Updating MAME emulator

[starfiretbt]

I want to update my MAME emulator but I haven't done that in a LONG time. Is updating MAME as simple as downloading the latest MAME emulator and folder and replacing the old MAME emulator and folder? I'm afraid if I try it without asking I might screw up my MAME game. I know I will lose the save states but that's not really a concern. I also understand there are things called MAME  ROMsets, which for some reason are tied to the specific emulator. Can't I just keep the roms I have? Those romsets get pretty large and I don't want to have to keep getting new ones.

[MadK9]

No its not just that easy, you need to match your roms to the mame version. Mixing is a very bad idea and can lead to lots of issues.

[starfiretbt]

But I don't want to lose the mame roms I have now, what if the games I have aren't on the other rom packs? What about the games that are in launchbox? what will become of them? Some of them are in playlists. What if the rom packs are larger? Does this mean every time I update I keep losing computer space?

[DeadVoivod]

The ROM names always stay the same.

[C-Beats]

If you grab non-merged you can pare down your collection quite a bit. Grab non-merged (without CHD) which "costs" around 135gb. Then use LaunchBox to import the working roms (and whatever other filter you want to apply) and then move them to another folder using the in-app tools. What's left in your download folder you can delete which brings your fullset down to something like 20gb. Then if you kept the games requiring CHD grab the ones you need and go from there. You can have a full working set for around 30gb or so (even smaller than a merged set)

[C-Beats]

MAME sets include games/chd files that aren't playable. They are distributed mostly for preservation and so people actively trying to develop MAME can try and make them working. If all you care about are playable games and the files they need then yeah, you definitely don't need 1TB of data.

[neil9000]

8 minutes ago, zugswang said:

and also the messing about it takes to weed out working and non working is a lot of work.

No it doesnt the MAME importer only imports working games, you than highlite them and use the copy/export tool to copy them to a new folder, takes two minutes. Here is my 0.253 working games only set, it's only 11.2GB and contains 2825 working games.

And here is my CHD folder which only contains CHD's for games that actually work.

So in total 156.2Gb for a fully working MAME romset.

 

[C-Beats]

Thanks for the finite numbers. I was clearly off on the CHD estimation. I didn't even realize they had that many titles in the 232 working set that needed CHD. That's my bad on that one.

[C-Beats]

The number of working games Neil quoted is number of working arcade games, and is 2828 parents as of the latest release. Your screenshot shows non-arcade machines (like 4004clk) which is increasing the number you are seeing. Arcade Italia is a great resource for looking up MAME roms and whittling them down based on parameters using the same MAME.xml and INI data LaunchBox uses in it's logic.

To address the OP and their question directly:
You want to keep your emulator and set at the same version but really don't need to update unless there is a feature or game add/revision that interests you. I personally am using .232 and haven't personally really felt compelled to update my set since. As MadK9 was saying though, if you upgrade one you need to upgrade both. This is because the emulator is built around the corresponding set and may have version specific information that was changed in either the ROM file or in the emulator, and having a mismatch set can cause issues for you. That being said LB media goes by filename which (as DeadDevoid pointed out) doesn't typically change per set. Because of this when swapping versions you can simply rerun the full set import in LaunchBox and the only media that will be grabbed is stuff you didn't already have.

[C-Beats]

MAME covers FAR more than just Arcade games. MAME.xml has information for all rom files that are supported, not just Arcade games. LaunchBox does it's best to whittle down the ROMs to only those that are for Arcade titles and so there may be some differences. I've personally never used RL or Hyperspin to know what they are doing. Thankfully sounds like all systems mentioned are more than open-ended enough that they all give the user plenty of options to choose from.

[neil9000]

43 minutes ago, zugswang said:

MAME has over 5,000 (probably 11,000 including clones) working games so I don't know where you are getting 2,825

Because i have only one version of each game, why would i want thirty versions of Street Fighter II for example? In the MAME importer i specify i want North America as my region preference, and that i want the 2 player versions of games so i get the correct roms for things like Turtles/Simpsons etc that allow me to choose the character, i then leave all the filters on so i dont get all the crap like mahjong games, fruit machiones, mechanical games that dont work without physical hardware etc, i also choose not to import clones at all, because again why would i want dozens of versions of the same game?

[neil9000]

3 minutes ago, zugswang said:

so well worth having many of them.

Not for me.

4 minutes ago, zugswang said:

HBAME is even better as KOF97 for example has 600+ clones and all different variants of the game though I cannot see any way LB can play these, hence why I use RocketLauncher for this.

And i really couldnt care less about HBmame, i have no interests in that whatsoever.

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, zugswang said:

Obviously I was wrong, though it does make me wonder why there is no option to add MAME if this is the case ?

We do things the way we do because MAME and MESS have been combined and MAME is actually a viable emulator for a pretty large number of platforms and so for our workflow and how our database is set up it's not all that possible to cram it all under one platform.

[starfiretbt]

Wow, that is a lot to unpack. I'm a little lost. Please bare with me while I try to understand.

I have a rom pack, I don't want another larger one taking up more space, I just want a newer mame emulator because some of the games in my rom pack don't work and I'm hoping a newer emulator will fix that but I don't want to have to start all over with a new rom pack. Like I said, some of the games are organized into playlists, but I did hear DeadVoivod say "The ROM names always stay the same" so I'm guessing they would stay where they are in Launchbox? But I don't want an entire terrabyte taken for mame so I don't want more rom packs, I just want the ones I have and maybe more if I feel like downloading a few individual games. C-Beats said "If you grab non-merged you can pare down your collection quite a bit" so I figure that means I can download individual games.

So my overall question is

1. How do I get a newer, more functional mame (in other words updating it) while still being able to use the roms I have?

I thought I can just replace the whole folder the emulator came in with the emulator but I hear from MadK9 saying that won't work.

Edited April 20, 2023 by starfiretbt

[Lordmonkus]

17 minutes ago, starfiretbt said:

1. How do I get a newer, more functional mame (in other words updating it) while still being able to use the roms I have?

You don't.

18 minutes ago, starfiretbt said:

I thought I can just replace the whole folder the emulator came in with the emulator but I hear from MadK9 saying that won't work.

MadK9 is correct.

If you know the version of the rom set you have then you can download that version of Mame from the Mame website.
If you want the latest Mame you will want to download the version of the rom set to go with that to ensure the maximum compatibility.

[C-Beats]

@starfiretbt The correlation between the ROMs and the Emulator when talking about MAME isn't the same as other emulators. Other emulators are designed to use any dump file for the system they are designed for. MAME has a lot of logic in the app to help with a very specific dump file and so changing the emulator without changing the ROM can cause mismatches that make things break. For that reason you don't update your emulator without grabbing the ROMs for that specific version. While you technically CAN grab games one by one, you'd have to ensure they are all from the same MAME set which typically is easier said than done which is why we recommend just grabbing the whole set and then whittling down to what you want. Also you can only whittle down a non-merged set in this way. Split/Merged share files between games and deleting one file may break several games making that pare down far more difficult.

[starfiretbt]

Okay, what if I get an updated mame emulator and replace the roms I want with individual roms from the nonmerged roms that I've heard some of you mentioned. Because downloading a new, larger rom set when the current one is already large enough just isn't what I want to do.

I can keep the old emulator and roms as backup (until I know all the new games and emulator work) and delete them when everything's oky-doky.