How to run MAME v0.224?

brutalizer

I have MAME roms v0.224. It seems that I need to install the correct MAME emulator to run these roms, right? Which core should I choose?

How can I find this out, without asking you guys, the next time I have a similar question?

mitu

Install the MAME emulator from RetroPie-Setup, then use the mame ROM folder for your ROMs. For an overview of what MAME emulators are available in RetroPie, see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME/.

How can I find this out, without asking you guys, the next time I have a similar question?

Try looking in the Documatation first.

brutalizer

@mitu
I did, but I did not understand the documentation. It seems that each different version of MAME roms, need a specific core? So if I have v0.134 then I need a special MAME emulator, and if I have v0.224 then I need another MAME emulator? So if I have version 0.XYZ how can I find which MAME core I should use?

Or have i misunderstood the documentation? I can use any MAME emulator, to any rom version?

BTW, which MAME emulator core do you recommend?

mitu

@brutalizer said in How to run MAME v0.224?:

Or have i misunderstood the documentation? I can use any MAME emulator, to any rom version?

No, use the ROMset collection version that's supported by each MAME version, otherwise your ROMs won't work, see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Arcade/ for a quick start into Arcade emulation.

Clyde

@brutalizer said in How to run MAME v0.224?:

So if I have v0.134 then I need a special MAME emulator, and if I have v0.224 then I need another MAME emulator?

Yes, and the v0.xxx is the version of MAME the romset is built for.

brutalizer

@clyde Ok, it seems I need the correct emulator for my MAME romset. I have romset version 0.224. How can I find out which emulator to use? In the link, there is an example for v0.37b5 which is using "Mame4all". But I have v0.224, so how can I find out which emulator to use for this rom set? So I dont have to ask you next time.

mahoneyt944

@brutalizer I would recommend installing mame2003 or mame2003-plus from source.

Go to retropie setup, manage packages. Mame2003 is found under main packages and mame2003-plus is found under experimental packages. Update, from source. This can take awhile to update.

What's the difference? As mame naturally gets improvements over time, roms also get more accurate. Roms get these version numbers to represent the rom files that were available at the time when the emulator was released. So a later version may not work in a older emulator because the emulator expects different files to be in the rom zip.

Mame2003 uses romset version .78 and strictly sticks to this. Mame2003-plus starts with .78 but constantly updates / fixes bugs which sometimes means updating roms too. So it uses a mixture of sets.

Where to get these roms? Well, I can't link you anything.... But I would recommend you Google "mame2003 romset" and "mame2003-plus romset" and you can find archived websites that have "complete non merged" roms available.

Once the emulator is installed and you have compatible roms, you can put the ROMs in your arcade directory. When you launch the game press the A button to enter setup and select the default emulator you want to use. Then press launch. You should be good after that.

If you want to use different emulators, when you launch the rom for it.. press A and set the emulator for this rom, then launch. When you set a emulator for this rom that will override your default emulator you have set.

Clyde

@brutalizer said in How to run MAME v0.224?:

But I have v0.224, so how can I find out which emulator to use for this rom set?

As I said, the number is the version of MAME, so you'll need MAME 0.224 for that romset.

RetroPie doesn't include every MAME version there is, but mostly older ones – or their updated forks like the aforementioned MAME 2003 Plus – that run more or less well on Raspberry Pis. One exception is mame (or lr-mame for the LibRetro version) which is one of the newest MAME versions. But as time goes on, this will change to newer versions, so you can't just select "MAME 0.224" to install via the RetroPie Setup.

See the Docs on mame and lr-mame about those emulators in RetroPie. At this time, they should be pretty near to your romset version, and since a new version only changes a certain number of roms, most of them should still work in another 0.22x version.

brutalizer

@clyde Thanx for your help! I have now installed lr-mame. It turns out all these v0.224 roms that I have, are packed as "7z" which lr-mame does not recognize. So I useed another old rom set which has packed every game as "zip". However, many of the zip games does not work.

Is there is a way for lr-mame to use 7z games? Or do I have to repack every game to "zip" instead?

Clyde

@brutalizer According to the Docs and this Reddit thread from 2018, MAME should support .7z files since version 0.146 from 2012, resp. lr-mame2015 / MAME 0.160. How did you conclude that the current lr-mame doesn't support this format?

brutalizer

@clyde
Maybe you are right. However, when I move v0.224 "7z" games to the folder, they do not show up in RetroPie. If I move old "zip" games to the folder, they show up.

And almost no game works. If I choose to start a game, the screen goes black for a second, and then comes back. Maybe the emulator is not correct for my rom set? What do you suspect?

Clyde

@brutalizer According to that Reddit thread, 7z files are only recognized in the arcade system folder of RetroPie, i.e. /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade. If you don't already use that folder, move your roms there and see if they appear under "Arcade" in Emulation Station.

If the non-working roms are from that old rom set you mentioned, they are very likely incompatible with a newer MAME, depending on how much time lies between the two. The first and foremost thing to heed with MAME is to use the right rom set for the MAME version used, or vice versa.

After making sure that your 0.224 roms are in arcade, you should check if lr-mame is selected as the default emulator for that system in the Runcommand Menu.

edit: some spelling corrections

brutalizer

@clyde
Ok, thanx. I did what you told me, and many games work now, not everyone. But the majority! And this small problem is because the lr-mame is not really compatible with my 0.224 rom set, as I have understood it.

Hallelujah. You have made one person happy today. I owe you one. :)

So in the future, I need to check that a certain rom set does have a correct mame emulator. So, I check the rom set version, and then check if there are mame emulators for that rom set. If not, I should ignore that rom set and look for another rom set with better support. Right?

Do you know which romset version and mame emulator combo, is the best at this moment? Is it v0.134 and lr-mame2003? Which combo is the best, do you know?

steptoe

Found this that might be what your looking for copied from another post and appears to support the 0.224 ROM set you have

There is lr-mame2016, based on the 0.174 version of MAME, but if you want something newer, you can install MAME ,from the experimental section, and this will get you MAME 0.224

I have a custom set based on MAME and FBAlpha that uses the best of every game from both ROMsets and the best samples, all non-working games, clones and games that simply won't run correctly have been removed and is ready to use

Look for "Wills Arcade Set 3.3" is should have almost everything you want

Clyde

@brutalizer said in How to run MAME v0.224?:

Hallelujah. You have made one person happy today. I owe you one. :)

My pleasure. :)

So in the future, I need to check that a certain rom set does have a correct mame emulator. So, I check the rom set version, and then check if there are mame emulators for that rom set. If not, I should ignore that rom set and look for another rom set with better support. Right?

Correct. Whereas a particular problem with RetroPie is that some of its emulators will be updated to newer versions if you update RetroPie via its setup. lr-mame is one of them, as well as lr-mame2003-plus and lr-fbneo which are under ongoing development. That may break their compatibility with your previous rom set, so you should be careful with the general update function.

Do you know which romset version and mame emulator combo, is the best at this moment? Is it v0.134 and lr-mame2003? Which combo is the best, do you know?

Ask ten people here and you'll get 12+ answers. ;)

It very much depends on your preferences and your hardware. But your example is a bad combination, because lr-mame2003 uses the 0.78 rom set, as it is written in the Docs. The closest MAME core of RetroPie to 0.134 would be lr-mame2010 which uses the 0.139 rom set.

You should carefully read the Docs on Arcade and the following chapters about MAME, FB Neo etc. to get a better understanding about arcade emulation. It's not trivial, but it's no rocket science either.

@steptoe said in How to run MAME v0.224?:

Found this that might be what your looking for copied from another post and appears to support the 0.224 ROM set you have

It did at the time of that post from September 2020, but like I explained earlier in this thread, lr-mame will install the current MAME version, so it will move on to higher rom sets as time goes on. Its installation script will compile the source code from https://github.com/libretro/mame, which seems to be at version 0.225 at the moment.

brutalizer

@clyde So basically, you want a MAME emulator to be higher versioned than a rom set? So if a MAME emulator works with v0.224 it should also work with 0.134? Or is there no such conclusion?

@steptoe you wrote that I "can install MAME, from the experimental section", which core is that? Is it "lr-mame"? I have already installed "lr-mame" from experimental.

Clyde

@brutalizer said in How to run MAME v0.224?:

@clyde So basically, you want a MAME emulator to be higher versioned than a rom set? So if a MAME emulator works with v0.224 it should also work with 0.134?

No, you'll need the exact same version, or at least one that is very near, like 0.134 is near to 0.139, as there will be only a few incompatible roms between the two.

steptoe

The reasons are that ROMs change between releases, better ROM dumps, bugs fixed that need updated ROM sets, etc, etc

MAME is all about preservation, there are a LOT of arcade boards that are no longer manufactured and it can take many attempts to get a full good dump of all the ROMs on an arcade board, especially the very rare hard to find boards that lead to the ROMs being destroyed by dumping them. If the board is dead anyway it doesn't matter but sometimes it has to be done to "preserve" that game for future generations who would normally NEVER get to see it never mind play it. It also means there is an option to recreate a new ROM using data dumped, so bringing back a long dead arcade game back into use

I've been following MAME since 0.1 when all it ran was Pacman and had it runnng on an ancient 486 PC I acquired from work. Amazing at the time you could play the ACTUAL arcade Pacman on a PC system with accurate sounds and graphics as if it was in front of you. Well it was, as you were playing actual code from Pacman just all the other hardware is emulated, hence why it needs more and more powerful hardware to emulate it all. Some games are not feasible at the moment, but are being worked on slowly, especially with custom chips and hardware with specs that are not available to the public and closely guarded by the manufacturers. These chips are being reverse engineered which can take a great deal of hard work by the coders to get it to work then all the effort needed to get it working 100%

MAME is about accuracy not speed, which is why some forks of MAME are better as they sacrifice accuracy over speed and use hacks to get games that run like a snail on MAME to be acceptable on other MAME versions such as HBMAME or FBAlpha

Try looking for that ROMset I suggested, its all setup ready to run with almost a simple copy to the PI and has pretty much every arcade game the majority of people are interested in and will easily run on a PI 3B, the majority should even run on the PI Zero

I used to run it all on a PI 3B but that is now used for KODI only. I built a bartop arcade cabinet that was PI based but upgraded it to Intel i5 based PC soon after as I wanted full pinball support via Future Pinball and VRPinball and also console emulation that the PI will simply not achieve

bollwerk

I would also maybe point out that lr-mame struggles a bit even on a Pi4 (at least at the default clock).
I've tested games with a few different versions of MAME on my Pi4 and I found lr-mame2016 to be the best compromise, so far, between compatibility with the most games and still good performance. But I also had to rebuild a set specific to this version of MAME, which isn't easy.

Clyde

Another option would be to use roms for different emulators in the arcade directory – the newer, slower ones only for the roms that the older, faster emulators don't support.

But even with this approach, I would recommend the aforementioned mame2003-plus and fbneo who do support many games from later MAME versions, rather than the newer MAMEs themselves, since the former two will still be faster in many cases.