Importing MAME Roms

[JackDaniels]

Hi all,

I'm in the process of building my own 4 player pedestal home arcade system.  After a few months of research and tweaks I settled on a design and have my file off to a cnc shop to make the cuts.  I thought that was going to be the hard part.  I'm quickly finding out that I was wrong.  I plan to run the system with some components I had left over from an old pc.  I've been considering a new mobo, gpu and processor but I went a little crazy with the build so far and I'm a bit over my budget lol.  With that said I've begun collecting roms and want to use LaunchBox/Bigbox for my front end.  So far I've been able to import roms for SNES, NES, N64, PS1, Sega Genesis without issue.  All of them seem to play without issue when I click on them.  I'm running into a problem with I try to import arcade (mame?) roms.  I have what is labeled a full set of roms, however after I import them I can't get them to play.  I've tried several times, watched videos and searched the forums.  I can't seem to get them to work at all.  I've deleted all the roms from Launchbox and posted here for some help.  

Thanks

Jack

[Retro808]

@SLUGIE79 I edited your post. Please refrain from posting links to roms or rom sellers. Also this forum does not condone buying roms so please do not do so in your posts.

[Retro808]

9 hours ago, JackDaniels said:

Hi all,

I'm in the process of building my own 4 player pedestal home arcade system.  After a few months of research and tweaks I settled on a design and have my file off to a cnc shop to make the cuts.  I thought that was going to be the hard part.  I'm quickly finding out that I was wrong.  I plan to run the system with some components I had left over from an old pc.  I've been considering a new mobo, gpu and processor but I went a little crazy with the build so far and I'm a bit over my budget lol.  With that said I've begun collecting roms and want to use LaunchBox/Bigbox for my front end.  So far I've been able to import roms for SNES, NES, N64, PS1, Sega Genesis without issue.  All of them seem to play without issue when I click on them.  I'm running into a problem with I try to import arcade (mame?) roms.  I have what is labeled a full set of roms, however after I import them I can't get them to play.  I've tried several times, watched videos and searched the forums.  I can't seem to get them to work at all.  I've deleted all the roms from Launchbox and posted here for some help.  

Thanks

Jack

First thing to do is confirm your roms work directly in the emulator. Are you using Mame or Retorarch and do the games work directly there without using LaunchBox? Also do you know what version the ron set is (its usually a number like .202, .229, .230 and so on)?

This will help determine if it is a LB issue or a Mame/Rom issue.

 

[JackDaniels]

4 hours ago, Retro808 said:

First thing to do is confirm your roms work directly in the emulator. Are you using Mame or Retorarch and do the games work directly there without using LaunchBox? Also do you know what version the ron set is (its usually a number like .202, .229, .230 and so on)?

This will help determine if it is a LB issue or a Mame/Rom issue.

 

When I imported the roms I chose MAME as the emulator - I believe LaunchBox recommended that choice and mentioned I could later change to retro arch.  The current rom set I'm using is labeled as 0.238.  I don't want to break any rules but they were from a large public discussion board website.  I check my LB folder and my version of Mame was different.  0.239? Maybe?  I deleted it and installed Mame .238.  In the process of deleting the roms from LB and then I'll re-import.

After some messing around i was able to get the roms to play in Mame outside LB.  I'll report back after I re-import.

Thanks for your help.

Jacck

[Retro808]

@JackDaniels That’s the first and most important piece is making sure the games work directly in the emulator. 
 

Now when you import make sure that in the Associated Platforms tab in your Mame settings in LB the name of your arcade platform is listed and it marches exactly the name that you gave the platform.  

[JackDaniels]

10 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

@JackDaniels That’s the first and most important piece is making sure the games work directly in the emulator. 
 

Now when you import make sure that in the Associated Platforms tab in your Mame settings in LB the name of your arcade platform is listed and it marches exactly the name that you gave the platform.  

Retro,

I imported the rom set again and chose Mame as the emulator.  I made sure that Arcade was checked and that it matches my name for the rom list (Arcade).  When I click on a rom to play it I get this message.  This is the first time I've seen it.  Previously the games would just fail to launch.  So it looks like I've messed something up.

Jack 

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, JackDaniels said:

Retro,

I imported the rom set again and chose Mame as the emulator.  I made sure that Arcade was checked and that it matches my name for the rom list (Arcade).  When I click on a rom to play it I get this message.  This is the first time I've seen it.  Previously the games would just fail to launch.  So it looks like I've messed something up.

Jack 

You havent unzipped the emulator.

[Retro808]

Yeah. As  @neil9000 stayed you are pointing to the zipped file. You need to point LB to the exe. 

[JackDaniels]

2 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

Yeah. As  @neil9000 stayed you are pointing to the zipped file. You need to point LB to the exe. 

After a few tried I noticed I'd set the path to the zip and not the exe.  I changed it to the exe.  Now I'm getting the same issue I was before.  Click play and the game begins to load and then nothing happens.  I appreciate all the help so far.

Jack

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, JackDaniels said:

After a few tried I noticed I'd set the path to the zip and not the exe.  I changed it to the exe.  Now I'm getting the same issue I was before.  Click play and the game begins to load and then nothing happens.  I appreciate all the help so far.

Jack

Where are your roms stored, im guessing as you didnt have the emulator unzipped that they are not in the mame/roms folder, so in that case you have to tell the emulator the location of your rom folder. You can either do that in the mame UI buy just starting the mame.exe, or directly in the mame.ini file located in the mame emulator folder.

 

[JackDaniels]

I don't have all the components for my final setup at the moment.  Right now I'm working off my gaming laptop and storing LaunchBox on a separate hard drive so I can easily transfer it when I get the other system up and running.  Basically I'm downloading to my C drive and then importing to my D drive into LaunchBox.  When I imported roms for other platforms I was given the option to move roms into LaunchBox.  When I import this full set I don't get that option.  

Here is what's in the mame.ini file right now :  "roms;C:\Users\****\Desktop\Arcade Build\mame-merged" - Thats where the files are currently located.

I appreciate your patience.

[JackDaniels]

Still no luck.  I'm going to start with a fresh install and work on it after the weekend.  

Jack

[JackDaniels]

I deleted all files and just started over.  This time everything worked relatively smoothly.  I appreciate all your help.

Jack

[jesh]

I'm familiar with retroarch and I use dig as a front-end on other devices. I'm new to launch box and pc emulation. I set retroarch as the default for launchbox. For snes and Nes launchbox knows nestopia and the correct snes core but for mame it doesn't. I have to right click load in retroarch download the core ex:mame-2003 then run the game manually through retroarch each time. I've watched eta prime and bits bytes videos on importing full rom sets and I think I found where to look but I don't know how or where I extract the large bittorrent that's where I'm lost. I know how to emulate basic zip files and haven't even tried to play any games with BIOS files. I just need help with a basic mame arcade game list.