Setting up HBMAME with LaunchBox?

[SiriusVI]

25 minutes ago, damageinc86 said:

but isn't hbmame for mame hacks?  I only have a umk3 in my hbmame folder, not a plain mk3 

Ah so it could be that it imported a wrong rom? I thought mk3 was a different rom hack than umk3. I will have to check later. Thx for your suggestion.

What version does your hbmame core display in retroarch? Is it 220 for you, too?

Edited December 12, 2025 by SiriusVI

[damageinc86]

9 minutes ago, SiriusVI said:

Ah so it could be that it imported a wrong rom? I thought mk3 was a different rom hack than umk3. I will have to check later. Thx for your suggestion.

What version does your hbmame core display in retroarch? Is it 220 for you, too?

yes, shows it as .220 mame hbmame_libretro.dll

[SiriusVI]

19 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

but isn't hbmame for mame hacks?  I only have a umk3 in my hbmame folder, not a plain mk3 

So, I feel I need to clarify some things again, just to avoid confusion.

1. I was importing only the HBMAME set, so all roms that are present in my import, should be from HBMAME and not regular mame.

2. All games work fine when using the standalone HBMAME emulator.

3. Some games do NOT work when using the hbmame core.

So, for example: these are all the Mortal Kombat games that HBMAME imported:

As you can see thereis one entry that's just called Mortal Kombat 3. The actual file is called "mk3.zip". This game is one example where it works with HBMAME standalone, but NOT with the core.

can you confirm the same behavior on your end? Or do you for some reason not have this title imported?

[damageinc86]

My HBMAME romet doesn't even have an mk3.zip in it.  I downloaded this romset, and HBMAMEUIFX when it was version 0.174.  I was under the impression it was a nice full romset at the time.  So I'm not sure if I'm just missing that one, or if yours has that for some reason?  I haven't been able to find any information on a Mortal Kombat 3 HBMAME romhack either.  So I'm really not sure what is happening here.  I found a .211 HBMAME romset on internet archive, and that also does not have an mk3 rom in it.

I'm beginning to think that someone just included an mk3 rom in your hbmame romset?  I dunno.

[SiriusVI]

15 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

My HBMAME romet doesn't even have an mk3.zip in it.  I downloaded this romset, and HBMAMEUIFX when it was version 0.174.  I was under the impression it was a nice full romset at the time.  So I'm not sure if I'm just missing that one, or if yours has that for some reason?  I haven't been able to find any information on a Mortal Kombat 3 HBMAME romhack either.  So I'm really not sure what is happening here.  I found a .211 HBMAME romset on internet archive, and that also does not have an mk3 rom in it.

I'm beginning to think that someone just included an mk3 rom in your hbmame romset?  I dunno.

My rom set comes from a trusted source. I'm not sure what version it is, but it might be the most recent one (245), since mk3 does work with hbmame standalone version 245. The hbmame core version however is 220. That's probably why not all of the (probably) more recently added games work.

Edited December 14, 2025 by SiriusVI

[damageinc86]

1 hour ago, SiriusVI said:

My rom set comes from a trusted source. I'm not sure what version it is, but it might be the most recent one (245), since mk3 does work with hbmame standalone version 245. The hbmame core version however is 220. That's probably why not all of the (probably) more recently added games work.

Ahhh yeah ok, if it is that new, then perhaps it was added, and the core is just too old.  And I don't think they are planning on releasing a newer version of the core anytime soon either.  Especially since it was taken down altogether from their official offerings.  That's too bad.  I think the only option is to point LB to the standalone hbmame for that particular entry then.  Which will be a mismatch in presentation if you are using the mega bezel reflective shader for the rest in retroarch.  

[Retrogamer4423]

Is there anyone who can properly transfer the HBMame set to Launchbox? I can see the main versions and the images open without any problems, but in the sub-versions, for example, when the ROM name is kof97c, it appears as an empty box because there is no image associated with it. There's no issue with the main ROMs, but none of the images open in the hacked versions. Maybe I should create a ROM set consisting only of the main ROMs and transfer that to Launchbox. How do you do it?

[RpT]

For me personally, When it comes to arcade I take a different approach to most systems, since it ends up being a big overlap of games across systems what with MAME, HBMAME, FBA, Fightcade, NEO-GEO MVS, CPS 1-3, etc...

Ultimately, I've scraped multiple times against both the MAME file names and the database game names as well as dropping in stuff from the official extras/multimedia packs and ended up with a big collection split in 2 ways:

1) Screenshot - Gameplay
2) "Videos" (not actually videos but takes that space in BB using the old theme). Actually a mishmash images folder comprising of posters, Cabinet Body, Game-Title, Box-Front and basically whatever other image set I copy-pasted in at the time to fill in the blanks.

To state the obvious, all the ARCADE based systems get imported without scraping media, then I just point to the respective media folders that already exists under platform  > edit > folder.
- "Screenshot Gameplay" gets mapped to my collected "Screenshot Gameplay" images,
- "Video" gets mapped against my mishmash folder.

The upside - As few missing ROMS as possible when it comes to art since it's there in both naming conventions, in your example kof97c I don't have that file exactly but I have a "kof97-01.png" which i suspect would act as parent (not at that system now to test).

The Downside - A lot of bloat and repetition. Probably takes more space than being super attentive but that would also take many man-hours to get right. Less valuable if you don't have so many arcade-based systems.

The Compromise:
- I resized everything using FSResize closer match the size they will be in BigBox previews. This dramatically shrinks the footprint since some of those images are way too large (a quick tip with this is not to process files that are already smaller than 300kb or so since you will likely make them bigger, also be careful to process jpg and png files separately).
- Every system under the "arcade" category shares these 2 folders for media.
- I don't bother with video snaps or any other media category (basically I prefer this anyway)

Total footprint
- 57,533 files 

- 5.71GB (on an uncompressed EXFAT drive with 4kb allocation table).  The resize helps a lot.

Not a recommendation per-say, but if I disliked it I would change...