Psynaptik

Thanks very much for this extra work!

If it helps, I am also no diy-expert. But I had a go at making the below: https://www.instructables.com/A-Super-Easy-Arcade-Machine-from-1-Sheet-of-Plywoo/ It's the first thing I ever built out of wood or anything, and it came out okay I feel. I wouldn't let a carpenter look too closely at the woodwork mind you...! : http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,156921.msg1648530.html#msg1648530 The secret is that it's lots of straight cuts and nothing too complicated. I didn't do T-moulding or anything like that that required a router, and modified it for my own needs, but I didn't need to draw up plans etc. If you can't find something that you like and is in budget, then I thought I'd give you the option of thinking about building one. Of course, this would be super cheap but take a chunk of time. But that feeling of building your own cabinet and still getting use out of it years later? Great! There are plenty of vids on youtube and threads on the byoac forums (linked above) that can give you helpful ideas for customising it for yourself. There's also the precut wood shells you can buy on amazon/ebay. Or from here: https://www.arcadeworlduk.com/. I'm also in the UK and have bought stuff from arcadeworlduk in the past and had no issues. Helpful customer service as well in my experience. Good luck with your choice!

For all it's faults, MAME is at least easier to use than Retroarch, in my opinion. I did not state that you SAID it, I said it is implied, and those are two very different things. Like I said, there's an assumption made that it's 'all so simple', if only you do everything exactly correctly, with the right tools, in the right way, in the correct fashion...etc. I don't think that saying, "well, it's all your fault for doing something wrong", when they obviously don't have the knowledge to know what's the right and wrong way to do things, is the correct way to go about helping people. I think you are forgetting how long it took you to learn about emulation, the bewildering array of vocabulary that goes with it (particularly with MAME). I'm sure you have been doing this for a while and have spent a lot of time on it. And you don't need to tell me what MAME is, *I* fully understand. I'm just trying to help someone else understand, rather than blaming them for having issues. I'm simply suggesting that having a little empathy for those at the start of learning about emulation might be a nice thing to do. Sorry if that doesn't sit well.

The problem with this attitude is that you and I now know the information in points 1 and 2, so that 3 is indeed true. For anyone else trying to get things to work, they need to work hard to get all the info to make 3 a reality. MAME is *not* one of the easiest emulators to get up and running. No other emulator needs you to match cores and romsets (save perhaps FBA) . I haven't used another emulator that does split/merged/non-merged romsets. Most other emulators don't need disparate sets of bios files to get several games to work. Most other emulators don't need caveats about moving individual rom files. No other emulators need a romset OH BUT NOW YOU NEED ANOTHER SET OF (SORT OF) ROMS! (that would be CHDs). Oh, and those CHDs need to match your romset and your core as well. And this is before we get into update patches etc. I mean it's all necessary because of the different philosophy behind the MAME project cf. other emulators and it's all perfectly justified and it's an AMAZING feat of teamwork and technical skill. But to say that it's all really easy and straight-forward, implying that if you can't get it to work at first you're stupid or lazy, is not only outright wrong, it's also really unhelpful. Maybe one of us should put all this in a written guide to pin so that it can be referred to, because I don't see it there. If we've been dabbling in emulation for a while, we tend to take this information for granted.

Many files don't work in the romset of mame. It may not be an error in the romset - it's just that a decent dump of that rom doesn't exist. CHDs must be downloaded seperately, often. They are massive though so worth being selective unless you are completist and have tons of hard drive space. You can't copy over roms piecemeal. You need to get hold of a non-merged set (I think...), select what you want, and then you can delete the rest if you like. For instance, I have an older non-merged romset which I use (0.170) because it fits onto a 500gb HDD which i keep external. I just copy over the roms I want usually into the directory on the machine I want them to be on, but I can only do this because of the romset and because they're all stand alone. I would strongly advise against adding your own files into zips - it doesn't work that way.

Mame is a nightmare and there's no getting round that. The best way to avoid problems is to download the exact romset for the version of MAME you're running. e.g. if you're running MAME 0.226 then you need the 0.226 romset (and CHDS if that's a thing for you). If you start to mix mame versions and romsets you're creating a whole heap of pain for yourself. To save space use a merged set. This is one where if games are clones the set will not duplicate the common files between them. This saves a lot of space, but means that your collection has to stay together. i.e. you can't just copy a file across one at a time and expect it to work, since a file it needs might be in ANOTHER file that you didn't bring across. If you just put your MAME roms somewhere and then add them to Launchbox without copying them across then that's the best way to do it hard drive wise. Other emulators should be a lot easier to get up and running. Retroarch is also a complete PITA, which for me has always gone beyond just getting things to load. Controls, displays...the very UI it uses. uuurgggh... BUT it does forgo the need to have a dozen emulators all over the shop, and once you have your settings sorted then it's nice. Depends what you're using it for.

You need roms. You need to import those roms into LaunchBox. You also need emulators to play those roms. You need to add those emulators to Launchbox. Follow the prompts when Launchbox opens for the importing, and you'll be fine. Failing that, go to the Launchbox channel on YouTube where there are a number of videos on how to get started.

Any game that uses digital input will work on an arcade cabinet. That basically means D-pad on a modern controller. An arcade stick is the same as that. If something needs analogue input i.e. one or both of the sticks, then that will either not work or be a sub-standard experience. e.g. Nex Machina. Although it's a modern update of Robotron 2084, it's made to use the twin analogue sticks (or mouse and keyboard, although I find that heinous for this game) so wouldn't work on 2 digital arcade sticks like the original Robotron (or Smash TV, Total Carnage etc.) I have dedicated vertical arcade that I built myself which I use to play golden age arcade games and shmups through the years on. Modern ones I play are Danmaku Unlimited 3, Crimson Clover World Ignition, many of the CAVE games (Mushihimesama, DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu (sp?)), Blue Revolver etc. All of these will adapt to horizontal screens i.e. play area will be slightly smaller but nice background to fill in the sides instead of leaving black bars. Platformers, as long as they use digital controls, are a good idea. I've seen Nidhogg done on a cabinet and that was pretty cool. I can't imagine any driving game being playable, since you'd need analogue controls to play them. Most buttons on modern controllers may well be pressure sensitive, but no-one ever uses them like that, so would translate fine. Depends on whether you need to hold combinations of buttons though (e.g. holding bumpers with face buttons) and whether that would feel okay on a flat surface.

Okay thanks. I'll go check that stuff out. In future I may make a guide on this for the forums.

So I've bought BigBox and downloaded Community Theme Creator. Opened it up. Generated Fake Rom List but don't see any fake roms appearing in the preview windows. Also, even though I've got the Theme Creator stretched on my 3:4 (1024x1280) monitor, and create a new theme, it's still making it 4:3 1280x1024. I also can't find anyway of previewing the theme to test how it works. Do I have to publish -> open BigBox -> reload theme to see any changes I make? I've got to say I'm totally lost. I've looked in the guides section but there are no tutorials/guides on how to get started making your own theme ANYWHERE. Even on the authors YouTube channel each video is an update of latest features (understandable), but are there any good videos/docs where someone has shown you how to get started? I'm really keen to get to grips with it, but kind lack of docs or any resource makes it difficult to work things out. Ultimately I'd like something with the nice game wheel on the side etc. Are there any themes that I could at least load up and deconstruct to start with? Thanks!

Yeah. Sorry, just a typo.

Oh okay. I might well do that if it's quite easy. TBH, it can't be any harder than managing a game collection with hyperspin et al.! Would be nice to contribute something back if it works out. Thanks for the pointers. I find it strange that people are looking for vertical 16:9! Most people into TATE games like early arcade or shmups are looking for 4:3 rotated aspect. Why would people use 16:9 vertical? Is there a genre of games I've missed?

Maybe I'm missing something, but they both seem to be for 16:9 widescreen monitors? What I need is 4:3 vertical (3:4). I'm slightly surprised that I'm the only one looking for this.