RidingNerdy Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 (edited) One of the biggest irritants of running a home arcade cabinet is the romcheck and region warning screens that can sometimes take a minute or more to go through. People used to say it was unavoidable because you'd have to hack the rom itself to skip it. But I noticed Retroarch supports an auto-load save state feature. It's possible to capture a save state after the BS and have the emulator jump to that as soon as it starts. The problem is, the full romset for mame is over 2800 games. It's going to take months to manually create all the save states for the full set. I'm wondering if anyone in the community thinks this is a worthwhile endeavor and if people would be willing to help crowdsource the work. I'm currently working on the Neo Geo games and the plan from there is to just go down the game list alphabetically. I won't link to the Rom pack I use for obvious reasons but it's the MAME .209 merged set. The saves will be generated assuming the user has the same files and names. The main technical hurdle I've found so far is the MAME retroarch core doesn't like to auto-load saves for Neo Geo. I got around this by making them a separate console and running them with the Final Burn core. I've set up a google drive for the project here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1k2yp-Ci8FPYhjP-oRWCRekc-sqmlg7nx?usp=sharing The states have been tested on 2 machines, but I hope others will try them so we can make sure the results are consistent. If anyone is interested in helping with making the states, message me with your gmail and I'll add you to the edit list for the drive. Any help is appreciated but if you want to contribute please make sure your rom names correspond with those of the above mentioned set. Edited August 1, 2019 by RidingNerdy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RidingNerdy Posted August 2, 2019 Author Share Posted August 2, 2019 Basic instructions: Place the game.state.auto files in your Retroarch\states directory. Run Retroarch Go to Settings > Saving Turn on Auto Load State Please note that currently the Neo Geo saves only work with the Final Burn Alpha core. If the names don't correspond with your rom files you can rename them. I'll upload a filename key eventually, but if you are using a full rom set pack the filenames will likely match up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RidingNerdy Posted August 2, 2019 Author Share Posted August 2, 2019 (edited) Current known 'save states just flat out don't work' list: Aaargh Akai Katana Current Status on the Google Drive: Neo Geo: Complete Mame: 0 through A Edited August 3, 2019 by RidingNerdy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetec-s-joe Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 This is a great idea, and one hell of a job you are taking on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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