RetroArch mame issue in LaunchBox, romset questions

[Gangor]

I've been having a loooong standing issue getting my mame games running in LaunchBox, took a long break and now I'm back at it determined to make this work.  To start fresh and skip the old details:

• I recently downloaded the new 0.231 non-merged romset. To keep things simple for troubleshooting, I picked ~30 games and got them to work in mame 0.231.
• I reinstalled RetroArch and downloaded the mame 2003 plus core and scan directory only would find 4 games.
  • I figured this out by performing a manual scan and it found all the games in the directory, Appears to be a RA bug, but most of these games will not play in RA and says they are missing files.
    • If I try to play the games in RA, the game loads then just navigates back to LaunchBox main menu.
  • In LaunchBox, RA emulator I can install the mame-current core, perform a manual scan and play the games successfully.

I've read all the info out there and perhaps I'm just missing something. Here are my questions

1. What am I not understanding/missing about the romset and how to get it working with the RA emulator, mame 2003 plus core?
2.  I previously used the clrmame pro guide by CriticalCid to upgrade from 0.222 > 0.231 but still had issues. Do I need to rollback my new 0.231 to a certain version to work with mame 2003 plus core?
3. I also downloaded the 0.231 CHD's, do I just add the respective folders to the ROM directory?
4. I believe I found the samples, assume these are just dropped in the samples directory?
5. Can anyone find my .xlsx file that had my parts list I researched? ?

Thanks in advance for any clarity you can provide me!

[Lordmonkus]

I'm not going to go into any real detail to help you out here because right out of the gate you are using a very mismatched rom set and emulator.

What I will do however is point you to my Mame for noobs tutorial.

 

[Gangor]

I have MAME 0.231 working both independently and within LaunchBox, but i'm trying to get RetroArch working in LB using mame-2003plus core.  Any suggestions in the noob tutorial i've already completed successfully.  Perhaps I'm not asking the correct questions.

• I want to utilize the latest rom sets for the updates which is why I downloaded 0.231 full non-merged set. Should my focus be on "rollback" to 0.78?
• If so, do I only need the rollback 0.231 set compared to the upgrade packs that require each iteration?

[Retro808]

The libretro docs has steps on how to build a romset for this core.

Not sure why you would go through all that trouble if you already have a .231 rom set. Why not just run the matching version of standalone Mame or the normal Mame RA core and save all the work?

 

[Lordmonkus]

There was and probably still is a complete Mame 2003plus rom set on the internet archive.

Using a .231 rom set is going to have a lot of incompatibilities.

[Gangor]

Ok, so it sounds like you're telling me I'm over thinking this and recommend stop spinning my wheels and move forward with 0.231 and mame-current core...time can be better spent on other tasks.

Thanks for the assist guys.

[Lordmonkus]

Well in fairness to the mame2003plus core and rom set it does have some advantages.

It's relatively small with no trashy video poker or fruit machine bloat and the core does support netplay if that is something of interest to you.

It's just that if you want to use the mame2003plus core you will want the proper set, I just checked and it is still available on the internet archive, just Google "internet archive mame2003plus" and it should be the first result.

[Gangor]

I saw that but wasn't sure if it was a valid site/resource based on some of the reviews.  I'll definitely check it out as well, netplay does have some appeal and wondering what games I may be missing out on based on the nofiller v2 list I'm currently working with. Thanks again.