This guide will quickly walk you through the Arcade Builder application and how you can add your own ROMs. Please read everything carefully so you can avoid having issues getting your games to run. Be sure to check this guide every now and then because new features may be added or changed.

Also check out the FAQ here: http://steamproxy.net/app/465780/discussions/0/152390648081151675/

Adding your own games to New Retro Arcade Neon is a fairly simple process. You will need these things before we get started.

• ROMs – You’ll have to find these on your own. The MAME 2014 core uses 0.159 ROMS. Those have the best compatibility. Please refer to the filetype chart below to ensure you have the correct file types for the emulation cores.
  
  
• BIOS files – If the arcade game you're trying to emulate needs a specific BIOS file to operate, you need to make sure to place it in NRA:N's ROMs folder. SEGA CD, PlayStation and Sega Saturn will require the BIOS files to be placed in the Emulators folder. (Other examples: Neo-Geo, Atari System 1, CPSII, PC Engine/TB16 CD)
  
  
  If you don't have these files, your game won't boot at all!
  
  
• Libretro Cores – The following cores are compatible with NRA:N.
  
  
• SNES9x2010[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• PicoDrive[buildbot.libretro.com] Be sure to set
  <picodrive_renderer value="accurate" /> in ArcadeEmulatorOptions.XML
  
  
• Stella[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• QuickNES[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• MAME 2015[buildbot.libretro.com] Currently unavailable, see Alternate Emulators section below for a link to the latest nightly build.
  
  
• MAME Core for Lightgun games.[1drv.ms]
  
  
• Gambatte[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• MGBA[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• VECX[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• Mednafen NGP[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• DuckStation[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• Yabause[buildbot.libretro.com]
  
  
• Mednafen PCE FAST[buildbot.libretro.com] and SuperGrafx[buildbot.libretro.com]

After you've downloaded the cores, you can extract them to
"New Retro Arcade NeonNewRetroArcadeContentEmulators".

Alternative Emulators:

• MAME Nightly. Instructions in this post

(Optional) Artwork for the corresponding game you wish to add. You can get these from Reddit, the Artist’s Alley board here on Steam or you can make a cabinet on your own! If you don’t have a copy of Photoshop, GIMP[www.gimp.org] or http://www.getpaint.net/index.html are both great free alternatives. You can find templates further on in this guide.

Please note that due to current limitations, some emulators will not have complete button support. This is something we plan to address in the future.

Community member and moderator Nabeday has created a awesome package of free games and cabinets. You can check it out here: http://steamproxy.net/app/465780/discussions/0/276237094331031026/

One important thing to understand when it comes to running ROMs using the MAME core is that there are often two types of ROM sets.

Parent ROMs are often the first or last version of a particular software. You won't need to do any extra configuring for these.

Child ROMs are typically updates or revisions to a particular game. With theses roms you'll need to have the Parent ROM in NRA:N's ROM directory. MAME will take care of the rest. This is needed if you wish to play a game that was converted from 4 players to 2, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, or The Simpsons. Child ROMs can also be known as Clone ROMs. Simply move the files to "New Retro Arcade NeonNewRetroArcadeContentRoms".

If you try to run a ROM without its required parent or without its required BIOS files, NRA:N will simply crash. Make sure you have all the files you need!

Non-volatile random-access memory, or NVRAM for short, is memory that is saved when a machine powers off. In relation to MAME and New Retro Arcade: Neon, NVRAM is the saved data of the arcade machine that is being emulated. High Scores and System Configurations are examples of such data. NRA:N stores this data in "New Retro Arcade NeonNewRetroArcadeContentRomsmame2014nvram"
You can now change an Arcade games individual settings inside of NRA:N by pressing F2. Navigating these menus is different for each game, but most games will tell you what inputs are used to navigate these menus. Some games will allow you to save your changes and return to the game from their setup menu. Others may require you to turn off a DIP switch that is meant for the setup menus, which brings us to our next sub-section.


It is now possible to Access MAME's internal menu for configuring various aspects of your Arcade game as well as providing access to a games DIP switches. You can access this menu by pressing TAB. There are a number of other functions you can access, but some of them will have little to no effect on the emulation. If you ever manage to screw something up to where the game is rendered unplayable, simply navigate to "New Retro Arcade NeonNewRetroArcadeContentRomsmame2014cfg" and delete the related config file that shares the ROM's filename.

If you have XML files from previous versions of New Retro Arcade: Neon you can import them into the newer version of the Arcade Builder. To do so, select Tools from the dropdown menu at the top and select Legacy Tools. From here, you can begin to import all your machines into the new builder along with any music, cartridges and posters you have saved. Your arcade machines will automatically be named the same as the ROM file itself.
XML files are still supported by New Retro Arcade: Neon so this process is entirely optional. Should you wish to use an external manager, you may continue to do so.

Launching the Arcade Builder is done by launching the game through Steam and selecting the highlighted option seen to the right.

Below you can see the layout of the Arcade Builder tool itself. The list below highlights each of the tools different aspects.

1. Items list - This is where all your customized arcades and other items are displayed.
   
2. Map - You can drag and drop items from the list onto the arcade machine nodes themselves.
   
3. Item Tabs - You can click on these tabs to edit the items in that category.
   
4. Layout List - This list contains all the items that have been placed into the currently open Layout. You can also drag items here instead of the map. You can double-click on a item to view it's contents.
   
5. You can name your layout here and select which attract screen video the layout will be using. You can also switch between the different maps.
   
6. You can switch between the different tabs here.

With the new version of the Arcade Builder, you can now create individual layouts for a specific set of games. If you want an arcade packed entirely with just fighting games, this is how you would do it.

To begin, right click inside of the layouts tab and select New.
Choose a name for your layout and you'll then be brought to the Arcades List. You can then proceed to populate your layout with any of your custom items. You can also load directly into a specific layout by right clicking and selecting the map you want to enter.


You can choose a default layout either by adding ArcadeLayout=[LAYOUT NAME HERE] to GameUserSettings.ini or by adding -ArcadeLayout=[LAYOUT NAME HERE] as a launch option. There will be a "Set as Default" option coming soon.
You can find GameUserSettings.ini at "steamappscommonNew Retro Arcade NeonNewRetroArcadeSavedConfigWindowsNoEditor"

You can add games to the Arcade Builder by right clicking in the Arcades list and clicking new. Be sure to give your Arcade Machine a name that fits the game you're adding. After you save your .arcade file, you'll be brought to a new window where you can edit the machine itself. From here you can change several aspects of the machine itself.


The Arcade Machine itself

1. Here you can name your Arcade Machine and select the ROMs and emulation core used. You can also select what screen type the game is using. Pixel emulates a CRT monitor, while Vector is for games that used Vector rendering to display their graphics. HD applies no filter.
   
2. You select your artwork here. You can see a preview of your artwork on the right side of the screen.
   
3. If you're using an attract screen video you can set the audio of the machine here.
   
4. Here you can select a specific attract screen video that the machine will display. Should you select a layout that doesn't use the video, the game will instead default to the Game Image instead of a Grid Frame.
   
5. You can select a legacy button layout here. In the future, a newer better tool will be added.

When you are done, be sure to click the save icon at the top right. You can now go back to your layout and drag your new arcade onto one of the machines visible on the map or onto the list to the right. This process is similar for game cartridges and other items.

When you're editing a machine, you can press the HOME key while NRA:N is running and NRA:N will reload the arcade machines. This is ideal for tweaking the finer details. This also works inside of the test map.

Standard Horizontal Cabinet - Arcade Model 1

Vertical Screen Cabinet (Special) - Arcade Model 2 - The Right artwork will be need to be a reverse of what's displayed.
LightGun Cabinet

Thanks to DayVeeMan - /u/simburger for providing these images.

DayVeeMan has created a rather excellent tool for creating button layouts that you can find here: http://steamproxy.net/app/465780/discussions/0/343787920132453690/

The images below are for another method that involves overlaying these images with your artwork and using the rulers to manually edit the XML files. The tool makes this process far easier and I recommend using it instead.

The LibRetro forks of MAME support standard MAME Cheat files. You can download cheat files from http://www.mamecheat.co.uk/. Version 0.156 is for the mame2014 core.

For the 2014 core, open the archive and place cheat.7z in “ContentEmulatorsmame2014cheat.7z”. Do not extract the 7z file. After you’ve placed the cheat file, simply press TAB when running MAME and cheat to your heart's content.

With the release of Patch #6, you can now add a new XML file in your Content folder called “ArcadeEmulatorOptions.XML” This XML file will enable you to tweak some of the specific options inside of the emulation cores. Here is an example of the formatting.
When you launch New Retro Arcade: Neon and start up a game core, NRA:N will output the various options of the core to a file in "SteamAppscommonNew Retro Arcade NeonNewRetroArcadeSaved" called OutputEmulatorOptions.json

From here you can see the variables that you can set in the ArcadeEmulatorOptions XML file. Bear in mind that not all options will have any visible effect so you will have to test these for yourself.

Originally posted by AHAS SavageCore:

Hey all

With thanks to DayVeeMan[XBD] for some beta testing and the FFmpeg scripts I present Attract Screen Tool!

Usage

First load it should ask you to set Attract Screen Video which is usually found at

SteamApps\common\New Retro Arcade Neon\NewRetroArcade\Content\Movies\

This can be any file.

Set any other options you may like then click the top right menu icon and select Main

Click the thumbnail image to assign video to grid or select multiple. It will set the next grid recursively from the grid you began and *overwriting* if they were previously set. For example setting grid 3 to 4 files will result in grids 3, 4, 5 and 6 being set.

Note In my test windows 7 virtual machine setting more than 10-15 at once caused errors whereas the actual PC running 10 sets 35 no problems. Let me know in an issue[github.com] if you get this and I will try and fix.

Now hit the play button to render

---
You can download here[github.com]

View the source here[github.com]

WARNING: Unless you're comfortable with a bit of Video Editing, you may wish to skip this section and instead use the tool above. This is advanced stuff. You'll be needing a video editor that can save in .mp4 format and one that can position individual video files in the workspace. (you can change the format by editing the GameUserSettings.ini and finding the line 'AttractMovie=AttractScreens.mp4').


Inside of "New Retro Arcade Neon\NewRetroArcade\Content\Movies" you'll find a video file titled AttractScreens.MP4. This will be your template for adding video clips to create your Attract Screens. NOTE: With games that run at a Vertical resolution, you'll need to stretch them to a 4:3 aspect ratio. It will look fine afterwards.[gfycat.com]

Recording your own Gameplay video to use in the final MP4 file can be accomplished using a seperate MAME install and a recording software of your choice. Open Broadcaster Software, FRAPS, NVIDIA's ShadowPlay or Windows 10's DVR feature are some suggestions.

Each of the numbered squares are where you'll edit in your Attract Videos. You can use this file as a template to overlay your own Attract Videos. Be sure the keep the video resolution the same. Keep in mind the number of where you placed your video file so you know which number to add.

Once you've overlaid your video of choice, save it and give a name that pertains to your layout. Select an arcade machine and under the Attract Video heading, enter the name of your video and the frame used. From there you can go back to your layout and choose the video file.

Special Thanks to DayVeeMan and AHAS Savage Core for making this excellent tool that makes the process a LOT easier. Send them some love yeah?

http://steamproxy.net/app/465780/discussions/0/343787283758035953/

Setting up LightGun games for New Retro Arcade varies on a game-by-game basis. This section of the guide will instruct you on how to calibrate the cursor inside of MAME so that it is accurate to where you are pointing. I suggest you do this in Desktop mode. You will need the MAME Lightgun Core that is linked at the start of this guide.

There is a Google Doc available for people to edit freely so you can share calibrations with other users. Be sure to follow the formatting when adding your own configurations.

Google Doc[docs.google.com]

The first step is to add -debugLightgun as a launch option through Steam. This will display an X on your screen when you use the Lightgun cabinet so you can find the center of the screen for calibration.



When calibrating a game for NRA:N, you'll have to open the console in-game and use the following commands:
Opening the console can be done by pressing the tilde key on your keyboard (`~) This may vary depending on your Keyboard layout.


Center the crosshair on the monitor and start entering X and Y values using the console commands. The range appears to be somewhere between 100 and 300 from my testing. It will take a bit of trial and error but once you've managed to get it accurate enough, take note of the X and Y coordinate that you are comfortable with. You can press Up and Down on your keyboard with the console open to scroll through your previous commands.

Once you've obtained your desired values, you can then enter them into the games configuration in the Arcade Builder.


One additional note is that some games may require further calibration in-game and often enough they will require the second gun to calibrated, such in the case of CarnEvil and Terminator 2. The best way to get around this is to open the games in a external version of MAME, calibrate the guns there, and copy the NVRAM data to NRA:N.

The list of streaming sites that NRA:N supports is very extensive. You can find the list in the link below.

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/docs/supportedsites.md

NRA:N also supports the following video and audio formats.

.3gp .a52 .aac .asf .au .avi .dts .dv .flac .flv .mkv .mka .mov .mp2 .mp3 .mp4 .mpg .nsc .nsv .nut .ogm .ogg .ra .ram .rm .rmvb .rv .ts .tac .tta .ty .vid .wav .wmv .xa

Special Thanks to Sharktopus for providing the Arcade Maps in previous versions of the guide.
Special Thanks to Aabra for helping fix the Marquee region.
And a EXTRA Special Thanks to all the others who have contributed and helped this guide flourish!

This guide is no longer being maintained by it's original author. Please direct any questions or comments to either the Steam Community forums or Discord channel. I would ask that if this guide ever needs to be updated that it instead be replaced entirely.