Mame Tutorial for n00bs

[vaderag]

9 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

If you are using the full set importer in LB it doesn't matter what set you use but Non Merged would be a waste of space in that scenario. Non Merged is recommended if you want to hand pick out specific games for your own custom set of games.

As for updating there really isn't any real reason to keep it up to date every month and now that Pleasuredome shit down their tracker and moved to the github io page it's easier than ever to get the latest sets.

Are there some details somewhere on keeping things up to date with the new model? (And a link to the new GitHub??)

[Lordmonkus]

What kind of details ? The Mame site updates what changes  each month and no links, we cannot provide any but if you Google search Pleasuredome github io it should be the first link in the results.

[vaderag]

29 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

What kind of details ? The Mame site updates what changes  each month and no links, we cannot provide any but if you Google search Pleasuredome github io it should be the first link in the results.

Ah okay, that probably answers the question I think!

[Sturm]

Okay, so I found the ROMs and CHDs, but they are in two separate downloads. Do they need to be combined somehow before importing into Launchbox? And if so, how?

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, Sturm said:

Okay, so I found the ROMs and CHDs, but they are in two separate downloads. Do they need to be combined somehow before importing into Launchbox? And if so, how?

You dont do anything with the CHD's in Launchbox, but you do need to tell MAME where they are if you are not keeping them in the default mame/roms folder in the mame emulator folder.

[turbofeet]

Yes the CHDs are stored in the ROMs folder, each extracted in their own subfolder.

[pdam]

Thanks mate. You just saved me a lot of time. I am big fun of MAME.

[venom.007.splash]

hey i'm having issue with my Mame (Arcade) NOT launching in LaunchBox. i did the full setup import mame full romset everything install fine but it will not launch any of my roms.

romset i.m using: MAME 2000 Reference ROM Set MAME 0.37b5

                              : EMULATOR        MAME 0.241

i'm not sure if i am using the wrong emulator for this romset but i can't find a complete romset that works with this version of mame 0.241. do i need to find the right emulator for this set or im i doing something wrong. i have attach photos to show how my files is setup in launchbox folder i don't know if this is going to be helpful.

[Lordmonkus]

If you Google search for "pleasuredome git io" you will find the latest and up to date rom set releases.

Using the latest version of Mame with that 0.37 rom set is not going to work at all for you.

[neil9000]

23 minutes ago, venom.007.splash said:

i'm not sure if i am using the wrong emulator for this romset

Yes, you are using the current emulator, with a 22 year old romset, you couldnt really do MAME more wrong than that, it's nearly as far apart between emu and roms that you can physically get.

[sLpFhaWK]

Hello there. I have some questions regarding Mame and launchbox, but more specifically MAME it's self.

I have a full split, merged and CHD's for romset .242 but I do not want every single game in the romset, so I am trying to single out games I want, mostly lightgun games, fighters, shooters etc. There is like 29xx games and I only want a fraction of these.

I'll import the fullset into Mame using the import full romset feature in launchbox it'll give me the name of the file for the game I wish to play, but the problem is the file I am looking for isn't in the folder. So now like I've said, I downloaded a Merged set as well as a split set thinking the file was merged with its clones as well as the bios and anything else needed to run the game minus the CHD, but even with the split romset i cannot find the file launchbox says the game is.

For example, Big Buck Hunter is a light gun game, it says it's bbh.zip but there is no bbh.zip in either merged, or split rom set. the CHD folder is bbh so thats easy to find. I Wrote down a list of 20ish games I want from the light gun catergory but all of them reference a zip file that i cannot find. 

So my question is how do I determine which files i need for the games i want? the overview panel on launchbox I thought would provide me the info I need, but sadly it led me astray unless I am just reading it wrong. I am going to ask this on reddit as well, but i figured i'd ask here as well. 

Thank you. 

[neil9000]

11 minutes ago, sLpFhaWK said:

Hello there. I have some questions regarding Mame and launchbox, but more specifically MAME it's self.

I have a full split, merged and CHD's for romset .242 but I do not want every single game in the romset, so I am trying to single out games I want, mostly lightgun games, fighters, shooters etc. There is like 29xx games and I only want a fraction of these.

I'll import the fullset into Mame using the import full romset feature in launchbox it'll give me the name of the file for the game I wish to play, but the problem is the file I am looking for isn't in the folder. So now like I've said, I downloaded a Merged set as well as a split set thinking the file was merged with its clones as well as the bios and anything else needed to run the game minus the CHD, but even with the split romset i cannot find the file launchbox says the game is.

For example, Big Buck Hunter is a light gun game, it says it's bbh.zip but there is no bbh.zip in either merged, or split rom set. the CHD folder is bbh so thats easy to find. I Wrote down a list of 20ish games I want from the light gun catergory but all of them reference a zip file that i cannot find. 

So my question is how do I determine which files i need for the games i want? the overview panel on launchbox I thought would provide me the info I need, but sadly it led me astray unless I am just reading it wrong. I am going to ask this on reddit as well, but i figured i'd ask here as well. 

Thank you. 

To do what you want to do you HAVE to have a Non-Merged romset, you CANNOT pull out roms like that from a merged or split set.

[neil9000]

[sLpFhaWK]

22 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

To do what you want to do you HAVE to have a Non-Merged romset, you CANNOT pull out roms like that from a merged or split set.

ugh, of course it is that way. lol looks like i'll have to download yet ANOTHER torrent for this damn romset 

 

thanks for the answer Neil. again super quick on the reply.

[sLpFhaWK]

lol jeez the unmerged set is 50gb more than the split set. 

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, sLpFhaWK said:

lol jeez the unmerged set is 50gb more than the split set. 

Yes, this is because every zip in that set is a fully working game. That is not the case in the other two sets, there they share files, so one game may use a file in a completely different games zip, this keeps the size down as that one file is in the set only once, and every game that needs it gets it from that one location. In a Non-Merged set every single zip is self contained, meaning that one file is now in every single zip that requires it, so you could have the same file duplicated hundreds of times, hence the increase in set size. However this is the only way to pull out specific games, as the other sets a game may need a file from another game in order to work, so you pulling it out will simply mean that game no longer works, that is not the case with the Non-Merged set, due to all that duplication of files.

[sLpFhaWK]

2 hours ago, neil9000 said:

Yes, this is because every zip in that set is a fully working game. That is not the case in the other two sets, there they share files, so one game may use a file in a completely different games zip, this keeps the size down as that one file is in the set only once, and every game that needs it gets it from that one location. In a Non-Merged set every single zip is self contained, meaning that one file is now in every single zip that requires it, so you could have the same file duplicated hundreds of times, hence the increase in set size. However this is the only way to pull out specific games, as the other sets a game may need a file from another game in order to work, so you pulling it out will simply mean that game no longer works, that is not the case with the Non-Merged set, due to all that duplication of files.

yah i understand, but i didn't think it would be almost 2x the space but in reality it makes sense.

but pulling out the games i want will be nice, now 1 more question. i see that they have these XML files for the different sets, how would i be able to view them properly to see what game is what zip, thats what those are for right?

[JoeViking245]

17 hours ago, sLpFhaWK said:

i see that they have these XML files for the different sets, how would i be able to view them properly

You can open xml files in any text editor (such as Notepad++ or even regular Notepad).  But those xml files (located in the /hash/ subfolder of MAME) are for MAMES softlists (software lists, as in computers and consoles).  So they won't help you for MAMEs Arcade Machines, including CHDs (unless the CHDs are part of a softlist). 

[Knowcontrol]

To see which game corresponds to which file name you'd open the mame.exe application to access the GUI. At the top of the GUI there is a place where you can type the name of the game to search for it. There is then a sidebar that you can make visible that will give all the details of the game including the zip file name.

As for the proper non-merged set, do as mentioned in a couple of the posts in this thread and go to pleasuredome get io (Google search gives you the correct address) and get the set from there. I just completed my 241 set yesterday with picking out each game, making sure I had the artwork and videos I wanted and then setting which ones I wanted as Favorites. I used the No Filler script to get me started on the games that I'd want. When I got stuck with a game file name I would launch MAME and look it up there.

[sLpFhaWK]

So I got launch box installed and I have been using the Bezel Project to get bezels for all the systems, so far I have NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, NDS, and Sega CD and MAME, all work but Sega CD, GBA, NDS and MAME. I've done all the same thing to get the others working, and just by looking at the config I have no idea what to do to get them to work. Is it crucial, no, but I do like seeing the bezels.

The issue with MAME is there is so many different packs to get, and I don't know what games are which pack, i tried to get them all but one pack failed and it totally aborted the process. I will try again but if it happens then I don't know what more to do, I know this isn't the place for it, but I figured there might be people who are familiar or had a similar issue. I don't really wanna start a new topic for this since it's not launchbox related, but seeing one of the MAME packs aren't working I thought that might be ok here.

Lastly I have an Ultimarc IPAC ultimate board. I have it setup to be default MAME setup, so Player 1 is up down left right ctrl alt shift space z and x, but I noticed retroarch uses a different config. Would it make more sense to swap RetroArch to mame's config, or mame to retroarch? I'd like them to be the same on everything I use just to make it easier to remember.

Thanks!