Basic MAME question

realkg

realkg

@dankcushions oh yeah and one more question from observing all this...

Can you tell me, in just basic terms (because the details are very many Im sure), what is the main difference between the mame rom set and the fba rom set (rasberry pi 3 versions). For example, does the fba have more 90s capcom games or something?

dankcushions

@realkg it's fbN not fbA - was renamed a year or two ago.

mame2003 (0.78) vs fbneo's romsets: fbneo supports cps3, and mame2003 does not, and fbneo supports a lot of hacks (mame I believe only supports real world releases), but fbneo doesn't support the breadth of older arcade titles, although that is situation has improved a lot.

basically, you'll probably end up needing to use both emulators (with corresponding romsets) to get the full library of arcade games worth playing on the pi.

realkg

@dankcushions excellent info. Cool, thx.

realkg

@dankcushions just an update on my progress...I found both rom sets through google and one main thing in particular strikes me...the size of the full sets (approx. 29 GB). I assume, based on what you have already told me, the recommendation is to download that whole 29 gb package and not just whatever games I want? Man it’s crazy...I will go to download it and after 6 hours it gets an error and crashes. This is nuts, I may never get this going lol

dankcushions

@realkg if the set is 'non-merged' you can indeed download individual games from the set and they will work, but if not then clone roms have dependencies on parents, and you need to consider BIOS roms also.

personally, i would just get the full set. 30GB is less than a call of duty patch at this point...

realkg

@dankcushions the set I found was non-merged. With the bios files I thought I was all set because a month ago I found what I thought were the 2 or 3 bios files that go with arcade (neogeo.zip, qsound.zip)...Perhaps my assumption is wrong and I need many more bios files than those?

One of the things I was going for was only having like 100 games in my RetroPie arcade menu...not the 1000s of games in a set. Hopefully since I found the non-merged like you said then I’ll get it working like I want.

dankcushions

@realkg said in Basic MAME question:

@dankcushions the set I found was non-merged. With the bios files I thought I was all set because a month ago I found what I thought were the 2 or 3 bios files that go with arcade (neogeo.zip, qsound.zip)...Perhaps my assumption is wrong and I need many more bios files than those?

if it's non-merged you may not need the bios files at all, but it depends on the set builder. in any case, the bios files involved depends on the romset in question. 0.78 only has a few, other sets have mode. they're labeled as such in the dat file.

note that bios files are hidden in emulationstation - it hides any in this list, by default: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/blob/master/resources/mamebioses.xml

YFZdude

@realkg said in Basic MAME question:

I will go to download it and after 6 hours it gets an error and crashes. This is nuts, I may never get this going lol

One of the more popular places to get these sets offers a torrent file for downloading. If you have a bittorrent client it is the best way. I've also seen some recommendations that a download manager can work well too for large non-torrent files.

realkg

@yfzdude thats another term ive yet to learn...torrent. I googled the definition of it and still dont quiet get what it is (compared to just a basic download from a server). In laymans terms is it basically downloading a file from another individuals personal database?

IanDaemon

@realkg Torrents are rather simple although they're used for a multitude of things. The process of downloading a torrent is similar to collecting a set of cards (Pokemon or Magic or what have you).

Downloading from a single download site is like going back to a specific store to buy all of your cards. This could take a while and you're putting all of the stress in a single place.

Downloading a torrent is like buying cards from that store and then trading with your friends who are also buying from stores and trading with others. You're more likely to get a full set of cards faster and the stress is spread amo(u)ng all of your sources. You also may get cards that a specific store doesn't have at that time.

YFZdude

@realkg
@IanDaemon posted a good explanation of operation. If you want to go in depth, check out this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

If you want to use this method, you can install a bit torrent client (application), which then allows you to open the actual torrent files or links. The benefits are stopping and resuming at any time you wish and being able to check the integrity of the download to protect against corrupted files. Most clients also allow you to throttle download and upload speeds so you can let it run without paying attention to it without killing your ability to use the internet connection for other things.

Linux based operating systems many times come with a bit torrent client already installed. Windows does not.

realkg

@iandaemon this makes it much more clear. Very well worded.

realkg

@yfzdude thank you for that additional insight. Very good info.

realkg

@dankcushions I wanted to also ask you what type of controller you use with your pi when you play MAME (and FBA & CPS games). Is it wired or wireless? What specific controller works best with arcade games?

The reason I ask is the way they designed the pi is awkward with the ports not giving us a traditional front or back so I don’t wanna fool with wires bending over the console.