What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability)

IanDaemon

Yes, you can't build from nothing, but from https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Validating%2C-Rebuilding%2C-and-Filtering-ROM-Collections/:

"...It is possible to 'rebuild' from one version of an ROM collection to another. If you also have access to ROMs from a newer or older ROM collection you can 'roll forward' or 'roll back' your ROM version...."

So everyone is right.

aidy80's

@roslof Thank you for sharing this spreadsheet, it's fantastic. I've been fumbling around with my arcade ROMs for awhile now but never been 100% happy. How does one go about compiling all the roms for the different emulators together by using that spreadsheet? Is it a case of going through each rom one by one?

What I mean really is - how do I get my own ROMs and the respective emulators to match your list?

dankcushions

@aidy80-s you would have to separately acquire the romsets of the respective emulators, and then manually transfer the game . zip from the desired emulator's romset to your /arcade/ directory, then select the same emulator via runcommand.

you can build any romset via current MAME and the rollback set, but that's more complicated and time-consuming than just acquiring the individual romset collections.

aidy80's

@dankcushions Thank you. Sounds like it'll be quite a lengthy job.

roslof

@aidy80-s said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

@dankcushions Thank you. Sounds like it'll be quite a lengthy job.

The work to gather the correct ROMs takes time, but there is a shortcut to associating ROMs to emulators.

It requires some skill with a text editor (one with column mode like Notepad++ or UltraEdit).

Backup configs/all/emulators.cfg
Remove all arcade references
Either manually create our I can provide a list of games with associated emulators
Merge the list from #3 into emulators.cfg

For example, from my MAME list, anybody can make a copy and sort it however they want. Can sort by emulator name, then copy the ROM names and format them accordingly to work with the emulators.cfg file.

For #3, I don't want to provide a partial file and have a noob blow away all of their references in emulators.cfg (since ALL emulators for all platforms are in this list) so I may offer a copy of mine upon request. My personal file uses lr_mame as the default emulator, so everything in the file is for all of the other emulators.

A pain, but definitely a shortcut.

roslof

Okay, I was "feeling cute" and decided it would be easy to leverage my existing spreadsheet and create a sheet with all of the emulators listed -- friendly for the emulators.cfg file located in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg.

WHAT THIS IS:
If you want to leverage my Recommendations List, and if you have the matching roms in place, instead of manually assigning emulators for each of the games, experienced users may inject what they want into their own emulators.cfg file and avoid the painstaking process of updating one-by-one through EmulationStation.

HERE IS THE LIST which is next to the recommended Arcade Emulators sheet.

Currently, I update the Arcade Recommendations list every week or so) and those changes will automatically carry over to the Arcade for emulators.cfg sheet.

aidy80's

@roslof Thank you very much indeed. I believe this information will be very useful for many users on this forum! May I just ask what the reason is that most games requiring CHDs are stripped from your spreadsheet? Is it because many of those games simply don't work on a Raspberry Pi?

roslof

@aidy80-s said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

May I just ask what the reason is that most games requiring CHDs are stripped from your spreadsheet? Is it because many of those games simply don't work on a Raspberry Pi?

Good question. Part of it is compatibility and performance. Part of it is size. Part of it was focus. I think the largest part of it is space on the device + time. Downloading different CHDs is expensive and challenging.

Someday, maybe. :)

obrie572

@roslof Given your notes on the poor performance of mame 0.223 and above on RPi4, what is your suggestion on which emulator to use instead of lr-mame? Have you been manually compiling lr-mame 0.222 or do you have an archive of the 0.222 binary?

I'm setting up a new install and the binary that's installed for lr-mame is 0.229, so I'm trying to understand whether to work on building the 0.222 binary, finding someone who has hosted the old binary somewhere, trying out the 0.229 binary, or replacing your lr-mame recommendations with a different emulator.

Thanks and appreciate all your hard work!

roslof

@obrie572 said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

Given your notes on the poor performance of mame 0.223 and above on RPi4, what is your suggestion on which emulator to use instead of lr-mame? Have you been manually compiling lr-mame 0.222 or do you have an archive of the 0.222 binary?

Good question.

First thing, here is the release for 0.222. Suspect we can tweak the MAME script and build a new executable.

The only reason I'm recommending it, is because lr-mame is arguably the best at rendering vector games, but the Pi4B can't handle MAME's new discreet sound engine for many games that may have previously used samples. This was introduced in MAME 0.223. Performance is simply too demanding.

Another, easier option is to try mame2016 or even AdvMAME (which I try to avoid) which both can handle the vector games.

ObscureUsername

@roslof Thanks, that's so helpful! I've now finally been able to put together all my arcade games in a single folder and they all run great. Some of them (such as alien 3) are much improved thanks to your recommendations.

One minor thing I thought I might mention in case others run into the same issue - for me at least, the mappings for emulators.cfg to 'lr-mame-2003-Plus', didn't work until I changed them to lr-mame-2003-plus . My system didn't recognise the system with the upper case P for some reason.

roslof

@obscureusername said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

@roslof Thanks, that's so helpful! I've now finally been able to put together all my arcade games in a single folder and they all run great. Some of them (such as alien 3) are much improved thanks to your recommendations.

One minor thing I thought I might mention in case others run into the same issue - for me at least, the mappings for emulators.cfg to 'lr-mame-2003-Plus', didn't work until I changed them to lr-mame-2003-plus . My system didn't recognise the system with the upper case P for some reason.

Thank you for the kind words.
You're absolutely right. The "p" should be lowercase. I've fixed this throughout the doc. Appreciated!

janderclander14

@roslof Thanks a lot! Is there any automated way to generate the romset with the correct rom versions for each emulator in the list?, something like a .dat file for clrmamepro or some bat files that pick the roms from each emulator's romset?

roslof

@janderclander14 said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

@roslof Thanks a lot! Is there any automated way to generate the romset with the correct rom versions for each emulator in the list?, something like a .dat file for clrmamepro or some bat files that pick the roms from each emulator's romset?

I'm not aware of any easy way to do that. Each emulator has its own matching romset. Could sort the list by emulator and copy relevant roms one set at a time into a folder. Probably starting with fbneo, since it's most recommended. Run clrmamepro against that set, then move to the pi when complete. Repeat with next sets, isolating each set as you go, then transferring to the pi.

obrie572

@roslof Thanks for tips! I recompiled MAME 0.222 by tweaking the build script and it worked perfectly with your compatibility script.

One thing I noticed is that your spreadsheet lists lr-fbneo for "offroad", but so far as I can tell offroad is not implemented by fbneo yet. Any chance that should be lr-mame2016 or did I miss something in the dat file? (Let me know if you'd prefer to address those questions in a different thread)

barbudreadmon

@obrie572 said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

I can tell offroad is not implemented by fbneo yet

indeed

roslof

@obrie572 said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

Any chance that should be lr-mame2016 or did I miss something in the dat file? (Let me know if you'd prefer to address those questions in a different thread)

Correct. It should be lr-mame2016. I made the change in the doc. Thank you!

Also, I have no trouble if issues are called out here, but you may also "Comment" in the doc. I review them ever-so-often.

janderclander14

@obrie572 May I ask which changes you did to the script? Thanks!

Edit: I just replaced the sources_lr-mame() funtion in lr-mame.sh as shown below and it worked

function sources_lr-mame() {
    downloadAndExtract "https://github.com/libretro/mame/archive/refs/tags/lrmame0222.tar.gz" "$md_build" --strip-components 1
}

#function sources_lr-mame() {
#    gitPullOrClone
#}

roslof

@barbudreadmon said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

@obrie572 said in What is the best MAME to use with Pi 4 4GB? (Largest library, highest compatability):

I can tell offroad is not implemented by fbneo yet

indeed

Well, maybe I was simply hoping it would have been supported by fbneo, but I hoped a bit too hard. :P

aidy80's

@roslof Where you are using 'advmame', which version are you using? 0.94, 1.4 or 3?