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Decorations
In the 80s and 90s, most video game screens had a 4:3 aspect ratio. Nowadays, screens mostly use a 16:9 ratio, which means that they provide extra space on the sides compared to a 4:3 aspect ratio.
Rather than stretching out the 4/3 image to fit into a 16/9 model, you can fill the extra space with a background image that provides an even more immersive experience. You can simulate the looks of an old TV set, or even a background that matches the game you are playing. We call this type of decoration a bezel.
Not every system and emulator supports bezels. Most Retroarch cores should support the right bezel out-of-the-box. Standalone cores and more modern system often do not support bezels or do not need any, because the systems already use 16/9 ratio.
The DECORATION
menu provides you several options for this:
- several
AMBIANCE
options that simulate an retro TV set or an old arcade alley - integration with the Bezel Project that provides personalized bezels per gaming system, and for many of them even personalized bezels per game! You can select the systems you want to enable theBezelProject from the menu
UPDATES & DOWNLOADS
→THE BEZEL PROJECT
.
You can also add your own bezels to Batocera.
Example of a well known arcade game, with theBezelProject on (and curvature
shader applied).
If you have a nice TV and ask for a 4K 3840×2160 resolution to the emulators, but with a bezel that is HD 1920×1080: by default Batocera will add black borders around the bezel. If you want your display to be full screen, you can either:
- switch to a lower resolution (like 1920×1080)
- turn on the STRETCH BEZELS option in GAMES SETTINGS
- add a line
mame.bezel_stretch=1
in yourbatocera.conf
for each emulator you want to stretch, orglobal.bezel_stretch=1
if you want to enable it for all systems.
Turning on bezel stretching for high resolutions has a significant impact on emulation performance.
Decorations (bezels) customization
Create a new bezels set
- Connect to your batocera.linux box, via the network for example
- In the
/userdata/
folder, create a directory calleddecorations
(next toroms
,bios
, …)
- Inside the
decorations
folder, create a new directory, let's call itmybezels
- From the main batocera.linux menu go to GAMES SETTINGS → DECORATIONS
- Check that the
mybezels
decoration is available and select it
- Note 1: default bezels are available at our github page. All default bezels have a 1920×1080 resolution and will be resized to your resolution, as long as your aspect ratio (width/height) is at least 16:10 (i.e. the screen is “wide”, like 16:9 compared to a 4:3 classic aspect ratio).
- Note 2: if you create a “default” folder instead of a custom name, bezels will replace the existing “default” bezels (the 2 folders will be virtually merged, the
/userdata/
bezels take priority).
Create a new bezel
In Batocera, you can create:
- bezels for specific games on specific systems (mario on SNES)
- bezels for specific games on all systems (mario on all systems)
- bezels for specific system (a bezel for SNES, one for GB …)
- a default bezel for all
You can have all four at the same time. In case your ROM/system selection matches more than one option, Batocera will apply the rules in the order listed above. If there is no suitable bezel, no bezel will be displayed.
A bezel is composed of 2 files. A .png
file and a .info
file. See explanations below.
Specific games on specific systems
Bezels for a specific game on a specific system must be placed in the games/<system>/
directory and have the same name as the ROM.
Example: mybezels/games/snes/mario.png
and mybezels/games/snes/mario.info
With this example, your bezel will be used for the game ROM mario
only on SNES. If you have a ROM named mario
on GB or NES, it will not be displayed.
Specific games
Bezels for specific games on all systems must be placed in the games/
directory and have the same name as the ROM.
Example: mybezels/games/mario1.png
and mybezels/games/mario1.info
In that case, if you have two ROM files named mario1
, one for SNES and one for GB, both will display your bezel.
Specific systems
Bezels for specific systems must be placed in the systems
directory and have the same name as the system.
Example: mybezels/systems/snes.png
and mybezels/systems/snes.info
Default bezel
The default bezel must be at top level and have the name default.png
and default.info
Example:
Create the file mybezels/default.png
.
A size of 1920×1080 is recommended.
The bezel will be drawn over the emulator rendering. Thus, you must keep transparent parts on the image.
the .info file
The .info
file is a text file describing how the image must be displayed over the emulator.
width
: width of the imageheight
: height of the imagetop
: top/left/bottom/right define the marge in pixel let to render the emulator.left
: top/left/bottom/right define the marge in pixel let to render the emulator.bottom
: top/left/bottom/right define the marge in pixel let to render the emulator.right
: top/left/bottom/right define the marge in pixel let to render the emulator.opacity
: a value between 0.0 and 1.0 to define the transparency of the imagemessagex
: horizontal position of game messages (when a state is saved for example)messagey
: vertical position of game messages (when a state is saved for example)
{ "width":1920, "height":1080, "top":2, "left":241, "bottom":1, "right":243, "opacity":0.7000000, "messagex":0.220000, "messagey":0.120000 }
- decoration.1633756129.txt.gz
- Last modified: 3 years ago
- by atari