spycat

Hi folks. Back in the days of the old forums it was possible to view a list of the forum members ordered by their ranking. Is this still possible? Some friends and I were recently wondering just how many forum members there are now.

For the BBC Micro: While MAME 0.212 emulates the BBC Model B, from a game playing aspect it's not perfect although it is improving. You may come across sound and graphics issues with some games. For overall emulation, including game playing, you would be better off using one of the free dedicated emulators such as B-Em or BeebEm. I use BeebEm 4.14 For the games themselves I would go with disk images such as the ssd and dsd formats, as they load automatically in LaunchBox using BeebEm (and possibly B-Em also) and very quickly too. Tape images load just like cassettes did on the BBC Micro itself - very slowly. Some years ago Acorn waived it's rights to it's OS, BASIC and DFS ROMs. This has allowed emulators like BeebEM to now legally include and distribute the ROMS, making the emulators work "out of the box".

Apologies for reactivating this, but can anyone identify this font with overlapping text?

Also, with emulating the old home computers, you often launch games only to reach the BASIC screen with the prompt and no idea of what to do next. It's worth looking online for the machine's original user manual which may be found as a pdf.

I don't have the Plus/4 in LaunchBox anymore, but I just dug out what I have backed up on an external drive. I've got enough to add it again to LaunchBox and refresh my vague memory. By the way, I don't have either of those games in my cart cass or flop sw lists.

I remember trying out the Plus/4 with MAME itself using the cart and flop sw lists. Most of the cart games opened automatically, but the disk games just opened to the Basic screen with the Ready prompt. Here you need to press F2 which types DLOAD" add the game name and the end quotes and press Return. Once Loaded you need to press Shift+F3 (or was it Control+F3) to run the game. There wasn't much in the games lineup apart from some text adventures and a few other games. I think that typing KEY at the prompt brings up the Function Keys usage.

@joseph goes to space Just to clear things up, which version of MAME are you using and which version are your roms?

Also bear in mind that where a MAME software system has games in various formats such as cartridge, cassette and floppy disk formats, or has multiple software lists it's not a simple matter to "consolidate" them into a single Platform due to the Default Parameters required by MAME. You would need to either create different Platforms for each format, or go with a single Platform using Default Parameters for the majority of games that use a particular media or software list type amd use Custom Parameters for the other formats.

Did you check out The Cover Project site? If not, when you go in, go to Guides and scroll to Templates.

Just to clarify things here, there is a difference between emulating a game using a software list and emulating a game using a direct media call. Games in a software list need the Use File Name Only... box checked. Also, your MAME ini file's rompath needs to know where the software list folder is (it's normal practice to put it in your MAME roms folder). The Default Parameters need only have the system, there's no need to add a media option as it doesn't make any sense here and MAME will not expect it and will just ignore it. And, if you wish, you can just point LaunchBox to the game's software list name minus it's extension instead of the path to the game. Launching a game using a direct media call needs the Use File Name Only... box cleared. Your MAME ini file doesn't need to know the game's location, but LaunchBox does of course. The Default Parameters need both the system and media options. The choice of the Adventure Vision as a testing ground was unfortunate and confusing in that the software list has the games dumped in bin format, a format that is also compatible with Adventure Vision games using the direct media call emulation. A software system such as the NES has the nes software list games dumped in a format that will not allow them to be emulated as direct media which only accepts the nes, unf and unif formats. And that's why the nes software list doesn't emulate using direct media emulation. It works fine when proper software list emulation is used. Software list dump formats vary, with some in a format that direct media calling also supports, others have what I would call, for want of a better term, an arcade style look to the files within the game roms. As a rule, games suitable for direct media emulation will have a format that the dedicated emulators such as AdViEmulator, ColEm, Nestopia and so on would also use.

Apart from setting the Associated Platforms fields up, there really isn't anything else to set in LaunchBox for MAME apart from ensuring that your paths are ok. Do you have any arcade games using MAME in LaunchBox and if so, do they run ok in LaunchBox? MAME issues in LaunchBox are usually down to Associated Platform errors, rompath errors, or ini file location errors (this is a regular issue when using MAMEUI). Out of curiosity, could you post a capture of your Associated Platforms window for your MAME emulator?

If your rom paths are ok in LaunchBox, then all I can suggest is to check your Associated Platforms fields for errors. By the way, I'm using MAME 0.212 without any LaunchBox issues.

If your using a software list then tick the box Use file name only... and see if your games launch. All four games in my advision sw list launch ok, but will not if this box is unset. If that doesn't work, then check that you have the advision.zip bios installed.

78081g503.ic655 This is a file for Bios roms such as TPS ZN1 ZN2. Unfortunately it hasn't been dumped yet. x2pe_04.2h This looks like a file for a game rom. The game name would be a help in finding out if it too is a no dump. You may find this link useful https://mamedev.emulab.it/undumped/index.php?title=Bad_dump

For bezels that come with lay files to go, your best bet may be Mr Do's website or the LaunchBox forums downloads section. The Bezel Project may also cover the lay approach for the arcade games, but I'm not really sure about that. There are some very good collections (image wise) out there, but they're not bundled with lays, some have Rocket Launcher type ini files while others come with RetroArch type cfg files. To use those bezel pngs in MAME you would need to supply the lays yourself. As I posted earlier, an image of one of your lay file's contents and it's bezel png name might help solve things.

The diagonal lines usually mean that MAME can't load the bezel due to a difference between the bezel png's name and the image file string inside the lay itself. Although when this occurs, the lines are full screen and the bezel image doesn't show. There may be something else wrong in the lay. Could you post the lay's contents?

It looks like you're getting a default bezel of sorts. Are you using an official MAME version or a compile with default artwork built in? I see you have default horizontal and vertical zips and pngs in your artwork folder.

In your mame.ini file under CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS you have use_bezels set to 0 instead of 1

MAME arcade games artwork folders (zipped or otherwise) all go in the artwork folder inside MAME. Each game's artwork folder should be named after the game rom. Clones are a bit flexible in that the game's artwork folder can be named after either the clone or parent. However, a parent game will not accept a clone named artwork folder. Of course, if you have different bezels for a parent and it's clones, then you need separate artwork folders. The included lay file should be named either after the folder containing it or as default. The lay's image file string must match with the bezel's name including the extension. Your mame.ini artpath must know the path to the folder containing your games artwork folders.

You're welcome. However, personally I'd put bezel support aside for the moment and concentrate on why you can't open MAME itself. That is just not normal.

It may help if you can post an image of one of your bezels and it's lay file content, as well as the name of the game's bezel png and lay.

Hi @madtanks It's odd that you can't open MAME by running mame64.exe Have you tried opening MAME from within LaunchBox by right=clicking any arcade game and then choosing Open MAME (or whatever descriptive name you've given the emulator)? By the way, game artwork like bezels will work whether the artwork folders are zipped or unzipped, unlike the actual games which must be left zipped. It's normal practise to have the various artwork folders, zipped or not, in MAME's artwork folder.

Bass Angler (bassangl.zip) is a clone of Fisherman's Bait (fbaitbc.zip) Bass Angler 2 (bassang2.zip) is a clone of Fisherman's Bait 2 (fbait2bc.zip) They all need the System 573 Bios (sys573.zip) All four games also require a chd which is different for each game. Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (ts2.zip) has two clones, (ts2a.zip and ts2j.zip) All three games need the ZN1 bios (coh1000c.zip) and the QSound device (qsound_hle.zip) Bonze Adventure (bonzeadv.zip) has three Bonze Adventure clones (bonzeadvu.zip, bonzeadvo.zip and bonzeadvp.zip) as well as the clone Jigoku Megure (jigkmgri.zip)

25 Carrot Gold, 250 CC and 28 Plays Later are electromechanical games (fruit/pinball stuff). 2650 Computer System refers to an old 8bit Signetics microprocessor. These are all emulated by MAME. Not too sure about the Memory stuff. It looks like you may have imported everything instead of setting filters.

I've never come across a dedicated Windows based emulator for it. While MAME can emulate Leapster and it's clone Leapster TV to a certain extent, they're classed as non working machines. The last time I tried I could not get any of the games I tested to open except Sonic X and that game just launched to a black screen even though I could get into the TAB menu. MAME, however improves with each build, so maybe in the future these systems will work ok.