mame.exe can't find files in roms but they are there

[3dlollo]

I am facing a weird issue; running mameui, works with zip files, but if I run mame.exe in launchbox, the game won't run

I tried to run mame64.exe on its own and it runs fine; but if I open a zip file with it, I get an error message in console that say that the archive does not contain the right files. I checked the zip file and it contains all the files that mame64.exe say that they are missing.

And yes, I used absolute paths and the console on windows is running with admin privileges.

Why do I get this behavior from mame64.exe? I am running games with different versions of Mame, so I need different executables and can't use retroarch only; which is why I am stuck trying to figure out what is going on here.

[Lordmonkus]

Is your mame.ini file in the main Mame folder (where the executable is) or is it in the \ini sub folder of the install folder ?

It needs to be in the main folder with the executable.

[3dlollo]

There is a mame64ui.ini file in the root folder (which is called mame039), where the mame64.exe is located, but I don't see one for the command line mame. There is one in the ini subfolder though.

[Lordmonkus]

Move the mame.ini file out from the \ini folder to the main folder with the executable and see if that solves your issue.

[3dlollo]

I think I fixed it, thanks for pointing out the ini file!

This is what is going on: if I run

C:\0136\mame64.exe C:\0136\MYROM.zip

it fail, but if I run

C:\0136\mame64.exe -rompath 'C:\0136\roms' MYROM.ZIP

then it works. So clearly it is a path issue; even if you pass the absolute path of a rom

I solved this by copying the ini file from the folder inside the location where the exe file is, and just added `roms` in the rom path. This default to the rom folder where the exe is, so I can just have all the roms in the local folder, and that won't affect anything if I move the mame folder

 

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah the rom path has to be defined in Mame (either through the UI or in the mame.ini) and the mame.ini has to be in the main folder with the Mame executable, for whatever reason when you load games via command line with the ini file in the \ini sub folder it doesn't work.

Good to hear you got it sorted.

[3dlollo]

Thanks; I assumed that there is always the fallback to the local folders, but it is not true actually. You still have to specify the path. BTW is there a plan for launchbox to add logging for such things? That would help

[Lordmonkus]

You can always just put your roms in the \roms sub folder of your Mame support if you wish and Mame should work perfectly fine out of the box though I am not certain of that when it comes to the mame.ini being in the \ini sub folder. If your roms are elsewhere you always need to tell Mame where they are for it to work, that is just how Mame works.

12 minutes ago, 3dlollo said:

BTW is there a plan for launchbox to add logging for such things? That would help

There is not.

As always we recommend getting games working in the emulator outside of Launchbox first, it makes it much easier to troubleshot from there.