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Merged? Non-merged? Split? What do people prefer?


Johnny T

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image.png.f013083ac5b1b2122d8f3c1e3a0b5c73.pnghere is a visual aid for how the romsets work. People use different ones for different reasons. Non-Merged is mostly used by people that want to delete games out of the MAME set and only use specific games and since non-merged sets don't have dependencies like the split set it makes it perfect for that. The merged set used to not really work the best with LB but now with the recent MAME updates in LB it is a pretty good choice. So really there is little difference between using split and merged these days and non merged isn't really necessary unless you want to be able to delete things from the set without worry of breaking stuff.

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I've currently got a "non merged" set. I mistakenly thought "non merged" and "split" were maybe the same thing as the names mean similar things. I've gone with non-merged as I wanted to put in Lord M's All Filler Mame set but it's handy to know that I can save space in the future if I need to by switching to a merged set without any detriment to the game playing experience. Cheers :)

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1 minute ago, Johnny T said:

I've currently got a "non merged" set. I mistakenly thought "non merged" and "split" were maybe the same thing as the names mean similar things. I've gone with non-merged as I wanted to put in Lord M's All Filler Mame set but it's handy to know that I can save space in the future if I need to by switching to a merged set without any detriment to the game playing experience. Cheers :)

Yeah monkus's no filler is designed for a non-merged set as all the roms in that set are self contained zips so dont rely on other zips to run like the other two types. As @DOS76 said if you want to handpick games out of a set or use something like the no filler bat then non-merged is what you want as its as simple as copying the game name.zip out, that is a lot more complicated with the other two set types as the game.zips also rely on other zips to run the game.

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Yep, I think I'll stick with non-merged for that very reason, the simplicity of adding/removing games. I'm making two playlists... one will be "Every Arcade Game" and the other will be "Arcade Classics". The Classics will be Lord M's list and the other will be all the rest. I'll be able to just have a mess around in the other list and see if anything grabs my attention and then copy it over to the Classics list and build on the excellent work that Lord Monkus has done. :)

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1 minute ago, Johnny T said:

Yep, I think I'll stick with non-merged for that very reason, the simplicity of adding/removing games. I'm making two playlists... one will be "Every Arcade Game" and the other will be "Arcade Classics". The Classics will be Lord M's list and the other will be all the rest. I'll be able to just have a mess around in the other list and see if anything grabs my attention and then copy it over to the Classics list and build on the excellent work that Lord Monkus has done. :)

Yep, and monkus's bat is strictly for non-merged, if you used it on another set type you will be missing required files anyway.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...

So, I recently decided to move from a merged to a non-merged setup and starting afresh to try and get an all killer setup

I have the latest Mame executable and rom set (234) but when I run Mame sf2 (for example) I get a whole bunch of 'not found' errors (presumably because those files are in separate archives.

How do I stop this?

 

Secondary question - is there an All Filler batch or similar for later versions - seem to only find for 17x

Edited by vaderag
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5 minutes ago, vaderag said:

So, I recently decided to move from a merged to a non-merged setup and starting afresh to try and get an all killer setup

I have the latest Mame executable and rom set (234) but when I run Mame sf2 (for example) I get a whole bunch of 'not found' errors (presumably because those files are in separate archives.

How do I stop this?

 

Secondary question - is there an All Filler batch or similar for later versions - seem to only find for 17x

The whole point of non-merged is that files are NOT spread around in other zips, each zip file is complete working game, hence the size difference in the sets, non-merged contains thousands of duplicate files. My guess though is you simply haven't told the emulator your rom path, so it can't find any of your games, it looks in MAME/roms by default, so if your roms are not in that emulators folder you need to specify were they actually are. 

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7 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

The whole point of non-merged is that files are NOT spread around in other zips, each zip file is complete working game, hence the size difference in the sets, non-merged contains thousands of duplicate files. My guess though is you simply haven't told the emulator your rom path, so it can't find any of your games, it looks in MAME/roms by default, so if your roms are not in that emulators folder you need to specify were they actually are. 

Yeah, sorry getting confused due to the not working...
Anyway, it seems to be due to me using multiple rom paths... if i remove the second it works...

Any ideas why the following doesnt work?

rompath                   "I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.234 ROMs (non-merged)"; "I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.232 CHDs (merged)"


Oddly the files it was looking for weren't in the SF2 zip which added to the confusion, but as I say, removing the second directory name works

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19 hours ago, wallmachine said:

Remove the space ;

Nope. Added the space to try fix - didn't have the space to start :/

The following still breaks

rompath                   "I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.234 ROMs (non-merged)";"I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.232 CHDs (merged)"

But the following works 

rompath                   "I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.234 ROMs (non-merged)"

 

EDIT: Okay, so I've tried directory renames, etc and there is no way to put multiple rom paths in here. Maybe it's a 234 bug, maybe it's something odd with my machine, but only one rom path will work...

Edited by vaderag
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3 hours ago, vaderag said:

The following still breaks

rompath                   "I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.234 ROMs (non-merged)";"I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.232 CHDs (merged)"

But the following works 

rompath                   "I:\CLEAN ARCADE SETUP\Roms\MAME 0.234 ROMs (non-merged)"

In my mame.ini all rom paths together are between double quotes. Not per path like yours:

rompath                   "H:\Roms\Arcade Classics;H:\Roms\Sammy Atomiswave;H:\Roms\Sega Model 2;H:\Roms\Sega Model 3;H:\Roms\Sega Naomi;H:\Roms\Sega Hikaru;H:\Roms\Sega Naomi 2;H:\Roms\Sega SystemSP;E:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Arcade Classics\_Mame_Bios"

I added the rom paths via the Mame configuration menu, not by editing mame.ini. (I also use Mame 0.234 and no problem Mame recognizing the rom paths.)

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