MAME, no-nag setup and mame.ini missing

[Nanotik]

Hello there,

I am struggling a bit with my MAME setup following this video:

 

My MAME set is a full 0.245 with CHD, roms and CHD were apart (MAME ROM Set 0.245 (Merged) - No CHD + MAME 0.245 CHD (Merged)) so I merged them together into a same folder so it looks this way:

./Games/MAME/romname.zip

./Games/MAME/CHDfoldername/file.chd

 

Then, I did import this full set into launchbox using the "import MAME Arcade full set" feature. 

So far so good. 

 

Now, I want to get rid of the nag/rom checking when I start a game so I replaced my mame.exe by this one but it doesn't do the trick. It says to be sure to have Skip_gameinfo  1 in our mame.ini file but the thing is I don't have this .ini in my mame emulator folder. I am clueless at this point.

 

Btw, I don't know if this is related to nag/checkrom boot but my CPSIII games need to load a "CD-ROM" which can take up to 20 min. I mean, there must be a faster way to boot these games. How do I fix this ?

 

 

Any help appreciated.

 

 

[Your Friendly A.I Overlord]

2 hours ago, Nanotik said:

It says to be sure to have Skip_gameinfo  1 in our mame.ini file but the thing is I don't have this .ini in my mame emulator folder.

In Windows make sure you have "show file extensions" enabled. From your second screenshot it looks like you have Mame running so you should have mame.ini. If not, open a command prompt, go to your Mame directory and enter: mame -createconfig

Open mame.ini with a text editor and under "Core Misc Options" add: skip_gameinfo             1

2 hours ago, Nanotik said:

but my CPSIII games need to load a "CD-ROM" which can take up to 20 min. I mean, there must be a faster way to boot these games.

This only happens when you run a CPSIII game for the first time. If you run it a second time it should launch in seconds.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Your Friendly A.I Overlord

[Nanotik]

I can see file extensions. I managed to start and play many games without this mame.ini. I think it has something to do with Launchbox itself who has its own command-line parameters so it doesn't rely on this mame.ini file. This is my MAME parameters generated by Launchbox when I told it to import my MAME full set. I can even see "-skip_gameinfo" there.

I just did your mame -createconfig, now I have my mame.ini!

I set skip_gameinfo to 1 and... nothing. I still have romcheck/nag screens when I start a game (tried with xmen).

I am wondering if the automated MAME import was the best solution. Should I start to setup manually from scratch my MAME set? 

 

[Your Friendly A.I Overlord]

21 minutes ago, Nanotik said:

I managed to start and play many games without this mame.ini.

21 minutes ago, Nanotik said:

I just did your mame -createconfig, now I have my mame.ini!

Are you sure that in LaunchBox the path to mame.exe (your first screenshot) and the folder where you created mame.ini (your second screenshot) are the same?

24 minutes ago, Nanotik said:

I am wondering if the automated MAME import was the best solution. Should I start to setup manually from scratch my MAME set? 

Importing games has nothing to do with how you set up the emulator.

[Nanotik]

47 minutes ago, Your Friendly A.I Overlord said:

1 hour ago, Nanotik said:

I just did your mame -createconfig, now I have my mame.ini!

Are you sure that in LaunchBox the path to mame.exe (your first screenshot) and the folder where you created mame.ini (your second screenshot) are the same?

Yes, I checked again. Just to make sure, I browsed and put my mame.exe path again in Launchbox. 

 

47 minutes ago, Your Friendly A.I Overlord said:

1 hour ago, Nanotik said:

I am wondering if the automated MAME import was the best solution. Should I start to setup manually from scratch my MAME set? 

Importing games has nothing to do with how you set up the emulator.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The thing is I did not set up anything yet. When I try to import a MAME full set, Launchbox asks in the process if I would like to let it install and configure MAME by itself.

For testing purposes, I deleted my mame.ini file again and tried to start a game through Launchbox and it worked. I don't know how Launchbox behaves with mame but it seems to ignore this mame.ini. Problem is I need this mame.ini (with skip_gameinfo set to 1) to make the no-nag mame.exe to fulfill its purpose but I have no idea on how to fix this.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Nanotik

[MadK9]

@Nanotik I just did a fresh install of LB to another drive, told it to import my full mame set and setup mame for me, while it was downloading the metadata and artwork/covers i replaced the mame.exe with my nonag. Once LB had finished importing i ran a game, and the game and no nag worked perfectly, i tried this on multiple games and all was fine. There is no need to add the skip_gameinfo 1 anywhere as the full importer adds it to the cmd line for mame, and just using skip_gameinfo in the cmd line toggles it to on afaik.

 

I will add that im not a fan of the full importer setting up mame, as you lose some of the features of mame, but i totally understand why its there and is needed. That said if you want to tinker with mame and all its features using a stand alone mame setup is far better, but beware this has its own pitfalls.

Edited August 2, 2022 by MadK9

[Your Friendly A.I Overlord]

29 minutes ago, Nanotik said:

When I try to import a MAME full set, Launchbox asks in the process if I would like to let it install and configure MAME by itself.

Sounds like you already have Mame set up in LaunchBox so you can choose "Manually Configure MAME Emulator".

29 minutes ago, Nanotik said:

Problem is I need this mame.ini (with skip_gameinfo set to 1) to make the no-nag mame.exe to fulfill its purpose but I have no idea on how to fix this.

The command-line parameters override anything you have in mame.ini, so it should work.

29 minutes ago, Nanotik said:

Yes, I checked again. Just to make sure, I browsed and put my mame.exe path again in Launchbox.

In LaunchBox your path to mame.exe is LaunchBox\Emulators\Mame 0,245. Are you sure the no-nag mame.exe and mame.ini are in that folder. I use Mame no-nag myself and like MadK9 says, after replacing the regular mame.exe with the no-nag mame.exe and setting skip_gameinfo to 1 in mame.ini everything worked straight away.

*Edit*

To make it clear, in LaunchBox the only command-line parameter I use for Mame is: -keyboardprovider dinput. Nothing more. So setting skip_gameinfo to 1 in mame.ini was necessary for me and worked straight away.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Your Friendly A.I Overlord

[neil9000]

7 hours ago, Nanotik said:

Btw, I don't know if this is related to nag/checkrom boot but my CPSIII games need to load a "CD-ROM" which can take up to 20 min. I mean, there must be a faster way to boot these games. How do I fix this ?

All CPS3 games will need you to do that as the arcade cabinets had hard drives in them that the arcade operator had to install the games too, what is happening here is you are essentially turning on that cabinet for the first time and it has no game installed to it yet. You cannot skip this but you can use the insert key on your keyboard to fast forward it.

[Hollywood31]

I, too, used LB to install MAME and roms.  However, I cannot find where the rom ini files belong that contain all of my previous game settings. I put a few ini files into the games folder in LB directory, but that did nothing. How do I get these ini files to be recognized when games are launched?

[JoeViking245]

7 minutes ago, Hollywood31 said:

I, too, used LB to install MAME and roms.  However, I cannot find where the rom ini files belong that contain all of my previous game settings. I put a few ini files into the games folder in LB directory, but that did nothing. How do I get these ini files to be recognized when games are launched?

If you have ROM specific ini files that you created in your old MAME setup, they're most likely in something like "D:\Old_MAME_Setup\ini\" folder.  Simply copy those ini files to your new MAME folder.  Something like "D:\LaunchBox\Emulators\MAME 0.246\ini\"

If by chance you're talking about ROM (game) specific settings you had in your old MAME such as keyboard/controller bindings, those are .cfg files.  If you want to copy those over, do the same as above but change "ini" to "cfg" in the file paths.