X-Men MAME not working

[Saca_Muela]

Let me preface this by saying that I am a beginner here. I just started messing around with LaunchBox about two weeks ago. I also am not crazy smart about computers like everyone else here it seems. I started my project with the console platforms and then moved to MAME. I followed ETA Primes video and found a full set split that I used and had imported into LaunchBox. I can play most of the games fine but XMen doesnt work. When I tried to run it, I would get a loading, or an initialized box and then it would go away and nothing would open. I thought it might be the ROM so I deleted it and found an individual XMEN rom and downloaded it and had it installed as an individual file. It showed up in my LaunchBox, but did the exact same thing as before. I have tried multiple individual XMen files and they all do the same thing. The xmen movie shows up in my theme, but the game itself wont start. Any suggestions why I cant get it to run? This is a very popular game so I know it must be working for others.

Is this a common problem? Is there an easy fix? I would really love to get this game playing as it would be perfect for me and my young boys.

Thanks for any help!

Edited October 1, 2020 by Saca_Muela

[DOS76]

can you get the game to play in MAME alone without LB being involved? What version of MAME do you have and what version of the ROM set do you have? Since  you have just grabbed a rando copy of the game from online now you have no way of knowing what set it came from so if you still have the original one that came with the set that might be for the best.

[Saca_Muela]

Thanks for responding. I don't know why I didn't think to try running XMEN directly through MAME. When I did that, I got this alert:

I am not sure what that means, but I think it means my ROMs is bad or missing some pieces?

Then I noticed that when I search XMEN in MAME that there are many ROMs that come up. One ROM is highlighted in white and many other similar ROMs below it that are greyed out:

From what I can figure (which is probably common knowledge for all of you) is that the ROMs that is white is the "Parent Driver" while the grey ones are "Clone Drivers" of that parent driver. I'm not sure how all that works, or what it means, but when I click on one of the greyed out ROMS, the XMEN runs and I can play it.

Is there any way to make the "Parent ROM" work or make it so one of the working clone ROMs is the one recognized by MAME as the default to play? 

I feel like there is something fundamental here that I need to understand about MAME and it will help me with other issues. For example XMEN is not the only ROM that is not playing when I click on it. There are a lot of games in my Capcom III play set that are doing the same things and I think if I understand what is going on here I can fix them all.

Can someone help me unlock the secret?

Thanks! 

[JoeViking245]

12 hours ago, Saca_Muela said:

I am not sure what that means, but I think it means my ROMs is bad or missing some pieces?

You are spot on.  (assuming you have xmen.zip...) As DOS76 lent towards, your rom and MAME revisions don't match up.    One way tell if you have the rom is click "Available" on the left hand pane (in MAME).  You're using MAME 0.224 and your rom is for revision 0.220 (or older).  You need to have the same revision of MAME and roms.  There's no backwards compatibility (with some exceptions).

13 hours ago, Saca_Muela said:

ROMs that is white is the "Parent Driver" while the grey ones are "Clone Drivers" of that parent driver

Yup!  And since it appears that the clone works but not the parent, you probably have a non-merged set of roms.  Well, at least for the X-Men series.

 

13 hours ago, Saca_Muela said:

Is there any way to make the "Parent ROM" work

Not in a way that it's worth anyone's time and effort.  You best bet is to match the romset revision with the MAME executable.

 

13 hours ago, Saca_Muela said:

working clone ROMs is the one recognized by MAME as the default to play

In MAME, No. well, I suppose you could delete the roms that are not compatible with the revision of MAME you have.  Then when you start MAME and click Available you won't see the ones that don't exist.  But MAME doesn't 'set a default'.  

 

13 hours ago, Saca_Muela said:

I feel like there is something fundamental here that I need to understand about MAME

"Fundamental: forming a necessary base or core; of central importance."

The rom set that you acquire needs to be of the same revision as the MAME executable.  If you find a rom set that says it's for for MAME 0.220, get the MAME revision 0.220 executable.   (Do you see a little bit of a recurring theme here? )

[neil9000]

13 hours ago, Saca_Muela said:

There are a lot of games in my Capcom III play set that are doing the same things and I think if I understand what is going on here I can fix them all.

And to add to the excellent comments above, the reason CPS3 isnt working is that the default Parent roms also need the CHD file to work, (a CHD is a disc or HDD image that works in conjunction with the rom, so you need both parts for the game to work), there are however "nocd" versions of those games in the romset as well, but those are clones and not parents, hence they are not the default version launched and those will work without a CHD, but not all the games have a "nocd" version, i know street fighter 3 third strike does off of the top of my head, try loading the specific street fighter 3 3rd strike rom i have highlited below.

[Saca_Muela]

Thanks everyone for your help...I downloaded an older MAME list and it seems to be more compatible with my edition of MAME and things seem to be working better!