LB won't run mame games

[vgbox]

I'm am disappointed and frustrated with setting my emulation gaming since i'm coming from qmc2 which already made me frustrated and look for easier frontend to setup. I also read that hyperspin is even much harder to setup  though its absolutely gorgeous frontend and i desire it but i just don't feel like being frustrated anymore so i read lb is very easy to setup... Great, so i dl it but things still don't run frustration free.

I have the latest mame 0.185, lb, directed lb to mame64 exe file, imported roms 0.185 (merged), told lb to play the mame roms from their current location, the setup was done with only 2 errors as you can see in the image. Great, now i pressed to play a game but lo and behold, they won't run as the run window is terminated 1 second after it launch... Both lb and mame are located in the same drive. I searched a bit in the forum but found nothing.

1. How do i make lb run mame games?

2. How do i fix the 2 errors seen in the image?

3. How do i make lb play video snaps for each game? I have mame video snap files if needed.

4. Do the mame chd files need to be set in the same manner as setting mame rom files?

5. Would it be a problem of lb and mame were located in different drives?

 

Thanks in advance...

 

Edited May 27, 2017 by vgbox

[Retro808]

My answers will probably be basic as I am still learning, but here goes...

1. Does mame run the games fine without using launchbox? (the romset version has to match your version of mame). If so I would probably share snaps of an edit game detail (right click a game and choose edit). Show the launcher and emulation tabs. Then also go to edit emulator and share snaps of the emulator detail and associated platforms tabs. Maybe the experts can see if you have something missing or not linked correctly. 

3. If you have videos already they can be placed in the correct system folder in the videos folder of your launchbox drive (\\LaunchBox\Videos\<system name>). Also in view menu make sure "auto-play video" is checked. I do not think it is defaulted to auto play. 

4. Mame chd files go in a folder named for each rom and is placed in the main folder you have your roms.

example: 

/mame/roms/carnevil.zip 
/mame/roms/carnevil/<carnevilchdfiles>

5.. They can be on different drives as long as you are directing launchbox correctly. 

Edited May 27, 2017 by Retro808

[DOS76]

Okay lets see here

1 is mostly correct except that while it is recommended to have the matching ROM set for your version it isn't necessarily if you say have MAME 185 emulator and a MAME 181 ROM set there would be only a few games that didn't work due to the emulator and ROMs being mismatched. Now if you had a 0.160 ROM set and a 0.185 emulator the number of games that wouldn't work due to changes would grow pretty large especially since your entire CPS2 library wouldn't work anymore due to the missing key files that weren't a thing then.

3. This can be done as explained as above but you also have the option of going to tools>manage platforms then choose your Arcade platform and edit it go to the folders tab and change your Arcades Video folder to your MAME's snap folder path.

5. If they aren't in the default MAME ROMs folder that MAME is looking for you will also have to adjust the MAME.ini to reflect the actual ROM path that you have for your games so basically if you chose to import your games into LB and you moved the ROMs there then MAME needs to know where they are because it is looking in the ROMs folder in the MAME root folder as the game location.

Edited May 27, 2017 by DOS76

[Retro808]

Hey look at that I was kind of helpful.  I will take it over not being helpful at all. 

Thanks @DOS76 sharing your knowledge. It helped me learn a couple things.  

[DOS76]

@Retro808 thank you for helping out and contributing to the community.

[vgbox]

1. How can i make lb recognize the chd (merged) folder without moving them to the roms (merged) folder? My merged roms are in their own folder and the chd's are in their own folder. I would like to keep it this way. 

2. Where is the option in lb to play videosnaps? I directed lb to my videosnaps folder and btw, it says that auto play of videos exists only in lb premium... That's, how shell i say it, surprising... I guess they want us to pay for big box. I wouldn't mind paying one time if it means free future updates forever but at this stage i'm really not considering paying for it unless i can make lb actually work as intended.

3. How can i make lb present all the image type lists it offers to show? For image type, only boxes art is working.  Does lb only downloads the boxes art for me and for the rest i need to provide the other image type? I have mame "extras" folder with additional zipped/in folder files (artwork, cabinet, marquees, game over, logo, etc.). Do i need to direct lb to each of the  extras folder additional files like i directed to the videosnaps folder?

4. How can i make lb work with mame software list roms (merged) folder? 

Btw, the roms did not launch because mame.exe was not directed to the roms folder. I did not know i should have even entered mame since in qmc2 for example everything is directed only from qmc2. I wonder why lb need the user to enter mame.exe and direct it to the rf since lb is already directed to the rf...

 

Why things have to be so complicated? I say this because lb is presented as an easier frontend to setup. I don't really find lb easier to setup than qmc2.

Edited May 27, 2017 by vgbox

[DOS76]

1 There isn't any need to do so you just have to add your chd path to the MAME.ini file and MAME will recognize your CHD files as being there.

2 Well yeah I'm sorry about that I assumed you had premium because you were asking about video. Video snaps are a premium feature.

3 LB should download all available media from the scrapping sources (LaunchBox Games DB and EmuMovies if you have a premium account there also) When you bulk import games it should offer you options on which media types you want to download during the import. I believe you can redirect your folders to the MAME folders by going to tools>Manage Platforms and the going to the folders tab and changing the paths to your paths in MAME.

4 I've asked for software list naming support in the past and it seems as if there is very little interest in adding them to LB. You can use MAME to play MESS systems but if you import with the software list roms it won't name any with short names correctly and you won't attach to any ids or media from the database.

Edited May 27, 2017 by DOS76

[SentaiBrad]

You can grab the media from EmuMovies for free, it's only Premium that is required to grab video from them (both premiums).

As for MAME needing to know where your mame roms are, this has nothing to do with LaunchBox, this is a MAME thing. You must tell it where all of your roms are because of the parent and child rom relationship. If if doesn't know where everything is, it can't operate properly. I also see that no ones mentioned that a MAME Merged Rom set can also make things more difficult. It needs to be split or non-merged for the best results.

LaunchBox is much easier than any other front end, things get complicated the more complicated an emulator is, MESS, RetroArch and a few other emulators have somewhat of a learning curve. As long as you put your MAME split or non-merged rom set and your MAME CHD pack in the MAME/roms folder, then import that using the MAME importer, you're done. It downloads all the available images from the LB Games Database, and if you have an emu movies account, you need to log in and it grabs from there.

We also have a ton of tutorials. I suggest watching the MAME tutorial. It's a bit older, so replace the version numbers with the latest MAME release, and ignore information about certain things, like Lightspeed for example. It's very outdated and isn't updated much at all. You could also watch the EmuMovies tutorial as well if you need more help in that realm.

[vgbox]

1. If i need to enter mame.ini or exe to direct to the roms and chd than what's the purpose of lb's "edit platform/folders window/game" directory? So if i understand correct, only the roms and chd folders need to be directed from the parent and the rest like artwork, marquees, etc. needs to be directed from lb?

2. I download all my mame related files from PD. Will they 100% work with lb or i'll need to dl all mame related files from emumovies from the beginning?

3. What is the problem with merged and lb? I won't be able to dl none merged or split because my hdd is almost full atm and i don't want to delete my merged files.

 

 

[DOS76]

3 With merged when you import it you will only get the parent Roms imported so say there is a Japanese game that it the parent but there is a US clone with the filters LB would (hopefully since I've seen issues with some games) use the settings to import the US version instead of the Japanese version with the merged set it won't see the US version at all because there isn't an archive with the name for it so the merged limits what you can do with it now if you know the US rom name you could easily just change the rom name to be the clone name in your MAME ROMs and in the LB game edit window and it would launch the clone but this would be manual and tedious work to accomplish.

2 I think so but I'm unsure as I don't do the MAME media myself I just use LB's

1 That location is always set to the default location regardless of where your games are installed you can change it to the path you are actually using but the only feature I know of that it works with is scanning for newly added ROMs

[vgbox]

Lb already downloaded a lot of files for a few hours after i launched it for the first time and directed the mame rom folder in it... So all it did do was downloading the "boxes" art only? 

Edited May 27, 2017 by vgbox

[Retro808]

If you choose a game and right click then edit the edit game screen in the bottom right side will show how many images are associated with that game. It will show something like 1/15 and you can click left/right to scroll through the images.

Are all your games only showing 1/1? 

 

[vgbox]

It was showing 0/0 for some reason even though it displays the boxes art then i pressed download images/data then it dl and showed more pics options like cabinet, arcade board, etc. inside the edit window.

Is there any way to display the different images of each game outside of going full screen (outside of pressing the zoom in icon on a game)? How can i dl all the roms related images and video files globally? I can't imagine myself entering each of my mame games to edit each as i have full mame rom set.

 

[DOS76]

In the platform you have open hit ctrl+a this should highlight all the games then go to tools and choose download metadata and media run the wizard if you already have some images imported use the 2nd option not to replace any existing media and finish the wizard.

[Retro808]

You can hit the details button on the top right of LB. It will open up a pane on the side of LB that displays metadata and the multiple images related to the rom.  ((unless that is only a premium feature - not sure on that part as I have premium))

Edited May 27, 2017 by Retro808