Need Some Advice Please

Ekstreme

The response you're going to get is start here: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki

Start small. Start with a single emulator then go form there. Take your time. The documentation is very concise

awsd12

Ok, i have read the wiki's but still confused about clrmamepro, Like I can get the roms etc and bios or what not but its just that what does clrmamepro do ? exacctly ? Like i need someone to help me step by step lol, if anyone can but thank for your time replying to my thread :)

dankcushions

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2859/how-to-use-mame-with-retropie-help-guide

Ekstreme

clrmamepro is basically a sorting tool. You give it a list of all the roms for a particular version or set in the form of a dat or from a binary export (this is like a catalog) and it will scan what you have and sort it depending on how you specify you want them. The key here is it's for a particular version. The sets change from version to version, which is what clrmamepro helps to organise by renaming, deleting, adding and sorting.

It can be confusing and it is quite daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's not that bad.

This may help:

Start simple, don't worry about getting whole sets at first or you may get caught in the collectors trap. I can guarantee you that most collectors will only play a very small percentage of the roms they have.

dankcushions

Start simple, don't worry about getting whole sets at first or you may get caught in the collectors trap. I can guarantee you that most collectors will only play a very small percentage of the roms they have.

sorta disagree here. where are you getting individual roms for the right sets from? :)

IMO people shouldn't be using clrmamepro at all, ideally. just get the "mame 0.78 reference set" that's in circulation, which is non-merged so you can put (almost) any one of those .zips in the /mame-libretro/ folder and it will work.

you don't need to put the whole set on your pi, but you do need to download one in the first place unless you want to be trapped in clrmamepro hell.

awsd12

@dankcushions
Hahaha man you speaking my language, easy language for me to understand, I just want to get a romset put it into a folder and bam place into pie and play. I have looked at this https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs which tells you what romsets work but with the new retiopie 4.0 it is a little comfusing since I hvae mame4al, m4al liberto and just fba, where do I place certain romsets to ? , all into mam4all and hope they work or ??????? consufesed as hell,thought this stuff would be fun and easy when i intailly thought of doing this ehhhh any help is more than welcomed yo

Ekstreme

Sorry, by whole sets I meant the entire full rom set. Don't go looking for individual roms, you'll do your head in

dankcushions

@awsd12 :)

do you have any romsets already? if not, here's what i would do:

download the 'mame 0.78 reference set' - it's easy to find. it's very large and will take a while.
it'll be some huge zip file. extract it so you have a load of zip files of game names. eg 88games.zip, 1942.zip, etc.
put ALL those game .zip files in theRetroPie/roms/mame-libretro/ directory of your pi. this will take ages.
restart. the mame menu should appear in emulationstation.

the process is similar with FBA, except you need the 'FBA 0.2.97.38' romset, and you need to put all the game zips from that in the RetroPie/roms/fba/folder.

it's up to you whether you want to use mame, fba or both. they have a lot of similar games. fba is better if you mainly want to play fighting and shooting games, and mame is better if you want to play older arcade games from the 80s etc.

awsd12

@Ekstreme

hhahaha yeah i was like O.o ahahahah but yeah im just trying my best to get something going nothing to fancy for now, just wanted to play gameslike street fighter, mame games fba games and maybe tekken or cavestory thats about it hahaha something to do

awsd12

@dankcushions

hhahahah cheers, from some of my research fba,mame have the same games and apprenlty neo geo aswell but not to sure, however was wondering with all other emulators aswel is like this aswell, get the roms and place them in folder etc, one thing i came across was neogeo.zip file which i have to put into mame/fba and neo geo rom files ?, was wondering if I have to do this with other emualtors aswell, I havnt tried any roms yet since ive been have some diffulties with reearsch and bios etc but just trying to get everything sorted before i do, otherwise i will be pissed spending so much time and not even get a rom to play hahaah

dankcushions

@awsd12 said in Need Some Advice Please:

@dankcushions

hhahahah cheers, from some of my research fba,mame have the same games and apprenlty neo geo aswell but not to sure, however was wondering with all other emulators aswel is like this aswell, get the roms and place them in folder etc, one thing i came across was neogeo.zip file which i have to put into mame/fba and neo geo rom files ?,

they have a few different games, but stick to one or the other for now. neogeo.zip - it's included in the romset, so when you transfer all your zip files to your pi, it will be one of those :) as long as you transfer the whole set you won't be missing anything.

was wondering if I have to do this with other emualtors aswell, I havnt tried any roms yet since ive been have some diffulties with reearsch and bios etc but just trying to get everything sorted before i do, otherwise i will be pissed spending so much time and not even get a rom to play hahaah

one system at a time :) every system has its own quirks so lets focus on mame and fba for now.

awsd12

@dankcushions

I am going hamm now son hahaha, ummm does fba run campcom games ?, found some capcom romsets and wondering if i should place those into fba ? im just trying to get roms now and then see if I can get them working after i xfer them. But is there anything else I need to know or can do for now ? another question : if i update the emualtor packages in retropie will, it make my roms useless ?

dankcushions

@awsd12 said in Need Some Advice Please:

@dankcushions

I am going hamm now son hahaha, ummm does fba run campcom games ?, found some capcom romsets and wondering if i should place those into fba ? im just trying to get roms now and then see if I can get them working after i xfer them. But is there anything else I need to know or can do for now ? another question : if i update the emualtor packages in retropie will, it make my roms useless ?

fba and mame run capcom games, but listen - don't download any romsets that are not the ones i listed. anything else, even if it says 'mame' or 'fba' or whatever, will not work.

updating is fine.

awsd12

@dankcushions

Not even the romsets mentioned in https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs ? like 0.37b5 ?, O.o

awsd12

@awsd12

lets say i get the romsets and place them in the retropie and non of the roms work can i just deltete everything from my usb and then redo the whole thing ? worst case scenario ???,

dankcushions

@awsd12 said in Need Some Advice Please:

@dankcushions

Not even the romsets mentioned in https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs ? like 0.37b5 ?, O.o

they're for different mame emulators and go in different folders. eg, 0.37b5 goes in the/roms/mame-mame4all/ folder. i'm trying to give you a simple option that will work, but if we go down that road then you might as well read the wiki page instead :)

lets say i get the romsets and place them in the retropie and non of the roms work can i just deltete everything from my usb and then redo the whole thing ? worst case scenario ???,

deleting roms from your usb will not remove them from the drive

awsd12

@dankcushions

hmmm I don't want to read the wiki becuase I have read so many, but im sure if i get that romset it will work no ???, also will i have to format my sd card then do this whole process again ?

herb_fargus

@awsd12 if you don't want to read the docs you won't get very far with RetroPie.

awsd12

@herb_fargus

Hey dude i watch your youtube videos :), I know i won't get far and it's not that i don't want to read them, I have, I just don't understand them, they are very basic in my opinion. Like they don't explain why you use chmplo < == sorry wrong spelling =, or if you have to use it if you have the right romset etc. I would just like some basic, descriptive answers. sorry if i offend anyone but thanks to everyone who replies thanks it helps

rbaker

@awsd12 said in Need Some Advice Please:

lets say i get the romsets and place them in the retropie and non of the roms work can i just deltete everything from my usb and then redo the whole thing ?

First of all, if you do not read the very clear and easy to understand wiki even if you have no experience, you will be forever asking questions like this one. You are then likely to give up when it goes wrong. In answer to the above question, it appears that you are using a USB stick to transfer roms. This is the most frustrating way in my experience. The easiest way by far is to get on a PC and drag and drop the roms to the correct folder. You can then reboot emulation station and your roms will be there for testing. If you do not like them or they do not work, you can just delete them. I will take you through the order that I did things as a complete beginner after installing retropie. You should follow it....

Boot retropie with a keyboard, mouse and iBuffalo gamepad. Follow autoconfigure. I could now navigate menus in emulation station. Time taken: About 20 mins.
I got a 0.37b5 romset and placed it in

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all

I did this using WINSCP, a program that I had never heard of or used before. There are hundreds of You Tube videos that explain the basics. Time taken: 1 hour to learn WINSCP and get familiar with the folder structure of Retropie and transfer the roms which are about 1.8GB in size.

I was prompted to do this by reading: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Transferring-Roms.

Start up MAME4ALL and browse the roms, select one, run it and then press TAB on the keyboard. From here, I modifed how all the roms would be controlled using my gamepad. Time taken: 30 minutes of trial and test to get the best feel.

I was prompted to do this by reading: https://github.com/RetroPie/mame4all-pi

Play for days until you decide that you want more games, more systems and more authenticity. You can then start tweaking the configs to achieve this - again using WINSCP. In fact, there is so much to tweak that you will never be bored. Dropping into this forum from time to time will allow you to learn many tricks an tweaks for a better experience.

I don't want to read the wiki becuase I have read so many.

This is madness. You cannot say that you want to play retro games but you don't want to read how to do it. I read three wiki entries to get up and running, to suggest that this is not understandable or a burden is quite frankly ridiculous.

I would just like some basic, descriptive answers

All the answers to your first set of questions are in fact fully answered in a very basic form in the wiki. But, in order to present you with an alternative description, please read this:
http://choccyhobnob.com/articles/demystifying-mame-roms/
I personally found it very good. Once read, the wiki section on managing roms becomes even clearer.

Don't like it?

Okay, What about this thread?

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2859/how-to-use-mame-with-retropie-help-guide

If after reading the examples on this excellent thread by @Floob , you still feel like you cannot do it or it is too much of a burden, there is nothing else that can be done to assist you here.

A last resort would be to abandon this site and the wiki and just watch this

and then, follow the suggested future videos.