Gangor Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 I'm brand new to this and I'm trying to get retroarch to work as from it sounds it works with most platforms. I extract retroarch to the pc, update, apply, download cores and when i select one to load (was aiming for MAME) to work with the arcade classics it doesnt want to seem to stick or save although i do see it appear at first until i close retroarch. With this, i cant seem to get a game to run with retroarch which in turn i cannot get to work with rocketlauncher and bigbox. I've looked at a lot of videos and such online, it seems pretty straight forward, but apparently I'm doing something wrong. Help please! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeromod Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 (edited) @Gangor SentaiBrad and crew have a TON of tutorials on their youtube channel, specifically for setting up emulators etc. with Launchbox. I'd start there, and if you hit a snag, refer to the video you were using and post back on this thread and we can help you out if needed.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSIht6UXIEXIgz4eXAEShxA Edited February 25, 2017 by Zeromod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangor Posted February 25, 2017 Author Share Posted February 25, 2017 Thanks guys, i actually did follow the youtube tutorial before i posted for help, figured that would make everything nice and fuzzy and it just didnt work. Let me try the pictures and get back to you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangor Posted February 26, 2017 Author Share Posted February 26, 2017 This is getting really frustrating. I went through your steps and first game i chose worked via retroarch emulator, then the next game fail and it seems more fail than not. I've tried different mame cores and even fb cores but still no consistent success. I was going to give up on retro and just go mame for arcade, but see the same thing there too. I feel like deleting everything and start from scratch, but this is a fresh win 10, dedicated machine, hardley anything has been done that I dont feel i could go back and revert if necessary. What else am i missing? Its frustrating because every video and page i read says get to this point, bam your game should work...so many issues at this point. Also, i'm a bit confused as to when i should be configuring global or a specific system emulator in RL. Perhaps i didnt have things setup right, but i wasn't able to use the global emulator when the system specific at least pulled up. Also at this point, i setup an emulator for retro there but the mod only lists an option for mame.akh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 If you could provide more details like which games and systems you are running into issues with that would be really helpful for us to help you. Some systems like CD based ones (eg: PSX, Sega CD and Saturn) require bios files. Some cores such as the Saturn one can be very particular about its images and how they are dumped, also Playstation requires you to load the cue file and not the bin. Arcade games can be a bit more troublesome if you do not have a full set because you may be missing required parent or bios roms. Also with the arcade stuff like Mame and FBA you sort of need to know what rom set your roms are and then you can pick which Mame core you use based off of that since each core is based off a specific build of Mame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangor Posted February 26, 2017 Author Share Posted February 26, 2017 FYI, i get it, this is all likely my lack of understanding of how this all works...apparently i'm not absorbing the info as well as i should be. So, when i initially started this 6 years ago (before kids were born and project time went poof) i purchased roms from "link removed", the disk i'm working with right now is the MAME's greatest hits. So i have all sorts of games on here, like tempest, gorf, burger time, etc. I imported the entire disk which gave me 1346 games all under the Arcade system. I left the combine roms with same titles option set. So since the 194X series games (capcom) is first in the list, i test them lots so here are some examples. I currently have the MAME 2003 core loaded in retroarch 1941 runs, 1942 fails, 1943 runs, 1944 fails. Burger Time fails, Super burger time runs. I have a number of games from sega in this system, some run, some dont. So this raises 3 questions in my mind: I assume since these games are in this list, they were made by sega, but not a rom for one of the actual sega platforms...is there a difference? Do i need to configure different games in this list somehow with different cores to work? How would i do that? (Sounds painful) Do i need to do something different or change the import feature when "combine roms with same titles" is enabled? Thanks for staying engaged btw, appreciate the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zannyuk Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 (edited) The main problem I think your encountering is your mame roms by the sound of it are 6 years old, and for them to work properly they need to match mame versions, eg if your mame roms were originally for (for example mame 0.95) unless you were using a 0.95 emulator you would get multiple errors like you are getting. To add to the complication retroarch has different mame cores that match different mame versions (for instance the mame2014 core matches mame version 0.159). Did your discs tell you what version of mame they were for or did they include a version of mame already on them? If so, I think your easiest solution would be to just find the matching mame.exe version that goes with the version listed on the disc, you can still use launchbox with mame it doesnt have to be retroarch. If no version info came with your discs, im afraid your best bet would be to rebuild your rom set and thats a topic all of its own. Edited February 26, 2017 by zannyuk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 I removed the link you had posted but I understand what you are talking about, we just can't be linking to sites that have roms let alone sites that sell roms. You say that you got those disks 6 years so I am not exactly sure what rom set version those roms would be from. If you can determine what rom set version those are from that would make deciding which version of Mame to use easier. Different versions of Mame use different rom set versions, over the years the roms have changed because of better dumps and newer features requiring certain extra files. One example of this was recently with Mame 178 and the Capcom CPS2 roms. These games had an encrypted "kill" chip that previously was not emulated but then it became decrypted and emulated. The roms then needed to be updated to contain a .key file which was the decryption. If you can determine the exact rom set version you have then you could download an older version of Mame matching your roms from the Mame website, they have all the older builds available there. But like @zannyukyou may be better off obtaining a new up to date rom set and Mame. If you need a guide for Mame and help with it I have a guide here and always willing to help out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangor Posted February 26, 2017 Author Share Posted February 26, 2017 Sorry about that monkus, thanks for cleaning that up was just trying to give you the right info to help me out. Ok, thanks guys, so let me play with this some more, perhaps clear the roms and add a few to see how that goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 21 minutes ago, Gangor said: So this raises 3 questions in my mind: I assume since these games are in this list, they were made by sega, but not a rom for one of the actual sega platforms...is there a difference? Do i need to configure different games in this list somehow with different cores to work? How would i do that? (Sounds painful) Do i need to do something different or change the import feature when "combine roms with same titles" is enabled? Thanks for staying engaged btw, appreciate the help. If you decide to not update your roms and wish to set up each game with a specific emulator that is possible. You would need to setup each emulator in Launchbox, just name each one with a distinctive name so you know precisely which one it is. From there you can edit each game and change which emulator it uses. Or if you would rather use Retroarch with different cores you could still have them use Retroarch as the emulator and then custom command line parameters for each game telling it to load a specific core that works for that game. This will be time consuming though depending on how many games you have. My recommendation is to get a new rom set and Mame but I do understand if that is not an option for you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zannyuk Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Well if you have the internet speed and harddrive space seeing as its been 6 years id start again I think we cant link sites here I think but finding the latest set is but a google search away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Yeah we can't tell you directly where to get updated roms but there is a certain dome of pleasure that is a wonderful place to look. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangor Posted February 26, 2017 Author Share Posted February 26, 2017 No, i'm going to look for current roms and try that, internet speed and HD size is fine. I didn't understand that roms had versions as well that matched with the mame versions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Rom sets and Mame version don't have to match perfectly but the further apart they are the more likely you are to run into problems. I used a 154 romset for a long time with versions of Mame up to 177. I only updated with 178 and still use 178 roms with new versions of Mame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangor Posted February 28, 2017 Author Share Posted February 28, 2017 Ok, so i had it mostly working and now i have 2 issues: I had retroarch working in rocketlauncher, but something suddenly changed and now when i go to the Arcade system, I only see Mame Global as an option for Default Emulator, not retroarch. Rom paths is set under Arcade system. When i had retroarch working, I was able to run the few games i tested, but they would not run from launchbox. I couldnt find a disconnect between launchbox and rocketlauncher (the only emulator configured in LB) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 I don't use RocketLauncher so hopefully someone who does will pop into this thread and be able help with that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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