Tested MAME rom collection?

Thorr69

@neurocrash Requests for ROMs are not allowed. However, the Docs for Arcade emulation show exactly what rom set each emulator expects to be using. You MUST match the rom set with the emulator.

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME/

neurocrash

Hi,

I greatly appreciate the clarification. I did not know the rom sets were specific to certain versions, so thank you very much for the clarification.

It appears that I already have the correct reference set, but it is much larger than my sdcard so I haven't tried it, and instead tried one that would fit on my card.

Thanks again!

Clyde

@neurocrash You usually only need a fraction of a complete romset, since it contains many "clones" (though some of them may be better than the originals), non-working or otherwise unattractive roms. Thus, most people filter their romsets to a much smaller amount. See Filtering Rom Collections for a start on that topic . From the tools listed there, I prefer Simple Arcade Multifilter for its straightforward interface that simply gets the job done.

neurocrash

@Clyde that is incredibly helpful to know! Thank you very much.

Clyde

@neurocrash My pleasure. Be careful, though, filtering your roms to get the "perfect" set can become addictive. ;)

neurocrash

@Clyde oh I really just want to have the old classics that I never had enough quarters for now that I have a lot of time at home. I need to send less time acquiring games and more time playing.

IanDaemon

@neurocrash said in Tested MAME rom collection?:

...now that I have a lot of time at home...

That Mr. Do! isn't going to play itself!

neurocrash

@Clyde Hmmm... I tried Simple Arcade Multifilter, but for some reason it isn't listing any catver categories that could be used as filters. I seem to have the correct files, but I'm missing something. The only thing listed under catver.ini categories to include is Uncategorized, and Generate filters doesn't seem to do anything.

When it is working, which include/exclude filters would you recommend?

Include
Copy all BIOS sets
Copy all Device sets
Copy all Mature sets

Exclude:
Exclude BIOS sets
Exclude Device sets
Exclude Mechanical sets
Exclude Mature sets
Exclude sets with CHDs
Exclude non-runnable sets

Thanks

Clyde

@neurocrash That's strange. Do you have the right dat and catver files for your MAME version? (or at least close enought, because it can be very difficult or maybe impossible to find a catver.ini for MAME 0.78 etc.) Is it a valid romset with the right filenames? Since Catver files are just text files, you can look into them to see what files they are compatible with.

I usually include BIOS sets, but exclude Device and Mechanical sets. Mature sets are mostly dependend on your personal taste, but beware that many of them are just strip versions of card or tabletop games. I ususally include Mature sets, but exclude tabletop and Mahjong games.

Hint: One easy way to see which roms belong to a specific set, genre, or combination, select just those and filter your romset (e.g. Mature included + Tabletop excluded).

neurocrash

@Clyde as far as I can tell, I have the correct full reference set for MAME 2003 and it is like 44gb while I have a 32gb card. I tried using one of the other filter programs and when I deselected mature, mini, fruit, quiz, and mahjong, it said I had only 109 roms, so that wasn't right.

I think I have the right xml and ini files but I haven't examined them yet (good idea).

Maybe when I get this working I can post my configs somewhere minus the roms.

Thanks

Clyde

@neurocrash At least in MAME 2003 Plus you can save its xml file from the Tab menu, that would provide you with a 100% genuine and up-to-date file. I don't know if the normal MAME 2003 has that option, since I only use Plus and FB Neo for arcade games.

There are also dat and catver files for MAME 2003 and Plus in the Docs. I'm using their catvers with Simple Arcade Multifilter without any problems.

neurocrash

@Clyde Hi, I wasn't able to figure out the filtering, but was able to transfer my installation to a larger sd card. I do have one point of confusion that I can't find any information about. The rom set that I have includes a folder called ".____padding_file" that consists of 15gb of numbered files. Do you know if MAME uses this, or if I can exclude it? The roms and samples are in different directories.
Thanks

mitu

@neurocrash Those padding files can be ignores/deleted.

Clyde

@neurocrash It think they're created by a certain file sharing client:

https://torrentfreak.com/bitcomet-pollutes-bittorrent-with-junk-data/

neurocrash

@Clyde thanks everyone for the clarification. This saved me a lot of space.

neurocrash

@Clyde It turned out that the catver.ini I had found (I think from the instructions in Romlister) was not in the correct format. After locating the appropriate file from the instructions here:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12809

I can see the categories to select/deselect.

I still have no idea what is meant by the following, in case you can recommend whether any of these should be excluded.

BIOS sets
Device sets
Mechanical sets

I'm hoping to remove unwanted duplicates.

Thanks!

mitu

@neurocrash said in Tested MAME rom collection?:

BIOS sets
Device sets
Mechanical sets

https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/aboutromsets.html

neurocrash

@mitu Hi, I appreciate the documentation link. I am not sure that I understand the consequence of selecting any of these filtering options in Simple Arcade Multifilter, but from what I can understand, it will not necessarily exclude the clones or duplicates I am trying to trim down.

Thanks for your consideration

Clyde

One relatively easy way to see which roms a certain selection includes is to just select the selection in question and filter those roms. Then look at the output directory.

I did that once for every selection in its own output directory. :)

neurocrash

@Clyde I have been resorting to a lot of trial and error to try and filter out unwanted titles, such as trying to make a list of only Mahjong titles to see if I was doing it right. I do find it interesting that neither Romlister nor Simple Arcade Multifilter include any option to filter by year. Aside from a handful of titles, I'm mostly concerned about 1983 and earlier.

Thanks again!