Mame32 QA/Test & Art Dept. Official Art Pack(s)
by john iv

This is the htm which will accompany the images.zip, the icons.zip, and bkground.zip.

images.zip
Place this zipfile into your \mame32\images directory. It can stay zipped and Mame32 will read the screenshots out of it. This file can contain .png or .bmp files. Once upon a time I started adding information in my screenshots as to what version of Mame the driver was added, this is a nice touch because there was never really been an interest in adding this info programmatically into Mame.. but I was always fond of looking back on certain versions and saying, 'ah yes, Asteroids in .26b.' <grin> This file contains screenshots for all the parent sets, it also contains what I call 'divergent clones', these are clones which are sufficiently different either gameplay-wise or visually, to warrant their own screenshots. This file is large and should remain up to date. I typically will also add smaller 'release packs' when a new beta of Mame comes out, which will only contain new images for that release, plus any images I have redone due to perfected colors or new working status of older games.

icons.zip
This file must be uncompressed and all the .ico files must be placed in your \mame32\icons directory. Currently we cannot read icons from a .zip file so they must be freestanding. I've been adding these icons since I got into MameDOS back in .16b, support for them was added in Mame32 .33b by Mike Haaland. These started life as 24bpp true color images and were kicked down to 8bpp for space. The majority of these are done w/ the idea that there would be a black or dark background behind them, which is easy now with the bkground.png support. As such on Win9x systems if you go with a light background, you may see some transparent pixel peek through. WinNT doesn't have this issue as it's icon treatment always puts black behind them. Decisions on which icons I do at a time fluctuate, it started out just the games I had played the most, of course that was when Mame supported 60 games. <g> I finished coverage of all icons around .35.11 and add new ones as games become playable or are newly added. This pack also contains icons for the defaults, and the folder tree.

bkground.zip
This file must be uncompressed into your \mame32\images directory. The file you wish to use for your background in Mame32 must be named bkground.bmp or bkground.png as Mame32 supports both. The majority are dark as that provides the best contrast to the icons. You may also wish to utilise the custom built app. rotate.exe which, when run will randomly or sequentially rotate your images and rename the choice to bkground.xxx. This is very cool to call from a shortcut and have Mame32 startup with a new background every launch. Thanks again to Joel C. for writing it.

For updated files, other Mame32 related news, build progress, troubleshooting, etc. please visit the Mame32 QA/Test and Art Dept.

john iv
mame32qa@hotmail.com

the official Mame32 message board:
http://pluto.beseen.com/boardroom/q/18365