Mame 37b5, Rom folder, Player 2 Controls and Attract Mode

jamietuley

Hello all,

Firstly big thanks to @BobHarris , @Efriim @mitu and @rbaker for helping out on my last post...

I thought Id start a new one, nothing too in-depth - I just have 4 questions based upon starting the pi image for my bartop arcade cabinet from scratch (I am only interested in name/arcade games)

Q1. After reading the retro pie docs it says that it recommends lr-mame2003 if y have a Pi2/3? I do indeed have a pi3 but I have a Male 37b5 romset to hand and wondered if there was anything wrong opting to use mame4all instead??

Q2. I am using the wifi method to transfer ROMS - do I need to create a roms folder within the mame-mame4all folder to put all the rom zip files in or can they just be same level as the artwork and samples folders?:

Screenshot 2019-04-15 15.40.47.png

Q3. I am using an ipac2 for my controls and when I started Emulation Station I inputted my controls fine, but there was no facility to put in my Player 2 controls? Do I have to do that manually with the Retroatch config file?

Q4. What is the easiest/best way to get Attract Mode setup?

Many Thanks in advance for any help and apologies if any of these are silly questions - I am a complete beginner!

Cheers

Jamie

quicksilver

@jamietuley mame4all will have less accurate emulation, fewer compatible games and lacks the advantages of retroarch. Mame2003 0.78 romsets are very easy to find, I can't tell you where but I would highly suggest switching if you have a pi 2/3.

dankcushions

@jamietuley said in Mame 37b5, Rom folder, Player 2 Controls and Attract Mode:

Q1. After reading the retro pie docs it says that it recommends lr-mame2003 if y have a Pi2/3? I do indeed have a pi3 but I have a Male 37b5 romset to hand and wondered if there was anything wrong opting to use mame4all instead??

it does explain this in the documentation:
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Arcade/#step-1-choose-your-arcade-emulators

RetroPie includes multiple versions of both MAME and FinalBurn Alpha. Older versions require less processing power, but newer versions support more games.

Q2. I am using the wifi method to transfer ROMS - do I need to create a roms folder within the mame-mame4all folder to put all the rom zip files in or can they just be same level as the artwork and samples folders?:

same level. eg ../roms/mame-mame4all/1942.zip

jamietuley

@quicksilver thanks so much for the tip! If I were to use a 0.78 set I've read lots about merged and split versions? Again being a beginner I don't know anything about this but do you recommend one of the 2?

jamietuley

@dankcushions thanks so much 👍🏻👍🏻

quicksilver

@jamietuley full non-merged sets are recommend

sirhenrythe5th

Just for interest: are you guys really using only full rom-sets?
I really love Arcade Games, but i never wanted to have ALL.
There are so much games, or different versions of games, that i dont want to have every single one in my gamelist.

I use AdvanceMame and therefore i used RomCenter to downgrade my existing rom set for the pc to 0.106 for the Pi.
That are 600 Games that are my favourites and nothing more (+ 200 NeoGeo Roms for use with FBA).

I unterstand that it is less work just to download a single file containing all the roms, but are you using them without filtering or do you choose which ones you keep?

quicksilver

@sirhenrythe5th it's best to start with a full non-merged set because then you can be certain all files/bios are intact and each rom can be used standalone. You don't need to put all the ROMs on your pi however.

sirhenrythe5th

@quicksilver ok, i think in our days is this the way you do it.
I started with MAME back in the 90s with 37beta5.
There were no full Sets avaiable in this aera and you collected every new rom as soon as it was supported by new MAME Versions.
Over the years it became Gigabytes and as far as we dont have 33.6k Modems anymore i can unterstand that no one is Interessen to download just the roms you might like but all at once.

dankcushions

@sirhenrythe5th ‘non-merged’ romsets don’t describe a complete collection of all roms for the given mame version, they just describe the way the romsets are packaged. a non-merged romset for pac-man, for example, would contain both the unique pac-man roms and the roms it shares from its puck-man parent.

you can just download the individual non-merged romsets for the mame version in question, if you prefer :)

jamietuley

@sirhenrythe5th I agree with you. I really don't want all of these ROMs.. I could probably narrow it down to 50-100 of my favourites. I do like the ability to have them at hand though incase I read about a game I never played back in the day.. or one someone recommends.
I would like to build up my favourites and then maybe add to them as I read or hear about games id like to add.
So am I right in believing a list exists that shows which ROMs require others (parents) in any given set??

Efriim

@jamietuley
Hi again.

A1. lr-mame2000 and mame4all are both compatible with 37b5 I think either could be used.

A2. the 37b5 roms can go directly in "mame-mame4all" or "arcade" folders. I placed samples in the "bios" folder somewhere I couldn't tell you if this is always correct, sometimes the only thing that would work was placing them in the "roms/arcade" folder side by side with the roms.

A3. The controls layout will be configured when using the EmulationStation controller config. This should automatically work for retroarch emulators. Entering the retroarch menu it is possible to adjust the controls for both players. The hotkeyshortcut for Retroarch menu while running a libretrocore pressing hotkey+X, I dont know the keyboard shortcut but it is possible. The menu for mame4all is its own and it will probably need a keyboard to enter it, try "esc"or "tab" but I have never tried.

A4. Through RetroPie Package manager. Installing a theme is another thing, and I havent ever done this but I might give it a try and let you know how it goes. Use this Front end chooser.

dankcushions

@jamietuley said in Mame 37b5, Rom folder, Player 2 Controls and Attract Mode:

So am I right in believing a list exists that shows which ROMs require others (parents) in any given set??

the compatibility lists show this, but as said - a non-merged romset removes the requirement of parent files - each romset .zip is standalone.

Ranma

@quicksilver

I can totally understand why someone would choose MAME 2000 over 2003 tbh, after my experiences with both sets. It's much easier to deal with imho. It's a more reasonable download size for starters, being about 2.4GB if memory serves versus up to 16GB for MAME 2003 Plus. The fact that it's already free of games that just won't run on any Raspberry Pi model, like Tekken, Virtua Racing/Fighter etc makes it even more compelling. The user doesn't have to spend any time filtering it out. Nobody really wants 16GB of MAME on their SD cards, and the time and energy involved in curating it for the Pi is astronomical. Then couple that with the fact that a lot of the games either work, or if not have a working clone or bootleg in the set makes it again a very good choice - just imho.

'More accurate emulation' has it's downsides for machines like the Pi, whichever model you use. If it's just the ability to run some classic 80's and 90's arcade games on your Pi, then there's very little between MAME 2000 and 2003. Just imho.

Efriim

@jamietuley

Here is to install the front end chooser, it is possible to paste a clipboard into ssh using right click on the PuTTY screen.

Install frontend-chooser via SSH or Command Line Interface

cd
mkdir frontend-chooser
cd frontend-chooser
wget https://github.com/mmatyas/retropie-frontendchooser/releases/download/continuous/retropie-frontendchooser_rpi2-static.zip
unzip retropie-frontendchooser_rpi2-static.zip
rm retropie-frontendchooser_rpi2-static.zip

The packages for Different Frontends are found here in RetroPie Setup
sudo ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh
or from emulationstation; RetroPie Setup.
RetroPie-Setup >> Update RetroPie-Setup script
RetroPie-Setup >> Manage packages >> Experimental >> attractmode/mehstation/pegasus-fe
it is good to update first. attractmode is at the bottom of the list.

Sources:
*https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/953zly/frontend_chooser/
**https://github.com/mmatyas/retropie-frontendchooser
***https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/1498/solved-how-to-add-something-to-retropie-menu

jamietuley

@Efriim thankyou so much for all your input on this.. as I'm not the best with all the technical stuff, though I am slowly learning.. I will have to sit down with this and have afew reads to make sense of it all.

At this stage I'm just trying to decide what direction to go with which MAME set to use.

I am of the same option as @Ranma in regards to the games I want to play dont really go as far as the more demanding ones like Tekken etc. My arcade era in the 80s and probably go as far a when TMNT and WWF came out - that would have been around 1990/91 Im guessing?

So with that in mind am I ok with sticking with 37b5? If so should I be using lr-mame2000 instead of mame4all? Is there a big difference?

Also @dankcushions pointed out about non-merged romset is obviously the way to go - does anyone know if a 37b5 one exists? I did have a look but it was a little fruitless.

Because a non merged set doesn’t rely on parent rooms I thought I could just cherry pick what I want and put it on the Pi instead of having 1000s of Rome on there.. though this way I would have to check what is working first?….

Is another recommend way of filtering out what you want just sticking with the whole set but selecting favourites? I did try and select a few favourites last night (pressing Y on my controls) but then couldst see where the ones Id selected get listed??

SO MANY QUESTIONS and I do apologise - its just a learning curve and I REALLY appreciate all the help!

dankcushions

if you're cherry-picking the ones you want to transfer across anyway i see no reason not to go with the more compatible and larger mame2003 0.78 romset collection. i mean, you don't even have to download the whole 0.78 romset collection - you can download the individual roms. if you don't want tekken, just don't download it :P

remember the year of the romset collection doesn't just dictate the latest games that it collects. 2003 (0.78) will also run the games from the 80-90s more accurately than 2000 (0.37b5), as well as run more games from that era.

sirhenrythe5th

@jamietuley there DO exist sites where you can still download single files and so you can cherry pick directly without searching and downloading a Full Rom-Set for 37b5.
Of course we cannot give you links here, but i recommend to search just for something like "old mame roms" i.e. with a search-engine.

Side-Effect: there will be a lot of roms, that have not changed over the time or are still compatible with newer Versions.
I used one of the sites and picked a lot of the roms the site-owner used with an older Version of MacMAME. Over 90% run with Mame4all as well as with AdvanceMame (0.106 Romset under the hood).

So: try & error can bring quit good results without really searching for a special romset. After 100s of upgrades that can be very hard to find any for 0.18beta5 for example.
And you can use Rom-Managers anyway to get incompatible ones to run ;)

Efriim

@jamietuley
In emulation station.

press the "select" button with a rom selected then choose "edit this game's metadata"
choosing delete it will delete the file too. If you change it to hidden it will only be hidden in kid or kiosk mode. You can also "Scrape" and the built-in scraper will search the database for that rom and find artwork and metadata for it automatically.

now back out and press the "start" button.
The first menu item is SCRAPER, in this you can change the database that is searched when using the built-in scraper to search for artwork and metadata (SkyScraper is an optional retropie_package that is more in depth for scraping roms than the built-in and for creating quality art, it can be used to search for preview videos as well).

Go back to main menu.
Enter UI SETTINGS. Here you can change the UI MODE to kiosk or kid mode which will hide some menu items and also any hidden games. There is a screensaver behavior setting that will play the random videos of your roms if you have scraped any videos using skyscraper. Change transition style to instant.

Go back to Main Menu
Enter GAME COLLECTION SETTINGS. Select "AUTOMATIC GAME COLLECTIONS" and check Favourites and Last Played. This will enable all of your favourites to exist together in ES.

If you add the frontendchooser to retropiemenu as I posted earlier it will require a keyboard to navigate. Perhaps @mitu will know how to invoke joy2key.py to enable the controller to be used in an added menu script.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#joy2key?
/home/$USER/frontend-chooser/retropie-frontendchooser

jamietuley

Thanks for the info @dankcushions..

So I think my route would be to cherry pick from the 0.78 romset :)

I have found somewhere that has a ‘full non-merged romset’ and I think I am able to download individual rom zip files..

Just one thing though, take 1942 for example. There are 3 different zip files to choose from 1942, 1942a and 1942b. Then on the compatibility list supplied on the retro pie MAME section the list says that 1942a and 1942b have the parent rom of 1942.

Is it that this list doesn’t refer to a ‘full non-merged romset’? so if for example I just downloaded 1942a, it would run fine without the parent rom 1942?