How to fix "u" added to mame games in target file path? (Mame non merged)

[Hamburglin]

I can't remember when this happened and if I messed it up or it was something else.

My target launch apps for games like tmnt are actually set to tmntu, as if I didn't use a mame merged list. Which I am. 

For example, tmnt is just tmnt in mame merged, but tmntu in mane non merged.

For some reason, my mame games got set to use the non merged set. This means I need to manually remove the "u".

This was not a problem a month or two ago so I'm trying to figure out what changed. I don't think I did an import and I definitely have been using the make merged set for over a year.

Anyone know what's going on or if I can fix it by reimporting my arcade games as merged?

I'm in the betas.

[C-Beats]

I think you may be misunderstanding how MAME loads the file we pass it. We tell it "tmntu" because you chose to prioritize North American clones. MAME then internally looks in your folder for tmntu file, if you don't have it (because you're running merged set) it then automatically looks in the parents file "tmnt" and uses the files in there to load the tmntu clone files that are nestled inside of it. Typically LaunchBox DOES check if a file exists or not before starting the game, but if you'll notice we don't when MAME is your emulator. This MAME logic is why we don't. Just because the file name you pass MAME doesn't exist, doesn't mean it can't figure it out on it's own.

[Hamburglin]

Ok well something changed then and I'm not sure what happened.

Any game with "u" at the end does not load anymore. I have to directly point it to the merged version without the "u".

Do you happen to know if I can launch mame manually in a way and see the logging as it tries to find tmnt?

Edited October 23, 2023 by Hamburglin

[JoeViking245]

3 hours ago, Hamburglin said:

Do you happen to know if I can launch mame manually in a way and see the logging as it tries to find tmnt?

Open a Windows Command Prompt window and start MAME from there.

Alternately, you can create a batch file to start the game and on the last line, add a pause.

mame.exe tmnt
pause

 

EDIT: can also add to either of the 2 above options, the parameter >MyLogFile.txt to send/save the output to a text file.  

mame.exe tmnt >MyLogFile.txt

 

Or start the game from within MAME and look for the big red box stating what files it can't find. (not sure if it states where exactly it looked though.)

[Hamburglin]

Ok, so dealing with the issue again when I had family over for thanksgiving, I think the problem arose when I updated retroarch mame core. I think they changed the way games are loaded. I.e tmntu is a "clone" and does not load anymore. You need to point to only tmnt.

I figured this out when I had to change xmenu to xmen. The game was stuck on a 13B BAD memory issue and wouldn't get to the title screen. I had to delete its nvram file for it work. It seems like updating the mame core to a newer version broke this all somehow.

Can I reimport my mame library to fix this somehow? As in, set all games with a "u" clone version to the normal version?

Edited November 29, 2023 by Hamburglin

[Hamburglin]

Confirming that mame handles these paths fine but retroarch mame current does not.

It happened in an update around the time I made this post initially.

I'm manually editing the launch paths for my playlist one by one but in the future won't set the import to default to the USA version.

Also, updating the playlisr xml files does nothing for the launch paths. It even leaves the old game path with the "u" at the end on them after I update the path and restart launchbox.

Edited May 6 by Hamburglin