I cannot get certain unreleased prototype games imported into LaunchBox no matter how hard I try.

[Arcade1993]

Hello! I am on the latest Launchbox on my MAME cabinet, on a Windows 10 machine.

I just learned about two prototype arcade games that never came out. Judge Dredd (Midway brawler; NOT the Acclaim shooter) and Power-Up Baseball, which is an NBA Jam-style game but with MLB.

I have the roms for both (jdreddp.zip and pubball.zip) in the mame/roms folder like all my other ROMs.

I tried to manually add each ROM into Launchbox, first by dragging the roms, and second my clicking on tools->add ROMs and neither option works.

It goes through all the motions like asking me if I want to download manuals and stuff like that, and when I finish it always says "0 games added".

Does anyone know what's going on? A friend and I are desperately trying to play these but are getting nowhere.

 

Thanks!

[Retro808]

What version Mame are you using?

Dredd just imported fine for me. I had to uncheck either the "Skip game Unplayable" since the Mame.xaml lists it as "Imperfect".

Power-up Baseball I think you need to make sure "Skip Prototype" is unchecked.

[Arcade1993]

49 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

What version Mame are you using?

Dredd just imported fine for me. I had to uncheck either the "Skip game Unplayable" since the Mame.xaml lists it as "Imperfect".

Power-up Baseball I think you need to make sure "Skip Prototype" is unchecked.

I am on 0.234 for MAME, and the ROMset is the same (0.234).

The problem with Dredd is I only see the crummy Acclaim game, not the Midway one.

Power-Up Baseball won't show up at all.

I did have "Skip game unplayable" unchecked, and I also unchecked "skip prototype", but LaunchBox always says "imported 0 games".

[Retro808]

When you imported your Mame roms did you use the "Full Mame rom set" import option?

[Arcade1993]

13 hours ago, Retro808 said:

When you imported your Mame roms did you use the "Full Mame rom set" import option?

I don't recall because it was like 2 years ago but I think it's a moot point anyway because Power-up Baseball was only dumped like 6 months ago so it wouldn't have been part of my original import anyway.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Arcade1993

[Arcade1993]

This is what I keep getting:

 

 

It refuses to import pubball.zip and I cannot figure out why.

[Retro808]

Change the importing emulator to Retroach then run it. It will then show the game but it will import the zipped name. Change the name to the game's name and it should import media. Then when imported change the emulator back to Mame.

[Mainiack]

I had this same issue with Power-Up Baseball and your Retroarch workaround did the trick on my machine. I do wonder why the workaround is needed though. Thanks @Retro808

[Arcade1993]

2 hours ago, Retro808 said:

Change the importing emulator to Retroach then run it. It will then show the game but it will import the zipped name. Change the name to the game's name and it should import media. Then when imported change the emulator back to Mame.

Geez, that somehow worked. Why did I have to do it like that? Do I have to do that every time I add a game to MAME?

Also the game won't launch. I have it set to launch with MAME but when I choose it, nothing happens.

[Arcade1993]

Also metadata like info on the game shows up but images won't.

[Arcade1993]

Anyone? I am trying to have friends over again today to play it.

[neil9000]

18 hours ago, Arcade1993 said:

Also metadata like info on the game shows up but images won't.

What image type do you have set for your Arcade platform? If it's "Box - Front" then yeah, nothing will show, big Arcade cabinets didn't come in game box's obviously, in this case you would want "Advertisement Flyer - Front" or "Box 3D" as 3D boxes were created out of the flyers. Take a look at your image priority's in Tools/Options and check/uncheck and re-order to your liking.

[Arcade1993]

3 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

What image type do you have set for your Arcade platform? If it's "Box - Front" then yeah, nothing will show, big Arcade cabinets didn't come in game box's obviously, in this case you would want "Advertisement Flyer - Front" or "Box 3D" as 3D boxes were created out of the flyers. Take a look at your image priority's in Tools/Options and check/uncheck and re-order to your liking.

The images show up just fine on the Launchbox database website, so my guess it has something to do with the convoluted way I had to import the game, first choosing it as a RetroArch game and then changing it later.

Also the images aren't really that important. Why does the game refuse to launch when I select it? It just has a loading symbol for a second and then stops. I have MAME set for the emulator, but I suspect it has something to do with the way I imported the game.

Also I'd like to know if I have to do this ridiculous import method for every new MAME game, or is it just Power-up  Baseball for some odd reason?

[Retro808]

Importing it that way is not the issue. That is how I imported it. Images for both games show fine for me.

Try refreshing the image cache.

19 hours ago, Arcade1993 said:

Also the game won't launch. I have it set to launch with MAME but when I choose it, nothing happens.

Does it run directly in Mame. Just tested both in LB and no issues.

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, Arcade1993 said:

The images show up just fine on the Launchbox database website, so my guess it has something to do with the convoluted way I had to import the game, first choosing it as a RetroArch game and then changing it later.

Did you actually look at your image priorities? I explained what i think the issue may be, you then quoted my post rambling about imports and not saying if you even looked at what i pointed you to. Might be nice when asking for help to acknowledge if you tried the help you received. 

[Retro808]

8 minutes ago, Arcade1993 said:

Also the images aren't really that important. Why does the game refuse to launch when I select it? It just has a loading symbol for a second and then stops. I have MAME set for the emulator, but I suspect it has something to do with the way I imported the game.

 

Again, how you imported should not be an issue as I went through same steps and it works fine. Can you confirm it does at least launch directly from Mame for you?

Also when you right click and edit the game then go to the "Emulation" page what emulator does it show.

10 minutes ago, Arcade1993 said:

Also I'd like to know if I have to do this ridiculous import method for every new MAME game, or is it just Power-up  Baseball for some odd reason?

For all, no. There may be some oddities like this. Jason did mention them looking at the Mame import process and see if they can make it less over zealous on importing and blocking some manual imports. But for now, at least there is a way to get stubborn ones imported.

[Mainiack]

Just for informational purposes:  I'm using Mame 0.233 and after following Retro808''s suggestion pubball.zip  imported, i then changed the game name to Power-Up Baseball, then changed the emulator to Mame, then downloaded images from Edit tab and got 9 images, i probably did not have all boxes checked, seldom do.  Game launches fine on mine in Mame and in Launchbox.

[Arcade1993]

Sorry, a lot of this stuff is really hard to do because I am using a genuine arcade CRT that runs at 640x480, and it's almost impossible to use LaunchBox with that screen resolution. It's very frustrating. I have to remote desktop into it and change the res to 800x600 (which is the max the hacked video card supports) and even then a lot of LaunchBox settings get cut off; and I am doing this all while my arcade monitor is making horrible squealing noises because it's running at a resolution it doesn't support due to it being a standard res arcade CRT.

This is what the settings look like for the game:

 

 

Do these settings look OK? I also apologize that the top is cut off on them; this is all I can view with the low res monitor.

The game launches just fine in MAME by itself without using LaunchBox for those that asked.

[Retro808]

That only 2 important settings in the game are what shows on in the "Launching" spot and the "Emulation" spot. Can you confirm in the Launching section it is pointing to the correct folder path and rom file? Your other games work, correct?

Otherwise I am not sure why it would not launch. All LB really does is send the command line to Mame to tell it what game to launch. Below are my settings.

 

[Arcade1993]

None of you are going to believe how stupid I am. I am glad I was so stubborn on getting this game to work, because I figured out I've been using a 2 year old version of MAME for the past 2 years.

When I first built and set up my cab, I was using regular MAME. A short while later, someone told me about GroovyMAME, which is a fork of MAME for people using genuine arcade CRTs. So I downloaded it, and used that ever since. Or so I thought.

Somehow I never realized the original version of MAME I was using was named mame64.exe, and groovymame was named mame.exe. So this entire time, for the past 2 years, LaunchBox has been using C:\MAME\mame64.exe for my arcade games!

Every single time I updated my ROMset and MAME version (as well as the MAME.INI) it was a complete waste of time!

I can't believe what a moron I am!

Still, the fact of why Power-Up Baseball won't import properly is in fact an interesting one. I wonder what the reason is behind that?

Also, I would still like to solve the mystery of getting both Judge Dredd games to show up in LaunchBox/Big Box. They are two entirely different games; not clones or version differences. Is there any easy way to do this?

Thanks again for everyone's help getting Power-Up Baseball imported because I would have never figured this out otherwise! What a blessing in disguise!