tippettmark@yahoo.com Posted December 16, 2020 Share Posted December 16, 2020 I am new to game emulation. I bought a vertical arcade cabinet and have Launchbox with a premium license. I installed Launchbox and it appears to be working as well as Bigbox, but I am not able to play any of the games I have downloaded. I am able to play a few games in Retroarch, so I know that emulator is working and I added Retroach and MAME to Launchbox using the emulator add tool. I am not sure what I am missing in terms of getting the ROMs I have downloaded to show up in Launchbox/Bogbox. Any advice is appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted December 16, 2020 Share Posted December 16, 2020 8 hours ago, tippettmark@yahoo.com said: I am new to game emulation. I bought a vertical arcade cabinet and have Launchbox with a premium license. I installed Launchbox and it appears to be working as well as Bigbox, but I am not able to play any of the games I have downloaded. I am able to play a few games in Retroarch, so I know that emulator is working and I added Retroach and MAME to Launchbox using the emulator add tool. I am not sure what I am missing in terms of getting the ROMs I have downloaded to show up in Launchbox/Bogbox. Any advice is appreciated. Gonna need some more information here to be able to help you. What system are you actually trying to get working, and with what core, did you check the "associated platforms" tab for retroarch to make sure the platform is there and has the correct core associated with it? Images would also help us to spot any issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tippettmark@yahoo.com Posted December 16, 2020 Author Share Posted December 16, 2020 OK, I am trying to get a few arcade games running using MAME and Retroarch and some virtual pinball. I am not sure what more you would need to know about the system you asked about. I will add screenshots. The first few are of what I see when I open Launchbox. I have some artwork for each ROM but when I select play nothing happens. I also added pics of Bigbox. When I try to play a game it says loading but then goes back to the game select screen. I also included a pic of what I see when I open the game folder for the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted December 16, 2020 Share Posted December 16, 2020 OK, first things first it looks like you just have some random MAME roms that you have downloaded from the internet, thats not really a good idea for MAME, MAME is different from most other emulators in that its versioned and also comes as "romsets" of which there are three different kinds, and unless your rom is from a "Non Merged Romset" it may quite likely need more files than just the rom itself (it would likely also need the bios file, and if the game/version of the game you have is a clone you would also need the parent). Also grabbing random roms its next to impossible to know the version of the rom you have, and that is important as the roms are only guaranteed to work with the matching version of the emulator. If your rom is from say romset 0.175, then you really need to use the 0.175 version of the emulator in order to know for sure that it will work. I see from your image you have Galaga, do you have any idea what romset it is from, im assuming not? Lets focus on just the one emulator for arcade as to not confuse matters here, and i recommend MAME standalone here and not the Retroarch cores. Which version of the MAME emulator are you running? Have you told said emulator the location of your arcade roms? Do the games load if loaded directly in MAME without Launchbox's involvement? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tippettmark@yahoo.com Posted December 17, 2020 Author Share Posted December 17, 2020 This is the MAME le I downloaded mame0226b_64bit. I started the MAME full set import but I saw that there were like thousands of games downloading and it seemed like it was going to take hours so I canceled the download. I can open MAME and see some games there but they won't play. This is the screen I get when I try to play a game in MAME. I am sure it is because I stopped the download. I do not really want all those games and I was concerned about them taking up a huge amount of space on my hard drive. I also didn't see the classic games I want in that set. I have not tried adding any of the games (roms) I have directly into MAME. I am not sure how to do that anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 37 minutes ago, tippettmark@yahoo.com said: I started the MAME full set import but I saw that there were like thousands of games downloading and it seemed like it was going to take hours so I canceled the download. Quick tip, Launchbox never downloads games for you. You have to provide your own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tippettmark@yahoo.com Posted December 17, 2020 Author Share Posted December 17, 2020 OK, so should I do that full set import move again and let it go the whole way? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted December 17, 2020 Share Posted December 17, 2020 Just now, tippettmark@yahoo.com said: OK, so should I do that full set import move again and let it go the whole way? There is really no point if you dont actually have the roms. Cant play what you dont have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tippettmark@yahoo.com Posted December 19, 2020 Author Share Posted December 19, 2020 On 12/16/2020 at 12:18 PM, neil9000 said: Lets focus on just the one emulator for arcade as to not confuse matters here, and i recommend MAME standalone here and not the Retroarch cores. Which version of the MAME emulator are you running? Have you told said emulator the location of your arcade roms? Do the games load if loaded directly in MAME without Launchbox's involvement? I am still confused as to what you are suggesting I do next. I replied with the version of MAME I installed (the 64 bit from the MAME site). I am not sure how to tell it the location of my arcade roms. I put copies of them into the MAME folder called Games. Still wont play when I open MAME. They do play in Retroarch. Although, in Retroarch when opening it asks me to choose a Core and I choose MAME (2016) from the list and that then opens the game and it plays. This is all without Launchbox involved. Can you suggest a course of action or steer me to a tutorial that will get me there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headrush69 Posted December 19, 2020 Share Posted December 19, 2020 17 minutes ago, tippettmark@yahoo.com said: I am still confused as to what you are suggesting I do next. I replied with the version of MAME I installed (the 64 bit from the MAME site). I am not sure how to tell it the location of my arcade roms. I put copies of them into the MAME folder called Games. Still wont play when I open MAME. They do play in Retroarch. Although, in Retroarch when opening it asks me to choose a Core and I choose MAME (2016) from the list and that then opens the game and it plays. This is all without Launchbox involved. Can you suggest a course of action or steer me to a tutorial that will get me there? MAME needs to know the location of the ROM files, which is set in a file called mame.ini in the same directory as the mame64.exe Easiest method, start mame64.exe by double clicking. (no ROM) Go to Configure Options -> Configure Directories -> and than navigate to that Games/MAME folder. Exit back to the main MAME menu and select Save Configuration. MAME should know where your ROMs are now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tippettmark@yahoo.com Posted December 19, 2020 Author Share Posted December 19, 2020 Alright that did the trick to get games to play directly through MAME. I tried opening them through Bigbox but still did not play that way. I guess I need to reconfigure how BB finds the games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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