What Pi 4 Arcade image?
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@sirhenrythe5th My apologies, I am new to RetroPie and although I have the hardware and cabinet all done, I have no clue on the software parts of things. I did see the images on punks but wow I do not want 60 consoles and billions of games.
I want classic arcade coin-ops (MAME) from the 70's, 80's and 90's.
So building my own collection then, where do I start? The ROM's I got mostly work but there are many that crash. I have a selection of emulators but is seems like a crapshoot. Then there are ones that work partially, like missing sounds est.
So between putting things in correct folders and using correct emulators, I am having more frustration than success. This with the added 'pressure' of two young ones that are chomping at the bits to use the machine dad so finely crafted.
I am open to any suggestions.
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@mellow checkout out our arcade documentation: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Arcade/
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@mellow i am an arcade fan also and like those games you mentioned from 70s-90s the most too.
I can really recommend to create your own image, it is not that complicated as it seems.
First of all you should download the official image and write it to a SD-Card.
The first time you will start it emulationstation will be nearly blank, only the config-menu will appear.
So no 60+ systems that you dont need anymore :)As you are concentrating on arcade if have good news for you: the necessary emulators are allready on board (i.e. "FBNeo", this one also supports retro-achievements which is great fun IMO)
The only thing you have to do is find the right roms or complete romsets.
This is a thing where google can be very helpful ;)
Of course you can also read great docs here and we will help you anytime here in this forum.EDIT: missing sounds: some of the games of the golden age still need "samples" which have to be copied in the dedicated "samples"-folder of the emulator.
Also here i recommend to try a google-search ;) -
@sirhenrythe5th I have the official image and a squeaky clean new install of RetroPi.
I have the following emulators:
lr-fbneo-neocd
lr-fbneo
lr-mame2003
lr-mame2016
lr-mame
mameSo I download a ROM and if it does not work on lr-fbneo I go down the list with partial success. I am not sure where to put the ROMS under MAMAE or ARCADE folders?
As an example, I cannot get Moon Patrol to work no matter what emulator I choose.
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@mellow
i recommend to put the roms in the "arcade"-folder.
When you start a game in emulationstation a message pops up saying "push a button to configure".
If a game does not run with the default emulator, you can select another one in this menu.If the game does not run with any of the emulators (i use FBNeo, lr-MAME2010 & lr-MAME2016) you need another rom.
You can find the right romsets for the (lr-)MAMEs by searching them by their version-number.
Or just search for "Mame2016" (without spaces) and have a look at the results.FB-Neo is something different because the romsets change very often during the very active development.
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@mellow I’ve said this dozens of times before regarding arcade roms, downloading random roms from the internet is going to lead to frustration. You have no idea what set they are from. Arcade emulation is not like console emulators where you throw a rom at it and it just tries to run it. As better dumps of arcade roms become available, mame and fbneo will update and no longer run older dump. That’s how it works. You need to look for a romset for the emulator and version, you wish to use. The most popular are mame 2003 and FBneo.
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@mellow hiya. Welcome to the forum. Nice build, I really like the Stranger Things reference "Palace Arcade". That's great!
I've built 6 cabinets, 2 dedicated and 4 MAME'd. The best collection for running it in RetroPie is lr-mamar2003 rom version .78. you'll get the most working roms from it and as long as you're in the "old skool" range, you won't have 100 million copies and clones as well.
If you're not familiar with running MAME or Retropie software, this could be a challenge at first, but come here and ask questions. Not only do you work with the standard MAME menu, you have the Retropie Menu as well. I highly recommend using a BT SNES style controller to configure the games with, well...really just to use the menus easier as using the stick and buttons is difficult.
I'd like to ask you.... Who did the graphics, where did you get the cabinet and where are the buttons from (Ultimarc?)
I just finished my Gorf restoration/MAME conversion. So I'm right where you are, but I'm sticking to running a small form PC and GameEx with native MAME. I just find it easier for my cabinets. They all have the same configs and parts are swappable. No offense meant to Retropie...I've been doing it this way for 20 years now. Lol.
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@jamrom2 said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
The best collection for running it in RetroPie is lr-mamar2003 rom version .78. you'll get the most working roms from it and as long as you're in the "old skool" range
That's just plain ridiculous and wrong, 18 years old version of mame doesn't have more working games than more recent ones. Furthermore the more recent emulators also emulate mame2003's working ones better.
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@barbudreadmon said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
@jamrom2 said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
The best collection for running it in RetroPie is lr-mamar2003 rom version .78. you'll get the most working roms from it and as long as you're in the "old skool" range
That's just plain ridiculous and wrong, 18 years old version of mame doesn't have more working games than more recent ones. Furthermore the more recent emulators also emulate mame2003's working ones better.
Thanks for the smack in the face. What a way to start a post... never heard of being considerate? It's a Help and Support forum, consider that before you reply like this.
Obviously he has other options..
If you read what I said CLEARLY before quoting me and completely annihilating my advice...for someone not very familiar with a RetroPie build and looking for old skool games, it's a very good start and easy to find Roms for with a simple search....because it says the version numbers in the listing when you Google it. It's easy to set up and get familiar with... First learn that not everyone out there is at expert level with building and configuring.But hey... You're the defacto... What do 8 know.
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@jamrom2 said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
It's a Help and Support forum, consider that before you reply like this.
That's exactly why i can't ignore an answer saying the polar opposite of reality, since it's gonna mislead people who don't know.
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@barbudreadmon I also don't ignore posts that I might know something more....but I don't treat other members like shit.
Opinions are like assholes...everyone's got one...just keep it clean.
Have a wonderful day
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@mellow
Hi,
best advise I can give you is to learn how clrmamepro works (this is the tool used to build correct romsets for many different arcade emulators) Full sets can be built from a combination of the current mame romset and a mame rollback romset. Each version of mame (or final burn) has an associated dat file that contains the 'recipe' to make that specific set - dat files are easy enough to find on the net
watch this to get an idea of what's involved -
@jamrom2 said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
@barbudreadmon I also don't ignore posts that I might know something more....but I don't treat other members like shit.
He didn't treat anyone like shit, he criticised your statement – albeit quite bluntly. Please don't mix those two together like too many people nowadays do.
Besides, lr-mame2003 won't get you "the most working roms". Even if limited to old school roms and the Pi family's hardware capabilities, lr-mame2003-plus and lr-fbneo support way more (and improved) roms than lr-mame2003.
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i think you're both right ;)
0.78 romset collection is trivial to find, and static, and can run a decent breadth of the games that are viable on a raspberry pi 2-4, albeit at variable emulation quality.
fbn romset collections are marginally less easy to find (especially if you don't understand exactly what you're looking for), and constantly updated, can run more games* than mame2003, with better emulation quality.
(*) in the FBA days mame2003 supported quite a few 80s/early 90s "golden age" games that FBA didn't, with FBA being a good supplementary emulator with its CPS3 support, better neogeo support, amongst other things...but with FBN's constant stream of additions i'm not sure that's the case anymore. at this point i wonder if mame2003 supports anything of note that FBN doesn't?
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@dankcushions I don't know about FBN, but MAME 2003 Plus is a fork of the static mame2003, and therefore should support all of its games plus any additions in the last years.
I for my part maintain both FBN and Plus on my RetroPie system, so I can switch easily from one to another if one lacks something the other don't.
You are right in that 2003 romsets may be easier to find, whereas FBN and Plus romsets may require periodic manual rebuilding (although I do stumble upon more or less up-to-date romsets for them from time to time). But that wasn't the point that @barbudreadmon criticised.
The real issue here of course was how blunt arguments should be. I confess that I'm more on the out-front side there, as long as the claim itself is targeted and not the person stating it. Which IMHO was the case here, though I for myself wouldn't have used the word "ridiculous". 😇
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@dankcushions said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
0.78 romset collection is trivial to find
Tbh, any fixed fullset is equally trivial to find, the same website which is very well known, and probably the first link you'll get on your favorite search engine as long as you spell your search smartly, is distributing all fullsets, and even for the non-fixed fullsets i believe it has a very small timelag.
Anyway, my point was only about the statement that "there are more working games on mame2003", which is wrong and will only mislead users, and down the line, as an arcade emudev, i know i'll have to deal with the aftermath of someone that did read that false statement, unlike the guy that launched this bomb. It might have been somehow true performance-wise if the OP had an old pi model, but that's not the case here, any more recent emulator will have more working games on a pi4.
@dankcushions said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
at this point i wonder if mame2003 supports anything of note that FBN doesn't?
Sega C1/C2 comes to mind
@jamrom2 said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
but I don't treat other members like shit.
Me neither, i'm just stating facts.
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@clyde said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
@dankcushions I don't know about FBN, but MAME 2003 Plus is a fork of the static mame2003, and therefore should support all of its games plus any additions in the last years.
i'm aware of plus, but that occupies a similar space to FBN for me - better emulator but more involved to locate and maintain a working romset.
You are right in that 2003 romsets may be easier to find, whereas FBN and Plus romsets may require periodic manual rebuilding (although I do stumble upon more or less up-to-date romsets for them from time to time). But that wasn't the point that @barbudreadmon criticised.
why i say both are 'right' is that the quoted line both recommended mame2003 as the best (for a new user), which i agree with, but also made an incorrect statement about the number of "working games".
that said, i'm not sure if "working games" was the intended metric as FBN supports a lot of non-arcade consoles, romhacks and other things that may not be of interest to someone seeking arcade emulation. i'm not sure i've settled on which emulator has the broadest coverage of the popular (and viable to emulate on a pi) arcade titles - it was 2003 a few years ago, but i suspect that it may be FBN now that it has midway, sega system 24 etc. i am tempted to go for a pure FBN setup at this point :)
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@dankcushions said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
i'm aware of plus, but that occupies a similar space to FBN for me - better emulator but more involved to locate and maintain a working romset.
Yeahh well … kinda. But Plus romsets are not that much harder to find, if you can live with one that's 4-9 months old, denying you only a handful of games at the current speed of Plus' development.
So I would rather recommend Plus to a newbee because of its many fixes and GUI additions than the original 2003 which may have problems with some games that Plus has already fixed. But of course thats only a very marginal preference in face of the many more obstacles a newbee faces in this hobby. 😉
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@clyde said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
So I would rather recommend Plus to a newbee because of its many fixes and GUI additions than the original 2003 which may have problems with some games that Plus has already fixed. But of course thats only a very marginal preference in face of the many more obstacles a newbee faces in this hobby. 😉
Imho, plus is just plain better than original 2003 on every fronts :
- should be about the same speedwise
- better integration with libretro features
- it has around 3000 working parent arcade games (that's a lot, we have yet to reach 2500 with FBN), while original 2003 is probably not even reaching 2000
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So … end of the commercial break. 😉
@mellow said in What Pi 4 Arcade image?:
So building my own collection then, where do I start? The ROM's I got mostly work but there are many that crash.
You have to understand that every arcade emulator (or RetroPie core) needs roms from a compatible romset. Other roms are likely to crash or may have other issues. Actually, that even applies to different versions of the same emulator (hence the MAME 2003 / Plus discussion).
So, you'll have to either use the appropriate emulator (and version) for your roms, or choose an emulator first and then look for its romset. Just throwing random roms at random emulators will only lead to frustration and madness. 🤬
Start with the link that @dankcushions gave you some days ago. Its a good starting point to learn the ancient art of arcade-fu. 😉 Feel free to ask any new or remaining questions here – ideally in one thread per topic.
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