Yes, I was able to do this weeks ago, but I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to manually move my files into their respective Mameui64 folders. I'd prefer to keep the files separate and tell Mameui64 where to look for them. The downloads I have are specifically designed to work that way. Having said this, I speculate that I could probably move all of these files into their respective Mameui64 folders, but that for me is a very messy way of doing things. It may complicate matters when a.) Updating to a new version of Mameui64 and b.) Using Clrmamepro to update my sets. But maybe not--I haven't done either of these things yet.
I've attached a screenshot to clarify something using the ROMs directory as an example. I believe this is what you were discussing earlier. Mameui64 by default looks at the "roms" folder first as it does for every other folder within Mameui64. You can delete this directory or specify an entirely new path over top of this directory. However, I believe you can also add additional ROM directories and Mameui64 will look for the Rom files in every directory specified. (I'll get to why I'd want to do this or may need to do this later on.) Does that sound accurate?
Ok, moving on...
Now, I should be able to set a directory for my ROMs, CHDs and Software List ROMs under Options > Directories > Roms.
Sound about right?
The next step: I need to set paths to the contents of these folders:
-MAME 0.194 EXTRAs
-MAME 0.194 Multimedia
Here's a screenshot of everything inside these folders:
-MAME 0.194 EXTRAs:
-MAME 0.194 Multimedia:
When looking inside the "EXTRAs" folder, I already have these folders within Mameui64.
-artwork
-ctrlr
-dats
-folders
-samples
Now, there are differences between the contents of these folders--as expected--since I'm adding new files to Mameui64. BUT there are also certain similarities (overlap). See screen captures.
Artwork comparison:
Samples comparison:
So, for the sake of these specific comparisons, do I keep the default Artwork and Samples directories while adding the new artwork and samples directories? I assume if so I can do this for everything in MAME EXTRAs and MAME Multimedia.
Now, if I was setting paths in "original" Mame with the mame.ini and the ui.ini files, this is how it would all come together.
mame.ini file example:
ui.ini file example:
Hopefully these two examples give you a better understanding of what it is that I'm trying to do.
I realize this is a crazy long post, but I'd greatly appreciate a response because I've spent A LOT of time working on the content of this post and trying to come up with the best possible way I could explain this situation lol. This is why I felt that direct voice communications was a better option than back-and-forth forum posts.