Mame help

mrbwa1

MAME is kind of a pain unless you have a full romset that is for the specific version as outlined in the page https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

You can try and rebuild other roms with tools like RomCenter, but if it finds missing files, you are left with the task of find them (hint, you need another rom that has those files as the individual files are just floating around somewhere)

Finding individual ROMS is much, much harder. Depending on how they are packaged, you may need one or more "parent" roms to get the missing files from.

MAME4DROID is a very popular variant that uses the 0.37b5 version roms like MAME4ALLPi in case you find roms forMAM4DROID.

Bluescreen2001

I have the same problem and I used MAME on a PC for ages. I have a lot of ROMs that work fine on PC using an old MAME "M.A.M.E. v0.111 (Dec 10 2006)".

Here an example, maybe someone give some hints. This is my pacman.zip:

pacman.6e 4096 1996-12-24 23:32
pacman.6f 4096 1996-12-24 23:32
pacman.6h 4096 1996-12-24 23:32
pacman.6j 4096 1996-12-24 23:32

Starting my old PC MAME all is fine. Starting on Retropi gives errors about missing ALL files. So I rebuilt the file with clrmamepro like described in https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs.

Now the file looks like this:

82s123.7f 32 2001-01-24 19:53
82s126.1m 256 2001-01-24 19:53
82s126.3m 256 2001-01-24 19:53
82s126.4a 256 2001-01-24 19:53
namcopac.6e 4096 2001-02-21 17:21
namcopac.6f 4096 2001-02-21 17:21
namcopac.6h 4096 2001-02-21 17:21
namcopac.6j 4096 2001-02-21 17:21
pacman.5e 4096 2001-02-21 17:21
pacman.5f 4096 1996-12-29 04:55

As you see it's a complete different file. I don't know what clrmamepro did.
If I start it on retropi it complains about ALL the files in the rom. Why it says it cannot find files which are in the zip archive?

This weird behaviour is with all roms I tried so far. It complains about files which are there. Why?
I hoped to build a new arcade machine based on Raspi but in this state it is unusable for me, and I am thinking about buying a cheap PC mainboard. :-(

BTW: also the native games like Quake and Doom ar not working properly with RetroPi because the controls mapping is incomplete.

senkun

@Bluescreen2001

identify the romset you have then choose the emulator that can use them, rebuild as appropriate. or choose the emulator you want to use and find or rebuild the appropriate romset for it.

BTW: also the native games like Quake and Doom ar not working properly with RetroPi because the controls mapping is incomplete.

ports like quake and doom work fantastic, and faithful to the originals. if you run quake and doom like it was the 90s, kbd/mouse feels just the same. if you're using a controller/gamepad you just need to remap the controls accordingly.

retropie is a frontend for all these emulators and ports, the folks behind it put in a lot of work so that many of them just work right out of the box, the rest are kept faithful to the originals, and it won't assume all of us are using the same peripherals. you need to work on these yourself.

dankcushions

@Bluescreen2001
what version of retropie? you may need to install retroarch via retropie-setup > install individual emulators > retroarch, if you're not running the latest.

Bluescreen2001

What do you mean with "identify the romset"? How?
I just tried the following. On my Windows MAME machine I deleted all, but the my original pacman.zip (the one with the four pacma.6* in it) files and tried to start it with "mame pacman". It complains about missing files "pacman.5e", "pacman.5f", "82s123.7f", "82s126.4a", "82s126.1m", "82s126.3m".

So I searched for these files and found them in the pacman.rom file generated by clrmamepro and add them to my pacman.zip and, voila, it works - on the PC. Transferred that file to Raspi and restarting emulation station doesn't work. If I put the file into mame-advance or mame-libretro it just comes back without any message. If I put it into mame-mame4all it complains about "pacman.5e", "pacman.5f", "82s123.7f", "82s126.4a", "82s126.1m", "82s126.3m" which are all in that file and four files namcopac.6* which are not in the file.

So I added these too. This does not help either.
I don't understand the inner workings of MAME. For me it seems it is looking for the ROM files in some predefined ZIP files and don't find them if they are all in one ZIP archive, except my Windows MAME version. This seems to look for the files in some kind of search order.

I think this is what clrmamepro does. It searches through all the ZIP files and moves them to the right location for the right MAME version. But I must say, I don't understand how to use clrmamepro. I did it like described in the howto mentioned above but it also does not work. So what can I do. I do not want to search all my roms again from the web, as I know they are working on my windows machine.

About the native games. It seems emulation station cuts of some keycode. E.g. in doom I cannot use the DOWN key. In game I cannot press ESC to get the menu.
But lets concentrate on the MAME stuff first.

How can I check the version of retropie? I installed it about four weeks ago from the original website.

dankcushions

i mean, it's all in https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

what do you mean clrmamepro "does not work" ? if you can't get it to work, your alternative is to download the correct romset for the mame emulator you are using, as per the above link.

your version of mame on your pc will not be the same as the version(s) of mame on retropie. you need to have a correct romset for the version on retropie. if clrmamepro doesn't like it, the set will not work.

also, you need a complete set on your pi. for example, pacman is not a parent rom (it is a variant of another game) so it will likely not work if you only transfer it to the pi. it needs it's parent rom, which is puckman.zip. you'd need both of those on your pi (from the correct romset), for it to have all the files it needs, unless you have built a 'split' romset via clrmameprop.

Bluescreen2001

I do not mean clrmamepro does not work, I mean the romset built with clrmamepro does not work.
I managed now to build a few games (also my pacman) by hand. But I don't understand how to build it with clrmamepro.

I have a huge set of ROMs from my old arcade cabinet project and it was very complicated to get it. So I don't want to find them all again.

Also I have not room for all of them on the raspi, I don't need them all either. So I have to choose a few that I want. But if one ZIP file is not a complete game and it need others, how can I analyze which ZIPs are needed for a specific game. I thought that is what clrmamepro is for. So in my dumb opinion thought I give clrmamepro a pool of all ROMs and give it a name of a game I want, and it build a specific ROM set for it. So I can add one game after another.

But that's not the case. I give it a set of ZIP files, rebuild for a given mame type. It does some scanning and building and the new files didn't work either. They are also displayed as incomplete if I scan the new folder again. But all the files are there somewhere. I can manually find them and create the ZIP by hand. What am I doing wrong?

herb_fargus

@Bluescreen2001 if you don't rebuild from a full set many games will not work- as mentioned on the above wiki page.

dankcushions

@Bluescreen2001 said in Mame help:

But that's not the case. I give it a set of ZIP files, rebuild for a given mame type. It does some scanning and building and the new files didn't work either.

like i said, it's building valid files, but mame zip files are not standalone unless they are parent roms. pacman is not a parent, it's a clone, so to get it to work you'd need to the valid pacman.zip (clone) and puckman.zip (parent), and they need to both be on your pi.

alternatively, you use clrmamepro to build you non-merged sets, in which case it makes sure every game zip has everything it needs (which makes clones larger).

it's usually much easier to just deal with complete sets.

Bluescreen2001

But the complete set is over 54GB. How should I put that on a Raspi without using a harddrive. And then I get a giant list of games which is bad to navigate throught.
It would be helpfull to be able to create a list of wanted games and build a romset for it.

dankcushions

i didn't say you had to, i said it's easier. i gave you an alternative.

other mame emulators don't use such a huge set.

timeonmyhands

@Bluescreen2001
Isn't there an option on clrmamepro to rebuild by combining clones, parent etc? Then following the rebuild you can just copy over the roms you want.

I'm in the middle of downloading a huge romset, so I'll probably be able to put this to the test by the end of the week!

herb_fargus

@timeonmyhands yes. It's all explained on the wiki page

timeonmyhands

Thought I'd add an update to this. I was having a lot of trouble with certain games, with parent ROMs all over the shop. In the end I downloaded a full set of ROMs. Even after rebuilding them with clrmamepro for Mame4all, there were several problem ROMS - most annoyingly for me Gauntlet. I went back to the start and rebuilt again with a different DAT file and it worked perfectly on another MAME emulator.

MAME isn't a particularly tidy way of getting games - the end results can be messy. My advice is to always build from a full romset. If the roms work, transfer over the games you actually want to play. With ones that scan with errors, try a different build.

Meneer Jansen

@timeonmyhands said in Mame help:

Thought I'd add an update to this. I was having a lot of trouble with certain games, with parent ROMs all over the shop. In the end I downloaded a full set of ROMs. Even after rebuilding them with clrmamepro for Mame4all, there were several problem ROMS - most annoyingly for me Gauntlet. I went back to the start and rebuilt again with a different DAT file and it worked perfectly on another MAME emulator.

MAME isn't a particularly tidy way of getting games - the end results can be messy. My advice is to always build from a full romset. If the roms work, transfer over the games you actually want to play. With ones that scan with errors, try a different build.

At the time of writing I am trying to convert my favorite games (from ROM-set 0.37b5 I think) to version 0.94 w/ help of the RetroPie Wiki page. Why? Because Mame4all cannot save games and Advance-Mame can. The former uses 0.37b5, the latter 0.94.

Clrmamepro does not run in Wine. Use a virtual machine for this (except when you're a windows user).
Indeed, you probably need a FULL rom set. I tried to convert dkong and galaga (only 2 roms) and ended up w/ about 10 ROMs (!) in my "converted roms" folder. That is: ALL variants (US, Japanese, bootlegs etc.) of the game were "built" but none of the 10 work.
I know that Galaga needs some Namco ROMs (i.e. to emulate the ROM of the Namco arcade machine it runs on). So I know converting a single Galaga rom wont work. This is to test the error messages of clrmame. The error messages that I get from clrmame are cryptic. It's missing one or two files, but does not say which ones nor for what game it is missing files.

My personal bottom line: pray that you can find ROMs for your favorite games somewhere on an old backup CD-ROM of yours from 10 years ago or else it won't work. I am NOT going to download and/or convert 14 GB of games that I never play to maybe get a proper working ROM set.

Isn't there an archive somewhere of a 0.94 ROM-set, or what need you not, for RetroPie?

P.S. If RetroPie ever quits using Mame4all I'm pretty much f*cked. The only working ROM set I have is 0.37b5.

P.S.2 FBA runs some of the newer Mame roms you can find on the internet, but produces a background humming noise.

dankcushions

@Meneer-Jansen

At the time of writing I am trying to convert my favorite games (from ROM-set 0.37b5 I think) to version 0.94 w/ help of the RetroPie Wiki page. Why? Because Mame4all cannot save games and Advance-Mame can. The former uses 0.27b5, the latter 0.94.

whaaaat? you can't convert from an old to a new set! you can't create something from nothing!

also, use mame2003 IMO. 0.78 sets are easy to find.

Clrmamepro does not run in Wine

yes it does. i'm running it in OSX via wine, even!

I know that Galaga needs some Namco ROMs (i.e. to emulate the ROM of the Namco arcade machine it runs on). So I know converting a single Galaga rom wont work

no it doesn't. galaga is a parent rom. if you have the correct galaga rom for your set, you don't need any namco whatevers. almost no mame roms need bioses (except neogeo games). if you're messing about with other files then your set is not build correctly, or you're not using a parent rom.

My personal bottom line: pray that you can find ROMs for your favorite games somewhere on an old backup CD-ROM of yours from 10 years ago or else it won't work. I am NOT going to download and/or convert 14 GB of games that I never play to maybe get a proper working ROM set.

your google-fu is very poor, then :) 0.78 is easy to find and you only have to use clrmamepro to convert from a newer to an older set. clrmamepro is not mandatory, but so many people start this process with a bunch of random .zip files and a random mame emulator and expect it to just work. mame isn't like that - you need the right set for the right emulator.

timeonmyhands

@Meneer-Jansen

I've just run clrmamepro via WINE on my Ubuntu machine - worked very well. Not sure why it doesn't work for you.

I converted a bog standard romset to 0.37b5, no problem. And the ones that didn't work, I converted to 0.94. I used the non-merged conversion.

"I am NOT going to download and/or convert 14 GB of games that I never play to maybe get a proper working ROM set."

Honestly, you may have to - it worked pretty well for me, and you don't have to put them all on your Pi

Meneer Jansen

Thank you all for the constructive criticism.

ClrMame starts in Wine but when you select a DAT file then it does not "recognize" it. Might be because there are spaces in the path...
I might give converting from new to old a try (ooops!) ;)

Anyway, might give googling for 0.98 mame rom set a try, but converting the whole set... Wont that take long?

dankcushions

0.78
that's for mame2003. so you won't need to convert anything.

advmame i don't know much about, but mame2003 certainly saves. if you want to get a 0.94 set for that, sure.

Meneer Jansen

@dankcushions said in Mame help:

0.78
that's for mame2003. so you won't need to convert anything.

advmame i don't know much about, but mame2003 certainly saves. if you want to get a 0.94 set for that, sure.

Does Mame 2003 run on RetroPie? And what do you mean w/ 0.78? Is that ROM-set easy to acquire via the internet?

P.S. Looked it up: full rom set for Mame as of today: 32 GB. Wow! Holy mackerel Batman!