Mame merged or not

[trellos]

Which set is better to use in mame merged or not and why? 

I have downloaded 0.185 merged ,thank you.

[DOS76]

I prefer split some prefer non-merged but merged while using the least amount of space has no way for LB to any clone roms only the parin MAent rom for a game in MAME

[SentaiBrad]

Yea, split and non-merged only for LaunchBox as merged doesn't import properly in to LaunchBox. I mean, it will import, but you have to import multiple times with different regions selected, and you may not get the version or region you want. Split is only a few GB larger than merged now days (last I checked), so merged makes even less sense now days. I remember when the difference was like 15GB. Split can have some odd.... issues as well. They're small issues, but some people run in to them more often than others. Derek (DOS) hasn't had any with split, but I have had quite a few, so I opt for non-merged because it's the most compatible version. It's a combination of merged and split. It has the same amount of files as split, but every file has been merged. A downside of this is that it's double in size. So with non-merged and chd, you're talking about a lot of space.

[NLS]

Well I would consider this a bug.

LB should import properly irrelevant of merged/split.

Anybody has reported that?

 

[SentaiBrad]

It's not a bug. Merged still imports, but the region and child rom flags are lost. There is nothing we can do about it, because that's how merged works. They've taken 12 files and reduced them to, usually, 1. MAME works with both obviously, but when each file is a means to region identification, and you get rid of those, guess what goes away? Being able to import things properly.

[DOS76]

Its not a bug LB scans your files if you have a merged set you have way less files for it to scan how can it find files you don't have? If you have split or non-merged set these files exist separately and not as pieces combined as one like they do with the merged set so the program can actually see them scan them and add them accordingly based on the criteria that you use. I'm actually unsure as to what running a merged set through import and using the import clones additional apps feature does since the feature is newer.

Edited May 20, 2017 by DOS76

[SentaiBrad]

Import All Clones will just import every single game it finds. I'm not sure how you'd select the region you'd want (maybe in MAME?), but you're gonna get a lot of extra stuff you may not want regardless.

[DOS76]

huh I'm talking about the import clones as additional apps merged into one game

[trellos]

So the best thing to do is to have a non merged set ,and what things I need to check in the import roms wizard in order not to have the same game 4 or five times ?

[SentaiBrad]

You don't need to check anything. By default, it will only import 1 version of a game; that's what the top dot and selecting the region is for. The check boxes are just for genre's of games and games that don't work in MAME. It's a toss up, but non-merged is the safe bet, but requires more file space. Split works and still works for a lot of people, but I'd rather take the double file size instead of dealing with will this wont this syndrome.