Confused on full rom sets

[Alturis]

I was able to locate what should be a full rom set for FBA 0.2.97.42 and I have updated my lr-fbalpha emulator to the latest from sources.

I have been reading the indicated help and docs about how to make sure roms are the right version but taking a step back I haven't found anything that explains where exactly to put the other .zip files in the complete collection folders other than "roms"

I know "samples" goes to the .../bios/fba/samples folder.

But the contents of the other folders such as coleco, gamegear,megadriv,msx, etc all look like they are just game rom sets themselves.

Are they somehow needed to be copied to the bios/fba folder as well?

I ask because I am still seeing many games such as the metal slug series failing to load when using what should be an fba 2.97.42 rom with the latest lr-fbalpha 0.2.97.42 and the games in question are listed as working for a raspberry pie 3 (which I have) in the lr-fbalpha 0.2.97.42 games list spread sheet.

It feels like I am missing a step here somewhere.

[Darksavior]

@alturis Please read the wiki for your answers. https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/FinalBurn-Alpha

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Neo-Geo

[Alturis]

Yeah ok so after re-reading some info I finally understand what the "parent" field means in the games list for each rom set.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GaqIIoiWbzKHwZ52S2xCSDQXILo81Ls1mHK6czKGAtM/edit?usp=sharing

So if you want to play Metal Slug 5 (mslug5.zip) you also have to have Metal Slug 4 (mslug4.zip), and Metal Slug 3 (mslug3.zip), and Metal Slug 2 (mslug2.zip) as well as the neogeo.zip bios roms all in the same rom folder.

This does work if you put them all into the roms/arcade folder but the recommendation is to put them in the roms/neogeo folder.

Either way you have the issue of all those games showing up as well as the "Neogeo" showing up which is kinda ugly and less than ideal.

I imagine if you take the contents of all those zips and package them all into one mslug5.zip, for example, that might clear that issue up? Will try that.

[Alturis]

Confirmed that putting the contents all into one zip works yes.

Also if having the "neogeo" dummy game in the list is undesirable you can put the contents of neogeo.zip into each dependant game zips.

[Darksavior]

@alturis said in Confused on full rom sets:

Yeah ok so after re-reading some info I finally understand what the "parent" field means in the games list for each rom set.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GaqIIoiWbzKHwZ52S2xCSDQXILo81Ls1mHK6czKGAtM/edit?usp=sharing

So if you want to play Metal Slug 5 (mslug5.zip) you also have to have Metal Slug 4 (mslug4.zip), and Metal Slug 3 (mslug3.zip), and Metal Slug 2 (mslug2.zip) as well as the neogeo.zip bios roms all in the same rom folder.

Please stop reading random tutorials and taking a wild guess at things. You do NOT need all those other games to make metal slug 5 to work.

Since you failed to properly read (or just ignore) the wiki links I posted, I'll go ahead and give you this little tidbit and end it there. To run metal slug 5, you just need neogeo.zip and mslug5.zip in the roms folder.

[mitu]

@alturis

So if you want to play Metal Slug 5 (mslug5.zip) you also have to have Metal Slug 4 (mslug4.zip), and Metal Slug 3 (mslug3.zip), and Metal Slug 2 (mslug2.zip) as well as the neogeo.zip bios roms all in the same rom folder.

Only if you use the files from the romset as is - which is a split set. You can use the clrmamepro or romcenter to load/filter/rebuild the romset and get a non-merged zip ROM, which can be used standalone so you don't need to have all the parent ROM(s) (the other mslug games) in order to play one game.
Read on https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Validating,-Rebuilding,-and-Filtering-Arcade-ROMs/

[caver01]

@alturis said in Confused on full rom sets:

Confirmed that putting the contents all into one zip works yes.

Also if having the "neogeo" dummy game in the list is undesirable you can put the contents of neogeo.zip into each dependant game zips.

If you are using lr-fbalpha for neogeo, you can actually get away with moving the neogeo.zip file into the bios folder. You still need mslug.zip (or whatever version) in the the roms folder, but FBA will find neogeo.zip in bios just fine. This is nice because it gets it out of the game list.

[Alturis]

@darksavior That might be the case with Metal Slug series. But I have confirmed that the "parent" field is intended to imply that files from the <parent>.zip are needed to run the game listed in the table. Either by way of having that other game present in the same folder or by manually including them in the game zip you want to play.
Edit: Or actually you are right each main mslug<x> only depends on neogeo.zip but many of the variant versions depend on the corresponding mslug<x>. My eyes were following the rows wrong and getting confused.

e.g. The Simpsons

simpsons.zip - The 4 player arcade version - 2M of files zipped
simpsons2p.zip - The 2 player variant - 250k of files zipped

simpsons2p will NOT work by itself. It has to have all the roms from simpsons.zip present. As confirmed by first failing to get simpsons2p working at all until I figured this out. ( I am aiming to build a 2 player arcade unit which is why I preferred that one )

[Alturis]

@caver01 Ah cool thanks. Yeah I was wondering if something like that might work.

Edit: To clarify - the bios zip file (e.g. neogeo.zip) goes directly into the .../bios folder. Not the .../bios/fba folder or .../bios/fba/arcade folder or anything like that. This seemed confusing to me as to why a specific emulator bios rom set like neogeo.zip would not go in the bios/fba folder but instead into the root folder shared by all emulators.

[barbudreadmon]

@alturis said in Confused on full rom sets:

But the contents of the other folders such as coleco, gamegear,megadriv,msx, etc all look like they are just game rom sets themselves.

They are, fbalpha also emulate consoles, and it does it well (possibly better than dedicated emulators for a few games). The way it does it is kinda confusing though ("mess style", which means to play a megadrive rom, you would have to prefix the rom with "md_" and remove ".zip" in the command line, and you can't rename them), so i don't know many people who use this feature.

[caver01]

@alturis said in Confused on full rom sets:

@caver01 Ah cool thanks. Yeah I was wondering if something like that might work.

Edit: To clarify - the bios zip file (e.g. neogeo.zip) goes directly into the .../bios folder. Not the .../bios/fba folder or .../bios/fba/arcade folder or anything like that. This seemed confusing to me as to why a specific emulator bios rom set like neogeo.zip would not go in the bios/fba folder but instead into the root folder shared by all emulators.

Yeah, goes right in the bios folder, no sub folders. There are other examples of emulators that access bios files the same way. The fact that lr-mame2003 has a folder there for samples, artwork etc. is maybe the outlier (maybe there are others that do this too), but those are not really bios files. Still, I do like the organization into subs, but it could create duplication if more than one emulator needs the same bios. I am just glad I got it out of my gamelist.

[dankcushions]

actually i think of the arcade emulators, lr-fbalpha is the outlier re: neogeo.zip

basically, lr-fbalpha checks the /BIOS/ directory for all BIOS/parent files. it's not just neogeo.zip - you could feasibly put any BIOS or parent .zip that your fba games need, but you don't want them to appear in your gamelist. it's a neat solution that mitigates issues from the many users who understably think neogeo.zip should go in the BIOS directory.

i believe every other lr-mame/fba variant will want all of those supporting BIOS/parent .zip files in the current rom directory. i like how lr-fbalpha does it, but i'm tempted to ignore that feature when supporting arcade emulators to keep everything consistent. or.. we could make the same change to lr-mame2003, etc.

(mame2003 does other stuff with hiscore.dat, etc, but that's really a separate issue)

[caver01]

@dankcushions said in Confused on full rom sets:

actually i think of the arcade emulators, lr-fbalpha is the outlier

Among arcade emus, yes. I was thinking about other platforms too. Several other emulators look to the root of BIOS for files. Maybe it is a config we are using in each case? I can certainly point AdvanceMAME/MESS to that folder (and I do). It is interesting that we have the option at all in FBA, but I am glad we do.

In another thread a while back, we were trying to figure out how to hide neogeo in gamelists. Some comments came from users who had successfully removed it and then realized they had dropped a copy into their BIOS folder a long time ago and forgot they did so. I was pretty excited when we figured that out.

I don't think we really need to change anything in 2003, do you? I mean, I know you could but your reasoning makes more sense--to keep parent-child dependencies together. FBA just has this as a bonus feature.

As for AdvanceMAME, you can reference multiple ROM directories in the .rc file so it is just a configuration that could enable it there. Honestly, the only reason I would pick MAME over FBA for neogeo is a dependency on a single romset.

[Riverstorm]

@alturis said in Confused on full rom sets:

That might be the case with Metal Slug series. But I have confirmed that the "parent" field is intended to imply that files from the <parent>.zip are needed to run the game listed in the table. Either by way of having that other game present in the same folder or by manually including them in the game zip you want to play.

Think of set types as an file organization method for ROM files (merged, non-merged, split-merged). It's basically the splitting or consolidation of with some duplication depending on your needs like saving space, smaller game list, smaller directory list, etc. but MAME searches the same few zip archives when launching a game in an attempt to locate the needed ROMs. You might have 1 or up to 3 files depending on the set type.

The "mslug4nd" ROM (clone game) needs x files to run. It doesn't matter where the ROM files exist in either mslug4 or mslug4nd.

If you dump all the ROM files into mslug4nd then only the clone should show up in your game list but if you dump all the files into mslug4 then both the parent and clone will show in your game list.

The difference is MAME looks for clones in the parent but not in the clone as there is only one parent/clone relationship per ROM.

There's no crossover between say mslug4 and mslug5. Neogeo.zip is the odd duck as in it's a "romof" and not a "cloneof" file. It's like a "system file" and parent/clones don't need to be related.

you could feasibly put any BIOS or parent .zip that your fba games need, but you don't want them to appear in your gamelist.

I always thought that was a clever feature but not quite sure how to leverage it. I think it would be just as easy if not easier to just use non-merged sets.

[Riverstorm]

@dankcushions said in Confused on full rom sets:

you could feasibly put any BIOS or parent .zip that your fba games need, but you don't want them to appear in your gamelist.

Thinking that through a little more the devs must have had a single goal in mind giving flexibility to split sets or maybe it was actually all for the BIOS ROM. It wouldn't work for a merged set and it wouldn't make sense for a non-merged set but useful for split. Which is probably the most common way you find pre-canned sets on the net but it seems here non-merged is more common. It's worth it though just to move the BIOS out of the way.

[caver01]

@riverstorm said in Confused on full rom sets:

It's worth it though just to move the BIOS out of the way.

I agree. This is a nice feature. You can do it with AdvanceMAME by specifying more than one path on the roms directory setting in the .rc file. This is how it can work with roms in either mame-advancemame or arcade. Both are listed. You could also reference the bios folder if you were running neogeo with advmame and wanted to hide the neogeo.zip.

[obliv]

@alturis could you actually send me a link of a recent neogeo ROM pack ?

[mitu]

@obliv Links to ROMs and requests for ROMs are not part of this forum - please read the rules.