Which emulator are you using for MAME

[mothergoose729]

9 hours ago, lordmonkus said:

Honestly, it's a toss up. I bounce back and forth between the two.

Stand alone Mame has HiScore support while I couldn't figure out if Retroarch does and it's just you have to jump through some hoops to get it working or not. Stand alone also now has port audio which gives you 0 latency audio if you want it but that requires exclusive audio so you can't use the same system for other audio features. This may or may not be something you want to use. I don't use this on my main system since I like to listen to MP3 music while playing.

Retroarch Mame is easier to get up and running since you don't have to fiddle with ini files or telling it where your rom folder is and it's shaders are better out of the box if you like (but you said you didn't so)

To me it's a wash and it's just personal preference with neither having a distinct advantage.

Better high score support is and more control over inputs and settings are why I plan to switch to MAME standalone. I believe that retroarch doesn't have support for multiple emulated mice, which can be a problem for rail shooters and light gun games. I have also found that save state support is really clunky in retroarch, as it is only supported in the MAME overlay, rather than the retroarch "parent" UI. The ability to hotswap different controllers though is very nice, and for the most part per-game input mapping works pretty well. 

[Thatman84]

5 hours ago, angelobodetti said:

Got it up and running with RetroArch. My issue now is that I use RocketLauncher and the RetroArch module in RocketLauncher does not support the system name of "Arcade" so it will not launch any games.

Is there a setting you know if in RL to shut that off?

If I rename Arcade to MAME in LaunchBox will it screw anything up? Playlists or anything else get messed up? I know some people had issues in the past with Playlists when their platform name was MAME.

Thank you!

 Recently setup RocketLauncher and for I wanted a system name as Electronic Handheld Games instead of Game & Watch. It was a very easy fix with RocketLauncher.

PM me if you can't do it as I'm new to RL so don't want to post the wrong info.

basically copy the retroarch module, edit the name & maybe 3 words in the module. Then add it as a new emulator.

FYI, @lordmonkus Libretro said they were going to be more regular on MAME core updates now since Patreon and so far they have been keeping up after a stint between .174 and .180 something iirc......see how long they can keep it going

 

[Lordmonkus]

That's good to hear. Up until recently it was a no brainer decision to use stand alone Mame over the Retroarch core but now like I said previously in this thread there is very minor differences between them. A case can be made for each and it's up to the users personal needs as to which to use.

[angelobodetti]

Looks like MAME on RetroArch creates a MAME folded inside my rom folder with the settings and nvram stuff. I'm guessing I need to tell the core where to put that. 

[Zeaede]

Im thinking of getting in mame, but right now there is some 25 torrents with mame/mess

Is there any turtorial guides that explains step by step what to do?

I have noticed one  mame torrent is around 120 gb, do i need the smaller ones?

Edited May 27, 2017 by Zeaede

[angelobodetti]

6 minutes ago, Zeaede said:

Im thinking of getting in mame, but right now there is some 25 torrents with mame/mess

Is there any turtorial guides that explains step by step what to do?

I have noticed one  mame torrent is around 120 gb, do i need the smaller ones?

You need about 650gb worth in 2 torrents. 

The mame non merged set 120gb

The CHD merged set 440gb

put the thousands of individual files from the roms (120gb) torrent into a folder. Then take all of the individual folders from the chd (440gb) set and put those folders in the same folder as your roms. 

Do not change the names of anything. 

In LaunchBox import roms, point to the main folder and LaunchBox will import them. 

Use mame RetroArch core because it's simple.  

[Zeaede]

1 minute ago, angelobodetti said:

You need about 650gb worth in 2 torrents. 

The mame non merged set 120gb

The CHD merged set 440gb

put the thousands of individual files from the roms (120gb) torrent into a folder. Then take all of the individual folders from the chd (440gb) set and put those folders in the same folder as your roms. 

Do not change the names of anything. 

In LaunchBox import roms, point to the main folder and LaunchBox will import them. 

Use mame RetroArch core because it's simple.  

Thanks for input

Why the 120 gb torrent payed my attention, i compared files with rocket launcher and hyperspin xml

I downloaded few roms o the 120 gb and tried it with RA that seems to work with BIOS in system folder

[angelobodetti]

14 minutes ago, Zeaede said:

Thanks for input

Why the 120 gb torrent payed my attention, i compared files with rocket launcher and hyperspin xml

I downloaded few roms o the 120 gb and tried it with RA that seems to work with BIOS in system folder

You need all of it. There's s ton of bios files in there. You also need chd pack because newer games and bigger games use them. 

If you want arcade and simple, get final burn alpha romset and use the fbalpha core. Simple, works, smaller...

[DOS76]

Yeah this can get a little confusing basically MAME has three different rom types you can have you can have

Merged which where all the clones and parents have all the files in one archive

Split where the parents and any clones are all represented by their own separate archive

Non-Merged which is where all parents and clones contain all the necessary files in every archive (This is a huge waste of space in my opinion)

To get more in depth basically if you have a non-merged casino game that has 50 version (because I swear some of them do) all 50 versions will contain all of the parent files plus what ever files the clone needs to run so say each clone variation is only 1 file that actually makes it different from the parent but the parent is 25 files then you would end up with 50 archives containing 26 files while with a split set you would have 50 archives only the parent would have 25 files in it and clones would have only the 1 file in it so in total you would get 1300 files in the 50 non-merged archives but only 74 in the split version and the merged version would only have 1 archive with 74 files in it as only the parent archive gets an actual archive.

Whew I hope that didn't confuse you more actually but my point is I would try the split set 1st as I've never had to use non-merged and don't see me ever being okay with having all of those useless redundant files taking up disk space on my machine.

Edited May 27, 2017 by DOS76

[orac31]

I am useing  mame stand alone but gave retroarch core a try but unless I move my Roms from launchbox to the retroarch rom folder they won't work is this right I want to try as you can't use a defult bezel for mame games without artwork in mame standalone 

[DOS76]

That shouldn't be right the RA version should be less picky about where the files are kept then the actual stand alone version.

[orac31]

I had been playing around all morning could it be I need the bioses in the retroarch/system/mane/rom?

[angelobodetti]

No all bioses are in same folder as roms. You literally need to do nothing in RetroArch. Your issue could be you don't have a full set or that you are trying to launch games that need chd files that you didn't download. 

[orac31]

No have full rom set and chds all work fine mane stand alone 

 

do you have to tell retroarch where rom folder is

[DOS76]

not in my experience

[orac31]

Will have a try again later 

[DOS76]

I just tested and I can load them in RA no issues from multiple file paths I had to go into LB and add an Arcade associated platform under RA to get them to work in LB but they are working from there now too.

[angelobodetti]

Same. I didn't need to tell RA to do a thing or look anywhere to work. 

Do you guys import clones? I did skip clones but I wonder if I'm kidding games because of it?

Also how does the merged romset work? Like when you load the zip file, how does it know which rom to play if there's multiple inside?

[orac31]

27 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

I just tested and I can load them in RA no issues from multiple file paths I had to go into LB and add an Arcade associated platform under RA to get them to work in LB but they are working from there now too.

 

13 minutes ago, angelobodetti said:

Same. I didn't need to tell RA to do a thing or look anywhere to work. 

Do you guys import clones? I did skip clones but I wonder if I'm kidding games because of it?

Also how does the merged romset work? Like when you load the zip file, how does it know which rom to play if there's multiple inside?

Thanks I try when I get home 

[DOS76]

Merged sets are harder to work with especially if you want to use clones you can either actually change the name of the archive to the clone name to use it or now that LB handles MAME games without extensions if the checkbox is marked you can enter a clone name without an extension as a game or additional app and it should launch the only issue with that is you have to have a level of understanding of MAME to be able to know which ROM names you would need it would all be manual tedious work in other words.