neil9000

"Most" MAME games do not need CHD's, but of course there are some that do. Most CHD games are either newer Arcade games like CPS3, or older ones that use video like Dragons Lair. There are games that fall outside of those but not to many.

Yeah just copying your whole Launchbox/Data folder should "just work".

Just sounds like attract mode was running, there are settings for that in the options. It randomly scrolls after a period of inactivity.

The plugins folder is for Launchbox plugins downloaded from the forums download section, you shouldnt ever put anything that isnt a plugin in there. Launchbox scans that folder at launch in order to load plugins so files in there that are not for Launchbox will cause errors, like the one you saw.

Delete the files in Launchbox/Plugins, i have no idea what those are or why they are there in the first place.

Also quite why a emulator would need to add files to the Launchbox/Plugins folder i dont know. Sounds rather fishy to me.

If they work in retroarch, but not from Launchbox, then no they are not set right, clearly. Double check your retroarch path, make sure you have the correct core selected in associated platforms, bulk edit a platforms roms and choose retroarch as the emulator and try loading a rom.

Actually you may need to go with 0.220, 0.221 is still being uploaded.

Just google "internet archive mame 0.221" the first result is what you want, a 0.221 merged set as a torrent.

If you want to use the set you currently have then yes you need that matching version of the emulator, there will be a ton of games from 0.139 that simply will not work in current versions of the emulator. Get version 0.139 from the below link, but bare in mind its a ten year old version of the emulator at this point and great strides in performance and accuracy have been made in ten years. https://www.mamedev.org/oldrel.html

The roms should work, but you would need to use version 0.139 of MAME, not version 0.221. I would add though that that is a very very old MAME romset, so emulation will be worse and you will be missing games that work now but didnt then.

What romset and emulator version are you running?

If your romset is from 2004 then you want a version of the emulator from then as well. There is a very good reason why romsets and emulators are versioned, they should match as the emulator changes every month and also game files are also changed often on a monthly basis, so a romset is only guaranteed to work with the matching version of the emulator, anything not matching could cause issues, more so the further away you get in versions. Personally i would just suggest getting a current romset from the internet archive and get the matching version of the standard MAME emulator. You dont need the UI version as you will be using Launchbox/Bigbox to launch the games anyway, and even the standard MAME does have a UI.

You shouldnt be copying the games to the launchbox folder for mame. It will leave behind all the bios files for example. Also the MAME fullset importer doesnt even offer to move/copy the roms for you, so you are using the standard rom importer for this?

Launchbox/Images/Platforms/Name Of Platform/Clear Logo.

Launchbox will by default combine multi disc games at import as long as they are named correctly. Multi disc, as well as any extra information about the rom that is not the name of the game should always be inside of brackets.

You dont need the commandline in your last image. That is what the associated platform core dropdown is already doing, so you are sending that command twice. Also why do you have a retroarch emulator entry just for Genesis?

No, you would need to use a different theme, like the old default.

Then actually use MAME and not Retroarch, retroarch MAME is really for the Arcade roms, any other system is a pain in the ass to use in Retroarch.

It works just fine still. 2020-05-30 13-30-36-1.m4v

We have certain settings pre-populated for some emulators once selected for ease of use. In order to use those settings Launchbox obviously needs to know the emulator in use to apply the correct settings, that is why it's a specific name used in this case. If any name was allowed we wouldnt know what emulator it was, in this case Retroarch so correct settings would not be auto populated.

Open a emulator and look for the option for controls or input.

You need to setup controls for games in the emulators, Launchbox doesnt/cant control those. The automation is for exiting out of emulators as well as some other Launchbox/Windows functions, but games are handled entirely by the emulators.

The CHD files do not HAVE to be in the same folder as the roms, as long as you specify to MAME the folder location they will work from anywhere.