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Mame games wont play


Browser Hound

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I am a complete noob so this may be a simple question.

I have downloaded and installed Mame using the wizard in the launchbox app. The app has not copied ALL of the games to the "Arcade" folder only some, 4013 copied of 13895 files. Also I cannot play any of the games that have been downloaded, all I get when double click or select play from the menu, is a spinning circle, a sudden appearing and disappearing black screen and then I am returned to the "Arcade" platform list again. There are no errors displayed so I don't know why this happens, where to start or how to diagnose the problem. As far as I can tell Retroarch and a Sam Coupe emulator are both working fine, and the games in "Sega Genesis", "PC Engine SuperGrafx" and "NEC TurboGrafx" platforms also seem to be working.

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You didnt mention, so i have to ask, you did actually go and download a mame romset right, you are not expecting Launchbox to download the games for you? If not then what version romset do you have, and what version emulator did you choose in the import wizard? Also The Launchbox MAME fullset importer doesnt move your games, so i'm not sure what you are referring to there. And finally, if you have a merged or split romset you cannot break them up like that, all files must stay in the same folder or you will break a ton of games as they rely on files contained in other zip files.

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I downloaded a full set from what was regarded as a trusted archive. Also, the wizard gave me three options: Move the files into the Launchbox directory: Copy the files into the Launchbox directory or Leave the files in their current directory and run them from there. I tried both "Copy" and "move" niether of which worked. I checked the "Arcade" folder and all the files were present in that folder.

I have had zero experience with Mame so I do not have the skill or knowledge with it, and I am afraid I might screw it up as I don't know the different file extensions and not sure if I have a rom or a bios file and I don't understand the me

nus. I have downloaded Mame again and installed a copy of it on another drive, so I can play with it and not touch the Mame that is used by Launchbox. 

The suggestion from Launchbox and YouTubers like ETA Prime, is that when using the wizard it should not be this difficult. Also I have redownloaded the rom set and a different but smaller rom set and none of these work either.

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5 hours ago, Browser Hound said:

I downloaded a full set from what was regarded as a trusted archive. Also, the wizard gave me three options: Move the files into the Launchbox directory: Copy the files into the Launchbox directory or Leave the files in their current directory and run them from there. I tried both "Copy" and "move" niether of which worked. I checked the "Arcade" folder and all the files were present in that folder.

I have had zero experience with Mame so I do not have the skill or knowledge with it, and I am afraid I might screw it up as I don't know the different file extensions and not sure if I have a rom or a bios file and I don't understand the me

nus. I have downloaded Mame again and installed a copy of it on another drive, so I can play with it and not touch the Mame that is used by Launchbox. 

The suggestion from Launchbox and YouTubers like ETA Prime, is that when using the wizard it should not be this difficult. Also I have redownloaded the rom set and a different but smaller rom set and none of these work either.

You appear to be mixing import types.  If you have a full rom set for MAME you use the MAME Arcade Full set importer option.  It will then ask you for the platform name your arcade setup (typically Arcade but can be others depending on what you named platform), then it will ask for location/folder of your ROM set and ROM set version.  Once you point it there, then LB will do what it needs to do.  For the full set ROM importer it doesn't actually move/copy any ROM files, just sets up pointers inside LB based on your option responses.  

2027208514_Image005.thumb.png.a5b6bd45436512f7e9e9bfc3d4245484.png

If you had things moved around from your prior try, make sure you revert back to the ROMs in the folders as they were downloaded from the original archive (i.e., folder then a bunch of zips containing the MAME roms). 

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Thanks.

All the files were imported and placed in the Arcade folder and the Launchbox audit function shows them to be in the correct Place.

So,I have started again, from scratch. I have deleted lauchbox and Mame, reinstalled both and gone through the set up and import again and now it seems to work. Luckily, I had only a very few other platforms/games additionaly installed, so I would not recommend this solution for anyone with a large collection, but for me, I was going to spend more time fixing it than it took to start again.

Thanks to all for the help and advice and sorry that we did not find a solution that might be useful for others.

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