Acorn Electron game import fails

[shanghaiultra]

I guess not many people are using this system, but would greatly appreciate any help trying to import games for the Acorn Electron. I have a bunch of games in .zip format but the import rom function just doesn't work - the list of games to be imported always fails to detect anything. I've tried re-naming the files and unzipping them but this makes no difference. 

Very confused by this as I imported a load of Amiga and Arcade classics without any issue at all. I also notice the Launchbox games database has a great many Electron games in it..

Grateful for any help.

 

 

[shanghaiultra]

For anyone finding this thread in the future. I am using MAME to emulate the Acorn Electron, but using the import game wizard and choosing Mame means the wizard only searches the Mame database to find matches for the games you are trying to import. Selecting Retro arch as my desired emulator solved the problem. I simply did a bulk edit afterwards to change my imported game to use MAME.

[neil9000]

7 hours ago, shanghaiultra said:

For anyone finding this thread in the future. I am using MAME to emulate the Acorn Electron, but using the import game wizard and choosing Mame means the wizard only searches the Mame database to find matches for the games you are trying to import. Selecting Retro arch as my desired emulator solved the problem. I simply did a bulk edit afterwards to change my imported game to use MAME.

This is because we do not support MAME software list roms, which is what these are from, hence them not working with the MAME importer which is strictly for arcade games.

[shanghaiultra]

4 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

This is because we do not support MAME software list roms, which is what these are from, hence them not working with the MAME importer which is strictly for arcade games.

Thanks a lot for clarifying. Suggest the wizard is updated in some way to allow the games to be imported independent of which emulator will be used to run them. Anyway, LB is already a great product glad to have bought my lifetime license. 

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, shanghaiultra said:

Thanks a lot for clarifying. Suggest the wizard is updated in some way to allow the games to be imported independent of which emulator will be used to run them. Anyway, LB is already a great product glad to have bought my lifetime license. 

You use the standard rom importer and not the MAME fullset one, and when choosing MAME as your emulator you will get a extra page with options, similar to what you have in the MAME fullset importer.

[shanghaiultra]

48 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

You use the standard rom importer and not the MAME fullset one, and when choosing MAME as your emulator you will get a extra page with options, similar to what you have in the MAME fullset importer.

I originally used the standard rom importer as you describe, but the problem still occurred. Not sure what is up.

Edited March 15, 2022 by shanghaiultra

[JoeViking245]

Acorn Electron is not innately part a MAME's 'regular' full set [of Arcade machines]. Thus not included in LaunchBox's MAME full set [Arcade] import wizard.  It is however within MAME's softlist (Software List) sets as Neil mentioned.  Because of how the 2 are handled differently by MAME, coupled with the fact the 1 is Arcade and the other  consists of computers, consoles, handhelds etc., to combine them into the existing full set importer for MAME would become quite convoluted.  

[For my own personal reference] When you selected RetroArch as your emulator when doing the standard import, was it able to get the proper game Titles?  I assume you had MAME softlist roms which are stored using their 'short name'.  

Or did you have a different set of roms, named accordingly that MAME is able to read/launch?  Again, just curious.

[shanghaiultra]

Joe, thanks for your interest in this issue. You're right of course, MAME is primarily for Arcade games and not computer or other systems, this is why I tried choosing another emulator in the import as it dawned on me that choosing MAME would tell LB to only search the MAME Arcade games database. 

To answer your question, LB picked up the names just fine once I changed the emulator to Retroarch. I used a set of Electron roms from TOSEC. I am guessing choosing any emulator other than MAME during the import process would work just fine.

Incidentally found it hard to find any solid guides out there for emulating the Electron and BBC model B with MAME. I managed to get both working pretty smoothly for most games using various posts elsewhere on this forum.

Edited March 21, 2022 by shanghaiultra