How to update your MAME ROMset to a newer version with CLRmamepro

[CriticalCid]

Yeah, I had strange problems with the conversion from .zip to .7z in the past as well… The safest way to avoid any problems with the conversion would probably be to add your current ROMs folder to the “Add-paths” and change the folder under “ROM-Paths” to an empty one. When you start the Rebuilder again should Clrmamepro create a complete set in 7z in this new empty folder without any remaining zip files or duplicates.

[Shades2585]

This tutorial looks great. I have never used MAME before so I have a few questions. Am I correct in assuming the the core pack should just be unzipped into where ever you want your roms to be? You don't need to add the core rom pact to the update list correct? Am I correct in assuming that you should never update versions past the version of MAME you are using? Thanks, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Is there a tutorial for setting up MAME for the first time? I see MameUIFX is no longer being updated and MAME is now at 176b. Thanks for all our help. :D Shades

[CriticalCid]

If you mean with core pack a complete set than no, you don’t have to add the set to the update list. Like I said in the tutorial you set the ROM-Path to your current complete set and add the update packs under “Add-Paths”. It's also possible to downgrade your ROMset to a lower version with this exact method but you would need to use rollback packs instead of update packs. Nonetheless is this tutorial meant for people who already know at least the basics of MAME. I would suggest that you try to understand how everything works and needs to be set up first before worrying about updating your ROMs. It might be too much at once for people who just started with arcade emulation.

[Shades2585]

Yes I meant complete set. I assumed as much, just wanted clarification. Do the update packs (MAME0.169-0.170.rar) need to be need to be unzipped or can it look directly into it? Is there a tutorial for setting up MAME for the first time? Thanks, Shades

[CriticalCid]

If the complete ROMset is in just one .zip or .rar file you have to extract it. But don’t ever extract the ROMfiles itself. And no. This tutorial is just only for updating your ROMset. It has nothing to do with setting up MAME itself.

[djwar]

Thank you CriticalCid, but I have a question lets say I have version .168 so if I download newest version, I need to download all the update packs as you stated in point #2, isnit? You think is worth it that much hassle, will the games look any different ? if not, there no point in upgrading and better keep the old version, right..

[DOS76]

I've got myself convinced that every 6 months I'm just going to download the latest set and just change the directory to the new one in LB and delete the old one I have about three months to go before my 1st scheduled update. I may change it to once a year though.

[CriticalCid]

djwar said Thank you CriticalCid, but I have a question lets say I have version .168 so if I download newest version, I need to download all the update packs as you stated in point #2, isnit? You think is worth it that much hassle, will the games look any different ? if not, there no point in upgrading and better keep the old version, right..

Like I said in the introduction. If all the games you want to play are there and working perfectly fine for you there’s no need to update it.

[dirtyces]

On 8/9/2016 at 9:31 PM, CriticalCid said:

djwar said Thank you CriticalCid, but I have a question lets say I have version .168 so if I download newest version, I need to download all the update packs as you stated in point #2, isnit? You think is worth it that much hassle, will the games look any different ? if not, there no point in upgrading and better keep the old version, right..

Like I said in the introduction. If all the games you want to play are there and working perfectly fine for you there’s no need to update it.

I just bought the updated launchbox for the big box frontend. Very happy with it. I have a question about updating roms.

I have the .161 roms and .161 chd's. 

Is it worth updating the roms ? I downloaded all the update packs for roms but couldn't find any for the chd.

The games I played so far work great so if i go by what you said then i shouldn't update but what about updating because of the mame updates, example Will the newest mame look better then the .161..... i copied someone's mame.ini from youtube for his hlsl settings. I think his version was .175..... using the same ini file, will .175 look better than .161 or is it the same.

to tell you the truth I'm pretty pc savvy and I'm scared updating, tutorial looks confusing and i'm scared i may mess up the chd's since i have no update packs for them.

any advice 

[CriticalCid]

I'm truely sorry but unfortunately I can’t say anything about that topic because I don’t like and use any shaders or scanline filters.

Hopefully somebody else can answer you that question.

[DeadPoison]

I think it is to hard for me even with step by step method.

[ALIE]

Mame and updating Roms the whole thing is just overwhelming.  I wish there was a noob step by step video guide for setting up the emulator and updating roms 

Edited September 23, 2016 by ALIE

[Lordmonkus]

I bit the bullet today and decided to try and use clrmamepro to update my 177 rom set to 178 because apparently now the Capcom CPS2 roms requires a .key file. I have tried to use clrmamepro in the past but just gave up because it is such a pain in the ass.

CriticalCid has a great and in depth tutorial here and really is awesome but if you are newer to the whole thing and want a simpler and easier to follow tutorial I recommend giving this one a try

http://www.cphsolutions.f2s.com/guides/cmprotutorial.htm

It's done in a step by step video which pauses itself til you are ready for the next step. I followed this and it worked out perfectly.

[mU$!c]

I'm using a MAME 0.175 ROMSET .zip files (Split)

 

1. Can someone explain to me why I'm adding my backups folder to "Add-Paths"? Maybe, clrmamepro is taking the backups and adding them to the ROMSET by changing case, names and/or adding missing rom files (files inside ROM zip or 7z) to ROMs/aka games zips?

This is the result after rebuild:

2.  crlmamepro is removing alot of stuff. It attempted to remove the floppy folder inside of the samples folder. crlmamepro did not convert all of my .zip files to .7z in my ROMSET either. In fact only a couple thousand were converted to .7z and it looks like the source flders are not being deleted, but I set them to be deleted after update and conversion to .7z. Also, can someone tell me if the samples have .7z support in MAME.

3. So, unless someone is going to help me a bit with this, I'm just going to use the Official MAME 0.175 release (Split) for awhile until a compadre of mine releases a 0.177 or 0.178 ROMSET

 

Feel free to give me any pointers, as this updating process is time consuming.

Edited October 6, 2016 by mU$!c
The Matrix has you

[Lordmonkus]

1. I believe it is because there may be certain files in the backup files that are useful to the rebuilding process. I am not sure about this though.

2. I cannot comment on this at all.

3. If you are going to download a whole new rom set at least wait til there is a full 178 (if it isn't out already) because it will contain the updated Capcom CPS2 roms with the .key file which Mame 178 requires to work.

[CriticalCid]

1. The scanner of CLRmamepro moves everything to the backup folder which doesn’t fit to 100%. But sometimes it only needs to add, rename or move some files around in the archive. So the files in your backup folder are still useful to rebuild your set. But I honestly can’t tell you if they are really required to update your ROMset but adding it is surely the fail-safe attempt.

2.The complete on-the-fly set conversion from .zip to .7z is kinda hit and miss. Sometimes it works perfectly and sometimes you get strange results like yours. The best attempt to convert it would be to rebuild your set to a completely new and empty folder. I guess I’ll need to add this to the tutorial sometimes soon as you are not the only one which came up with that issue.

On 30.7.2016 at 2:16 AM, CriticalCid said:

Yeah, I had strange problems with the conversion from .zip to .7z in the past as well… The safest way to avoid any problems with the conversion would probably be to add your current ROMs folder to the “Add-paths” and change the folder under “ROM-Paths” to an empty one. When you start the Rebuilder again should Clrmamepro create a complete set in 7z in this new empty folder without any remaining zip files or duplicates.

 

Hey @lordmonkus. I saw you did a noob-friendly tutorial for MAME itself. I hope you don’t mind if link to it in my start post

[Lordmonkus]

go right ahead

[mU$!c]

On 7/29/2016 at 6:40 PM, rmilyard said:

So all my ROMs are .zip. When I try to change to .7z looks like I end up with both zip and 7z of same file. Also some of the .zip aren't changing to 7z. Not sure what doing wrong. I have full set of 174 with CHDs and trying to updated to 175 and then 176.

Yeah, that's what happened when I tried converting from .zip to.7z, I was converting a ROMSET, though. I was trying to update from 0.175 to 0.177

Edited October 6, 2016 by mU$!c
the matrix exists

[mU$!c]

23 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

 

 

1. The scanner of CLRmamepro moves everything to the backup folder which doesn’t fit to 100%. But sometimes it only needs to add, rename or move some files around in the archive. So the files in your backup folder are still useful to rebuild your set. But I honestly can’t tell you if they are really required to update your ROMset but adding it is surely the fail-safe attempt.

2.The complete on-the-fly set conversion from .zip to .7z is kinda hit and miss. Sometimes it works perfectly and sometimes you get strange results like yours. The best attempt to convert it would be to rebuild your set to a completely new and empty folder. I guess I’ll need to add this to the tutorial sometimes soon as you are not the only one which came up with that issue.

 

Hey @lordmonkus. I saw you did a noob-friendly tutorial for MAME itself. I hope you don’t mind if link to it in my start post

@CriticalCidBTW...is it possible to downgrade a ROMSET? Say, from 0.175 down to 0.168? I haven't found a 0.168 ROMSET for DL. I need a 0.168 ROMSET for EmuCR_mameplus_bin_x64-0.168r5272-20151126, as you know MAMEPlus doesn't function quite the same way as Official MAME releases and has more GUI options. I'll have to look into a cheat engine and cheat files for official MAME releases, I haven't used official MAME in a very long time.

@CriticalCidIs downgrading a MAME 0.175 ROMSET down to 0.168 even possible?

Edited October 7, 2016 by mU$!c
because I am Neo

[CriticalCid]

It’s definitely possible and works exactly the same way. You just have to use the Rollback ROM packs instead of the update packs. Of course you will need all Rollback packs from your current version to 0.168. With that said. Finding all required Rollback sets would probably be harder than finding a complete 0.168 set.

As alternative you could also try to find an older set and older update packs and update that set to 0.168.

A second alternative would be to use an older complete set (pre 0.168, but as close as possible) and a more current set (again, as close as possible) and try to build a 0.168 set with them, but you will most likely end up with a handful of missing files if you are gonna use that method.