MAME roms not all working

Riverstorm

@caver01 said in MAME roms not all working:

It should be said here on this thread that getting MAME ROMs to work isn't actually trial and error at all.

Well said, I agree when I first read the post about trial and error I bristled a bit. :) When using the DAT with a ROM management tool it's really an exact science.

Parzival

what would the rom set of dungeons and dragons as well as mega man 2: power fighters be?

caver01

@Parzival first you tell me, what version of mame are you going to use to open these?

caver01

Because you need both bits of info to answer your question. The ROMset must match the MAME version you plan to use. Otherwise, it may not work.

Parzival

@caver01 mame4all or mame2003 :)

caver01

@Parzival Ok, so you need to go find two ROMsets. 0.37b5 for mame4all and 0.78 for lr-mame2003. Let's look for Mega Man 2.

Checking here, you can look at the compatibility lists. I looked at 0.78 and someone has tried MegaMan2 and reported that it does not work on the Pi3. No notes added. That's unfortunate. if it did work, though, 0.78 would be the ROM for that emulator. Next, I checked 0.37b5, but Mega Man 2 is not in there. It's from 1996, right? So perhaps this ROMset is simply too old have a game that was so recent (by the standards back then).

So, I looked at AdvanceMAME 1.4 which is a fallback for me. It's more recent at ROMset 0.106, and lo and behold--there it is in the compatibility list and someone has said it works on a Pi2. That's good because it probably works even better on a Pi3.

So, the short answer for MegaMan2 is that you can run it with AdvanceMAME 1.4, which means you need to find a 0.106 ROMset.

I know this sounds like a lot of rig-a-ma-role to get a single game to work, but that's why we have more than one MAME emulator available. The point is that each MAME uses a ROMset that matches. You can't just download a random zip file from somewhere and expect it to run on your preferred emulator.

You will have to do the same investigation for your D&D title. Newer arcade games are going to be harder. Classics from the 80's often give you more choices.

Riverstorm

That's well written Caver a great way to explain some of the reasoning on multiple emulators and ROM sets.

Parzival

thanks guys you are the best! Mega Man is working and ready to play. Ill be posting pictures and videos of how my cabinet looks ;)
Thanks Again!

megatron99

I got D&D and Alpha to work on FBA

Beretta9

D&D and all three of the street fighter alpha games wont work using mame4all or mame 2003. Use final burn alpha for these.

moman

@caver01 I see you are helping out wit a problem I also seem to have. I just bought a Pi 3 and most of my mame roms will not play. Moon Patrol, defender 1942, 1943, missile command etc mostly the old calssics. I have the rom set .37b5 and the Pi mame emulator still says there is an error. Only games I have working so far are tapper, timber, qbert and frogger. Any ideas ?????

BuZz

@moman Please do not post a support request without first reading and following the advice in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first (and start a new topic).

caver01

@moman In addition to @BuZz's reply, I will tell you that it could be a lot of things. To help you narrow the scope, we need a lot more detail from you:

First of all, follow the link BuZz posted above and provide appropriate detail.
What exact emulator are you using? They each have different requirements. By your ROMset version, you really can only expect good results from MAME4All.
What exact ROMs are you trying to run and failing? There are numerous clones that require files from parent ROMs. You really need to have this figured out, or at the very least, understand the details and post exactly what's going on here. Calling out a game title is not the right way to describe the details. Use the MAME compatibility lists, as they will cite parent ROMs.
How do you know you have the ROMset you think you have? Have you done any integrity checking using a tool like CLRMAMEPRO?

Finally, don't get discouraged. None of this is easy. Those of us who are doing it and making it look easy have put in countless hours to understand all of the details. We have been building our systems for years in many cases, and because of that, we have worked through many of the same challenges. Stick with it, as the rewards are worth the effort, but recognize that you will also need to do a fair amount of research to understand how to make your setup work best for you.

dsstrainer

Having a hell of a time with the mame2003 romset.
I downloaded a full Mame 0.161 romset and rebuilt it down to 0.35b7 for lr-imame4all and that has been fine
But I wanted some additional games like Alien vs Pred and some others that weren't supported in that version so I've been trying mame2003. I got the 0.78 dat files from the wiki and everything appears to be rebuilding fine, but almost nothing works. The only ones that work are the ones like Punisher which always work, but even simple games like puckman and outrun (from 1985) won't load at all with mame2003. Oddly I can run those converted games in mame2010 and even fba next sometimes, just not 2003. And outrun is in the compatibility list and marked as OK
But I was able to run a version of outrun with an old version of mame romset (not even sure which version for the GP2x handheld device mame gp2x wiz 2.2 romset and that works fine with mame 2003. So not sure what is going on with it. Going to try to get the latest 0.178 romset and try down converting again.

BuZz

@dsstrainer Please do not post a support request without first reading and following the advice in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

dsstrainer

I'm obviously well past that point BuZz... If I'm posting questions, rest assured there are probably real problems.

Anyway, it turns out it was a few issues. I somehow managed to remove some of the parents and clones of certain sets in my main mame 0.161 folder. Interestly, clrmame didn't report them as missing and just created new merged versions with the bits and pieces that it had, which were split sets so they were incomplete. So I restored from my original 161 tarball, only to find that it too is actually missing bits from the file and the dat file, specifically for the outrun game even.
It has outrun.zip, outrunb.zip but missing outruna.zip
The mame 0.78 dat file requires outruna.zip

Running a clrmamepro scan of the 0.161 doesn't flag anything because the dat file doesn't reference outruna so there is no mismatch. But when I rebuild as merged sets to 0.78, clrmamepro doesn't catch that there is a missing outruna file, and a scan afterwards also doesn't catch it. Perhaps because it is a merged file and it loses track of its references. But I would think that during the initial merge from the split 0.161 set, clrmamepro should have flagged something that when it reads outruna in the 0.78 dat file, but the outruna file doesn't exist, it shouldn't try to merge outrun and outrunb and pass it off as a finished file. If I grab an outruna from another romset, and put it into the source folder and then rebuild it, it rebuilds correctly merging all 3 files.

So while I know clrmame is proven, It might have an issue here... perhaps with the conversion from split to merged and missing an intermediate clone, which might be a very small subset of roms which could be why it has gone unnoticed. I'll play more with it. Also going to grab the 0.181 rom set and see what it has for outrun

mediamogul

@dsstrainer said in MAME roms not all working:

If I'm posting questions, rest assured there are probably real problems.

It's not that anyone is judging the legitimacy or severity of your problems. It's that without following the guidelines detailed in that link, no one will know enough about your issue or basic setup to give any kind of meaningful help.

herb_fargus

@mediamogul and as he mentioned it was due to his misunderstanding of how mame ROMs work rather than an actual issue as is the case with 99% of all posts about mame.

dankcushions

@dsstrainer my advice is forget clrmamepro and just get the 0.78 set. there's almost certainly a way to get clrmamepro to do what you want it to do, but it's not always obvious, and we can't really support you in it beyond what's already written in the guide.

i personally think the clrmamepro stuff should be probably less prominent in the wiki, or in a separate section. full romsets are so widespread.

mediamogul

@dankcushions said in MAME roms not all working:

i personally think the clrmamepro stuff should be probably less prominent in the wiki, or in a separate section. full romsets are so widespread.

I can get a rom set built to about 95-99% complete, but even following the letter of the law, I've never had perfect results. I've relied on prebuilt full rom sets for some time now as a result. However, I still always scan them against a dat file to check for completion.