Damo_T Posted April 4, 2020 Share Posted April 4, 2020 Hi All, A real newbie here with a lot of questions so I hope I can make some progress by asking on here and apologies in advance for the long questions? I am in the process of building an Arcade cabinet. My goal will be to have a large collection of games with different emulators but as a lot of the games I like are the retro arcade games I am happy to just get MAME working well for starters. So for starters I purchased some MAME collection which came with a sort of front end Arcade.EXE. I came across reviews of various front ends and saw several recommendations for LaunchBox so thought I would give it a try and the videos of it looked good. I have downloaded and installed it and imported my ROMS but my experience is far from good and I think I have problems in two areas: 1) The LaunchBox does not look good (Is this because I need to buy the premium)? In video’s I see a nice wheel type selector etc. 2) I see a lot of game covers which do not do anything. Maybe I don’t have these games although some I do have and don’t load. My original Arcade.EXE did not have the Mame.EXE so I downloaded the latest so again this could be the problem. As I am new to all this I want simplicity until I get the hang of things so to begin with, where would be the best place to get maybe a new more complete set of ROMS which would match my MAME version? Secondly, how do I get LaunchBox to be a better experience i.e. Look better, better Menu/Game selection and only show games I have the ROMS for? This will be the first of many questions I expect but any advice appreciated. I ideally would like a system which a whole collection of games/emulators which functions to start with that I can improve over time. As I say I only have the basic LaunchBox at present but happy to purchase the full version just got to decide on lifetime or not (it does appear to have gone up in price since I started on this project). Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo_T Posted April 7, 2020 Author Share Posted April 7, 2020 Anybody? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 On 4/4/2020 at 8:06 AM, Damo_T said: 1) The LaunchBox does not look good (Is this because I need to buy the premium)? In video’s I see a nice wheel type selector etc. That is the Bigbox part of Launchbox, and yes that requires a license to use. On 4/4/2020 at 8:06 AM, Damo_T said: 2) I see a lot of game covers which do not do anything. Maybe I don’t have these games although some I do have and don’t load. My original Arcade.EXE did not have the Mame.EXE so I downloaded the latest so again this could be the problem. Hard to tell as you bought this (you should never pay for roms as that is hugely illegal, as well as it all being available online for free). It could be that you didnt have a fullset but used the fullset importer. Or that you are using a much older romset and your version of the emulator is not compatible with the roms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo_T Posted April 7, 2020 Author Share Posted April 7, 2020 Many thanks for your response, it really is appreciated. I will purchase the license now so at least I can explore the additional features, I didn't want to over complicate things. I think my ROMS might not be fully compatible with the MAME emulator version I am running so planning on downloading new ones but cannot find a site where I can download the full set. I found another site but again they are asking for money for the password to unlock the Zip or to purchase a 1TB drive from them with everything on. I am looking for the simplest way to get the MAME roms and associated files. I would like Dragons Lair and other emulators but that will have to come in time as I get used to things. If you could provide any links where I could download a full set it would be greatly apprecaite. I also found details about merged and split. Is merged the easiest way but takes up more space? Many thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 We cant provide direct links as that is against forum rules. Pleasuredome or the internet archive for full sets. Pleasuredome is the best place but is a private torrent tracker and you need to maintain ratio or you will be banned. Internet archive is normally a couple of versions behind but is just a normal torrent. The official mame emulator site does provide all the old emulator version, so whatever romset you get match it with the correct emulator version. https://www.mamedev.org/oldrel.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo_T Posted April 7, 2020 Author Share Posted April 7, 2020 Thanks again for your help. I will take a look. What do you mean by maintaining ratio please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 1 minute ago, Damo_T said: Thanks again for your help. I will take a look. What do you mean by maintaining ratio please? It means you have to share back at least as much as you download in order to maintain a at least 1:1 ratio. So if you download a 60GB mame torrent on pleasuredome you have to also upload that 60GB to other users or they will ban your account. No one likes a person who deletes a torrent as soon as they have downloaded it without sharing it back, and that will get you banned from torrent sites for "hitting and running". For example on this torrent site i have a ratio of 2.169 which means i have shared back more than twice as much as i have downloaded, as you can see from the other stats, 3.75TB uploaded and only 1.72TB downloaded, so i have shared more than i took, which means i have a good ratio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo_T Posted April 7, 2020 Author Share Posted April 7, 2020 Thanks for clarifying. As I say its all new to me. Pleasuredome are not accepting new accounts so looking at your other suggestion. Appreciate your help big time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damo_T Posted April 7, 2020 Author Share Posted April 7, 2020 Just purchased and applied the license. It now looks amazing. Worth every penny!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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