New Arcade (MAME) issue. Lockup (Little rectangle)

Agrajag

@barbudreadmon Thanks for the explanation. That answers that. At least it's a known issue.

dankcushions

@agrajag said in New Arcade (MAME) issue. Lockup (Little rectangle):

@dankcushions

To be honest, accessibility was one of the issues, but it sounds trivial. In the end it's just another platform. I've always been a bit confused on why different versions of MAME require different ROM sets. It's not like the ROM from the 1984 Pac-Man keeps changing over the years. It's the same ROM, no? So why 10 different versions?

MAME explain this pretty well: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/FAQ:ROMs

Would I be better of tracking down say, the correct set or using something like clrmamepro which I think can just take current rom sets and create older ones?

no - to do that you would need to start from the current mame romset and the full rollback set, which would be fairly massive download, and then you'll have to learn clrmamepro. just download the romset you need - so much easier and quicker.

barbudreadmon

@agrajag said in New Arcade (MAME) issue. Lockup (Little rectangle):

It's not like the ROM from the 1984 Pac-Man keeps changing over the years. It's the same ROM, no? So why 10 different versions?

You have a big misunderstanding here, for obvious reasons if you read https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/FAQ:ROMs i doubt there is a romset that was redumped 10 times, and that's definitely not the case of pacman, afaik pacman was dumped only once. Your issue here is that you are using a split pacman romset, however pacman is a clone, so you'll need its parent (puckman) if you are using split romsets, or you'll need a non-merged pacman romset, whatever you prefer. If you don't know what i'm talking about, read https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Validating%2C-Rebuilding%2C-and-Filtering-ROM-Collections/ , if you didn't read https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Validating%2C-Rebuilding%2C-and-Filtering-ROM-Collections/ yet, then read it anyway. As i'm always saying, clrmamepro is your friend.

Agrajag

@barbudreadmon @barbudreadmon Thanks. It's been a while since I was into MAME on my PC so I'd forgotten about split vs merged, etc.

Got it.

mahoneyt944

@agrajag mame romsets change versions because they become more complete as time goes. So where pacman has always been the same, our copies of the roms, proms, and eeproms from the hardware maybe incomplete. When the chips were dumped initially they could have been corrupted or missing from the board all together. There may be newer revisions from certain games found later on, etc.

What core would I recommend? As a mame2003-plus developer, I'm biased. I use mame2003-plus in my arcade cabinet build for all the mame games I personally use. It works very well.

Agrajag

Just an update for anyone watching.... I grabbed a reference 2003-plus set and started dropping in some roms to test. Working GREAT and already this is better. I automatically seem to be getting hi-scores. Nice!

mahoneyt944

@agrajag yes, high scores are auto installed. Not every game supports high score saving though. These are essentially hacks to reload the memory and are made custom for each game that doesn't natively support saving.

Agrajag

@mahoneyt944

Is there a good source site for backdrop art already set up for 2003 Plus?

mahoneyt944

@agrajag

Artwork isn't my department but @Riverstorm might be able to give you some tips.

Agrajag

@mahoneyt944 Thanks again. Everything is working fine post-skyscraper scrape. Had an issue with about half the video snaps not working, but a trip to Youtube for an hour fixed it all.

Now to decide if I should hack my Mayflash to add a spinner to it or just pick up a controller that has one (and maybe a trackball). I miss Tempest, Front Line real Wild Western and Arkanoid.

barbudreadmon

@mahoneyt944 said in New Arcade (MAME) issue. Lockup (Little rectangle):

Here's the lists I created for each core so far. Have a look and search for the games you're looking to play. https://buildbot.libretro.com/compatibility_lists/
Note that these lists are as accurate as they can be, but still imperfect. Part of this project is to flush out these imperfections.

dkong (and clones) should probably be listed as having wrong colors for mame2003/mame2003-plus/mame2010

@Agrajag you might also want to take a look at FBNeo. MAME2003+ and FBNeo are the 2 best arcade emulator as far as libretro integration is concerned.

Pros of FBNeo :

overall more accurate emulation, meaning less glitches
all games should have proper savestates support, meaning they also have proper runahead/rewind/netplay support
retroachievements support
it supports some games MAME2003+ doesn't

Cons of FBNeo :

it's overall a tad slower than MAME2003+ (accuracy is a double-edged sword), shouldn't be a major issue on pi4 though
since it's not MAME, it doesn't have a MAME OSD
it doesn't support some games MAME2003+ does
romsets aren't "fixed", the emulator is kept in sync with current MAME romsets

Agrajag

@barbudreadmon Looking into this now.