SITE UPDATE - January 30, 2018

In-Game Artwork: 8 new games; 6 games updated artwork; 3 games other updates

So a week or two ended up being almost seven months this time... and I am truly, truly sorry for that. Lots of real-life stuff happened... again... cross your fingers that this is the last time for a while.

I am determined to "be back" for good this time, and for the long haul. This past couple months especially, I have felt excited working on this stuff again, more so than I have in a very long while. I can sit for hours in Photoshop until the wee hours of the morning again, without that lack of sleep feeling. So many things circling in my head of what needs to get done this year and after that... I plan to be very busy this year.

As mentioned last time, there has been a TON of artwork completed that I need to get to. I'm working on it, and will get it all out as fast as I can. I feel like this year we are going to hit that 1000 artwork files mark. Here is what we have for now:

• Fire One bezel artwork is complete. Thanks to the scan from TrevEB, and clean-up work by comboman.


• Comboman was kind enough to touch up and fix the colors on the bezel for Devil Zone... it looks much much nicer now. This also updates Magical Spot and Magical Spot 2, as all three games used the same bezel artwork.


• Based on multiple high quality photos, comboman completed the bezel for Shuuz.


• The Blue Print bezel is another scan from TrevEB. Comboman also cleaned this one up. We had a scan of the marquee for this, thanks to the BYOAC / CAG artwork, so I cleaned that up to go along with this.


• Circus has absolutely beautiful artwork. TrevEB scanned this some time ago. Newcomer JB did an amazing job cleaning this one up. I touched it up just a bit, fixing the colors, and adding the rest of the parts of the control panel, thanks to contributions from Nightvoice.
  
• JB was not done yet, though, and he tackled the bezel for Bank Panic. Once completed, I figured we should add in the control panel also, so that is also included. Both thanks to the BYOAC / CAG artwork.


• We have a second newcomer, RaspBear. You will see him credited as udb23 in the notes. He has previously done artwork for the RetroPie crowd, and has now started to help out over in our little corner of the internet. First up is P-47... bezel and marquee are both completed, thanks to scans from the BYOAC / CAG artwork, plus a bezel scan that I completed. Had to finish the game up again, so I found as many decent pics as I could of a working cabinet, and created the control panel to complete the game.


• As I started getting in the groove for this stuff again, I found a few really good pics of the bezel for Lock On, got bored one day in November, and finsihed that one up.


• I promised Shoegazr that he would have Rygar usable before the end of 2017... it is done as well as can be for now. Comboman did the bulk of the cleanup work on the bezel some time ago... I did a few more tweaks to that, along with the marquee and control panel. All three pieces courtesy of the BYOAC / CAG artwork. There are still some areas on each piece that are kind of dirty, but this will work for now.


• Timber has bezel artwork now, thanks to comboman, and a little color adjusting on my end. This one is based on a photo, so it is not perfect yet, but still very nice. I forget who sent me the photo for this... whoever did, please please... message me, so that I can update the notes for the game.


• MAMEWorld user gginelli was kind enough to let me know that the shifter was not working in either Pole Position game. When I went to go fix it, I figured I should do it right, and also add in the whole control panel, as the current artwork was kind of hokey. As I got that done, I found other things that needed fixing: the colors were off on the cockpit bezel, and the Atari logo section was not an equal circle on the upright artwork, which also had the colors off a bit. Some time around when I started working on this, Nightvoice had posted a TON of artwork he has been working on for the past months, and it inspired me. A lot of what he had done really aligned with the ideas that I have had for some time now on how each game should look on screen. I ended up going all out on Pole Position and PP2, and cleaned up everything. Full cockpit and upright artwork for both games is done, along with the Euro version of PP2. Of the new artwork added, the marquee and both cpos for PP1 are from the BYOAC / CAG artwork, as is the bezel for the conversion version of PP2. The cpo and bezel for the Euro PP2, along with the gauges for PP1, the various stickers for PP2, and the steering wheel, I created based on multiple photos. The marquee for PP2 was vectored by zorg some time ago, along with the steering wheel logo. All items for all games were color matched together. We are now Prepared to Qualify. For those that only want to see bezel artwork on the screen, but still want the gearshift, I added in extra views that you can apply by going to Video Options while in-game.


• The bezel for Donkey Kong 3 was completed ages ago, but I was never told who scanned it. By chance, I came upon a post at BYOAC which cleared that up... so thank you to bobbyconover at BYOAC!! LAY file has been updated with past due credit.


• Two games changed names since the last update: fantasy is now fantasyu, and twc96 is now twsoc96.

That seems like a lot... but I want more... we need to keep adding more artwork.

Next update will see a change to the download page, so that we can start including non-arcade artwork that is now supported with the merger of MAME and MESS some time ago. Lots of good stuff coming soon for that side of the business. Also, I am going to squeeze in some "life lesson" stuff here and there, just to elaborate on why things were somewhat dormant here recently.

Stay tuned. Lots of good things are coming in 2018 and beyond.

P.S. almost forgot... thank you to Vas Crabb on MAMEDev for adding layout groups to the artwork system in 0.189... this makes setting up various Control Panel parts SOOO much easier at the end of the day.