Running games via RetroArch gives me "This romset is known but roms doesn't match the emulator"

[Benjc]

I've for some time had Launchbox running my MAME library via MAME. Now I'm trying to switch over to running these same games through RetroArch.

So, firstly I tried running Golden Axe purely from RA (added just that one game into my MAME playlist) and that's working.

Then, over in LB, I switched the emulator to RA. RA has an associated platform of MAME which has a core of fbneo_libretro. Likewise, Golden Axe has its platform set as MAME.

Now, when I launch the game from LB, I get a "This romset is known but roms doesn't match the emulator" error from RA. 😕

From what I've read this error can be caused by fbneo not having the correct romset but if this really is the issue then why does the same file for Golden Axe run perfectly well directly from RA (also using the fbneo_libretro core)?

Any suggestions welcomed as I'm mystified as to what I've missed here.

[neil9000]

24 minutes ago, Benjc said:

I've for some time had Launchbox running my MAME library via MAME. Now I'm trying to switch over to running these same games through RetroArch.

So, firstly I tried running Golden Axe purely from RA (added just that one game into my MAME playlist) and that's working.

Then, over in LB, I switched the emulator to RA. RA has an associated platform of MAME which has a core of fbneo_libretro. Likewise, Golden Axe has its platform set as MAME.

Now, when I launch the game from LB, I get a "This romset is known but roms doesn't match the emulator" error from RA. 😕

From what I've read this error can be caused by fbneo not having the correct romset but if this really is the issue then why does the same file for Golden Axe run perfectly well directly from RA (also using the fbneo_libretro core)?

Any suggestions welcomed as I'm mystified as to what I've missed here.

FBNeo is not MAME, they are completely different romsets, you need to use the correct romset for the emulator or core. Why does it work when loaded from Retroarch and not via the commandline? sounds like a emulator bug to me, or you are loading a different version of the same game from Retroarch and Launchbox, but again if you are not actually using a FBNeo romset you are actively making things more difficult and incompatible.

Edited March 4, 2023 by neil9000

[Benjc]

Okay, I'll seek out the relevant romset then👍

I have only one copy of goldnaxe.zip on my system so yeah, it's really really weird and confusing that it works direct from RA. I guess I was just hoping there might be something obvious I'd missed here without requiring me to download afresh and, if previous romset changeovers are anything to go by, lose all my high scores (but, hey, that's a whole other thing).

[JoeViking245]

If Golden Axe runs directly in RA, you can launch it via LB through RA. 

When you run it directly from RetroArch, make note of the core that it's loading to make it run.  Then in LaunchBox, check that that's the core you're asking it to use.  If the core is different than the one you have assigned to the Platform it resides in, but the assigned core is what's needed for all the other games in that platform, edit that game and in the Launching, Emulation section, check and use Custom Command-Line Parameters to load the correct core for Golden Axe.

[Benjc]

Okay, after further digging I found my games ROM file location as shown in LB is the Games\MAME subfolder of my LB folder. This is not where my ROMs are kept. Even stranger, there's nothing in that folder at all!

Changing the path to where Golden Axe actually is unsurprisingly made RA work. Yes, this is a solution but it's not a good one- I can't fathom manually repointing every game's file location by hand so RA works.

I'm wondering if my import is screwy somehow, I mean, how does LB even manage to load these games from this magical empty folder? Is this normal? I'm starting to think I'll have to reimport all the games again...

[neil9000]

50 minutes ago, Benjc said:

Okay, after further digging I found my games ROM file location as shown in LB is the Games\MAME subfolder of my LB folder. This is not where my ROMs are kept. Even stranger, there's nothing in that folder at all!

Changing the path to where Golden Axe actually is unsurprisingly made RA work. Yes, this is a solution but it's not a good one- I can't fathom manually repointing every game's file location by hand so RA works.

I'm wondering if my import is screwy somehow, I mean, how does LB even manage to load these games from this magical empty folder? Is this normal? I'm starting to think I'll have to reimport all the games again...

Launchbox does not care where your roms are, and for the mame fullset importer it doesnt actively import anything. It gets the list of what games work from the mame emulator itself, it then adds the games listed there to launchbox. When loading, no game is passed to the emulator, Launchbox just says hey mame load "game name" and mame itself finds and loads the game. So when trying to load a game in a emulator that is not mame, but using a mame romset (again like i said earlier, bad idea) it does not actually have the file to pass, because as you correctly state the roms/mame folder is empty (this is just the default location of all roms unless staed to use another location during the import process).

[Benjc]

Thanks- importing the whole new set seems to have worked🙂 Now off to de-dupe my entire games collection manually...😭