MAME skips games when importing

[JoeViking245]

1 minute ago, Joe35car said:

How about adding a preliminary check box when importing? 

Well, they kind of already do.  It's just called something a little different.  Skip games unplayable in MAME.

Take for example Daytona USA 2: Battle on the Edge (daytona2).  That games overall status is Preliminary.  But you will never be able to play it in MAME.  Supermodel3 emulator, yeah. But not MAME.

[Joe35car]

Yes but as we can see it's not importing the preliminary games for mame which are marked working in official MAME. 

[JoeViking245]

51 minutes ago, Joe35car said:

Yes but as we can see it's not importing the preliminary games for mame which are marked working in official MAME. 

I see.  You might want to submit a feature request.  (A top this page - Help & Support < Request a Feature)

[Joe35car]

Done. 

[JoeViking245]

17 hours ago, Joe35car said:

Yes but as we can see it's not importing the preliminary games for mame which are marked working in official MAME. 

Did some checking (as morbid curiosity got to me ). 

Why would MAME list a games Overall Status as Preliminary when at the same time they list its Emulation as Good? 

To start, I got the current list of everything MAME (v0.271) via the command line mame.exe -listxml >listxml.xml.

I parse the output file (listxml.xml) for games listed as Overall Preliminary, and Emulation Good. This gave 889 ROMs.

After then removing the Mechanical machines (mainly Pinball) and Softlists, this left 368 Arcade Machines.

 

My findings about the remaining 368:

Though the Emulation aspect of "Overall" may be "Good", it can still have "Imperfect" [or worse] "Unemulated" Sound and/or Graphics.  "Graphics", not to be confused with "Palette" which pertains to colors.

To have some semblance of the gameplay being enjoyable, I want to remove ones that have no sound and/or imperfect protection (ROM wasn't completely 'cracked' [creating an array of gameplay issues not covered elsewhere]) and imperfect timing.  This left 89 ROMs.

To have it at least somewhat visually pleasing, from those remaining, I removed ones that have an imperfect or unemulated palette (aka, the colors [if any] look like crap).  This left 0 ROMs.

 

 

In summary, Arcade Machines that are deemed by MAME as having the Status Overall - Preliminary and Emulation - Good, have one or more of the following issues:

• Its "Mechanical" (You can emulate it in MAME. But you can't play it.)
• It's a Software List item (aka, a non-Arcade game or system)
• Its sound is unemulated
• Its color palette is either unemulated or imperfect (wonky or no colorization)
• Its protection is imperfect (You can emulate it in MAME, will have random adverse effects during gameplay)
• Its timing is imperfect (will either run too slow, too fast or sporadically [is my guess])

 

Again, this was just for my own curiosity.  It seemed weird that MAME would list a game as Preliminary even though its emulation was good.  And now, I know "the rest of the story".  (And to me, makes sense)