen top and bottom, which I have masked off with a physical bezel.

[bionictoothpick]

Looks really good. I was thinking about square display before - as it is equally good for vertical and horizontal games. But I know I couldn't stand black stripes so it means I had to design custom bezel for every game. And even for my small collection of 150 games it is unrealistic - and it makes it more like a "fantasy project" to me.

If you are using Retroarch, you could make custom bezel for each system pretty easily...and with your skills...

[artyfarty]

If you use MAME, you just download a MAME artwork pack, and it displays a virtual original bezel matched to every game.

[bionictoothpick]

For your setup that would work perfect I guess. My machine is vertical, so this lends itself better with the Marquee and such:
http://mamelayplus.jimdo.com/galeria/custom-standard-cabs/

They can be converted for retroarch too.


So many options...so little time.