How to build custom MAME Romsets?

Chillimonster

I know there are various DAT files for the different rom sets for Arcade, but now there is a unified directory is there a 'simple' way to have an all encompassing list of emulated games with the correct links to the various emulators without having loads of clones across the systems?

So in effect you would go to the 'Arcade' section and there would be, say, 3000 games, but no clones and some may open in Mame4all, some in FBA, some in Mame 2003 etc.

Is it possible, is it do-able, and has anyone done it?

Hopefully i've explained what i mean

dankcushions

on a raspberry pi 3, you can get away with a 0.78 set in your arcade folder, with the default emu set to lr-mame2003. you can reduce cruft by using the 'lite' 0.78 dat available on the wiki: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs#lr-mame2003

then, what I do is add the handful of exclusive games that are only on lr-fba-next (mainly capcom CPS3 games - street fighter iii, etc) and manually change their emulator to lr-fba-next.

note: the 'lite' set doesn't include neogeo - I have all of those in my neogeo folder.

Chillimonster

Thanks,

Would that give all of the available emulated games? wihtout the need to use mame4all?

Is there anything missing that is on Mame 2010 that works?

I am after the most compelte set of emulated arcade games if possible.

dankcushions

@Chillimonster said in How to get the best MAME Romset?:

Thanks,

Would that give all of the available emulated games?

it wouldn't give ALL emulated mame/fba games, but i think almost everything that runs properly on a pi2/3. i'm not aware of anything significant that this doesn't cover.

wihtout the need to use mame4all?

mame4all is an older romset than 2003 (it's from 2000), so 2003 includes everything in mame4all.

Is there anything missing that is on Mame 2010 that works?

sure, but again, i'm not sure that it's worth using over the better supported 2003. 2003 already includes a bunch of games that are too intense for the pi3, so a more recent romset (and more accurate emulator) may well even reduce the number of working games.

Chillimonster

Thanks for the clarification, appreciate it :)

movisman

@Chillimonster

I use a combination of lr-mame2003 and lr-fba-next also for my ROMS. However from memory, I believe in my collection I have to use lr-imame4all for the following games because performance/sound is an issue otherwise:

Altered Beast
Mortal Kombat
Moon Walker
Out-Run
Rampage

Less than 5% of my roms. So while you should be able to use mame2003 and fba-next for nearly all games, a few will still run better in lr-imame4all because it uses an older romset. This means emulation is less accurate which leads to better performance. Hope this helps.

Cheers

Chillimonster

OK, so the plan is

lr-mame2003 and lr-fba-next for the main roms (with hell of a lot of manual sorting) with a few of the stragglers from lr-mame4all

Quite a task from the look of it.

First step will be using ClrMamePro to strip the roms and make full non-merged sets, then manually copy over to the arcade folder and add the emulator associations.

Unless there is a quicker / easier / batch way of doing this?

dankcushions

@Chillimonster well, mame2003 is used for 99% of your roms so you make that the default, and then there's manual intervention needed for about ~20 roms that need fba/other. not much to automate, really!

dankcushions

@movisman said in How to get the best MAME Romset?:

@Chillimonster

I use a combination of lr-mame2003 and lr-fba-next also for my ROMS. However from memory, I believe in my collection I have to use lr-imame4all for the following games because performance/sound is an issue otherwise:

so i've been testing these, just to see if anything could be done:

Altered Beast

graphical issues in mame2003. works in lr-fba-next without these, but the sound seems distorted in comparison? not sure...

Mortal Kombat

this works fine for me in 2003 with a pi3. i know on a pi2 there are audio issues, but these seem to be CPU related, as the pi3 runs it fine for me. mame4all runs it fine for both.

Moon Walker

works fine if you use the unencrypted bootleg clone.

Out-Run

works fine for me on pi3/mame2003

Rampage

seems to be stuck in a service mode in mame2003. works in mame4all.

movisman

@dankcushions

Hi,

Yeah, I think Altered Beast has distorted sound/speech on fba. Only mame4all worked for me properly, same goes for Rampage.

Regarding Outrun and MK, yes I definitely have performance issues with those on an overclocked Pi 2, but good to see they are ok on Pi 3.

With Moonwalker, I can't remember why I decided against using mame2003 for it, from memory it ran ok, but the sound was pitch shifted a bit, although that might have been FBA, I can't remember. There was some reason or other for it.

Chillimonster

OK - so have finally go round to sorting the Mame 2003 rom set out - used the LITE version as a started and removed the endless puzzle drop / baseball / soccer / basket ball games and am now down to approx 1000.

Also added some roms back in that are actually clones but well known (Donkey Kong / Pacman etc)

What i need to do next is add the NeoGeo games in.

I can do this via the usual way and manually select the emulator for each game, but is there an easier way such as editing a file and adding them to a list telling them to use fba-next?

Would make life easier as i could sit there with the laptop and do that rather than doing it the 'long' way :-)

dankcushions

@Chillimonster said in How to get the best MAME Romset?:

OK - so have finally go round to sorting the Mame 2003 rom set out - used the LITE version as a started and removed the endless puzzle drop / baseball / soccer / basket ball games and am now down to approx 1000.

well done! you've basically conquered the mame beast :)

Also added some roms back in that are actually clones but well known (Donkey Kong / Pacman etc)

yeah i've been doing that also. i think there are a few other things that were mysteriously removed in the 'lite' set that i made. i think mappy was missing. qbert too.

What i need to do next is add the NeoGeo games in.

I can do this via the usual way and manually select the emulator for each game, but is there an easier way such as editing a file and adding them to a list telling them to use fba-next?

Would make life easier as i could sit there with the laptop and do that rather than doing it the 'long' way :-)

the file is /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg - as you can see, it uses hashes so isn't very readable or editable :)

for me, i got a neogeo romset (i think it was actually built via the lr-fba neogeo only dat file from https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs#lr-fba) and put that in the neogeo rom folder, and used lr-fba-next to run them (it is the default neogeo emulator in retropie at the moment). i know they're basically arcade games, but the split felt ok to me.

you could put them all in the arcade folder along with mame 0.78, but unfortunately it's a manual process to select lr-fba-next as the emulator. luckily the entire neogeo catalogue is around 200 games, so it could be worse :)

Chillimonster

@dankcushions said in How to get the best MAME Romset?:

@Chillimonster said in How to get the best MAME Romset?:

OK - so have finally go round to sorting the Mame 2003 rom set out - used the LITE version as a started and removed the endless puzzle drop / baseball / soccer / basket ball games and am now down to approx 1000.

well done! you've basically conquered the mame beast :)

Also added some roms back in that are actually clones but well known (Donkey Kong / Pacman etc)

yeah i've been doing that also. i think there are a few other things that were mysteriously removed in the 'lite' set that i made. i think mappy was missing. qbert too.

Any others you remember having to add back in from the full 0.78 set?

What i need to do next is add the NeoGeo games in.

I can do this via the usual way and manually select the emulator for each game, but is there an easier way such as editing a file and adding them to a list telling them to use fba-next?

Would make life easier as i could sit there with the laptop and do that rather than doing it the 'long' way :-)

the file is /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg - as you can see, it uses hashes so isn't very readable or editable :)

for me, i got a neogeo romset (i think it was actually built via the lr-fba neogeo only dat file from https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs#lr-fba) and put that in the neogeo rom folder, and used lr-fba-next to run them (it is the default neogeo emulator in retropie at the moment). i know they're basically arcade games, but the split felt ok to me.

Currently doing exactly that.

you could put them all in the arcade folder along with mame 0.78, but unfortunately it's a manual process to select lr-fba-next as the emulator. luckily the entire neogeo catalogue is around 200 games, so it could be worse :)

Looking through FBA now for missing games to compliment the 0.78 set.

dankcushions

@Chillimonster can't remember the missing 0.78 lite games, sorry! for fba.. the key ones for me were the capcom CPS3 games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_System_III#List_of_games

ajhorst

I use advancemame and run into very few problems. One thing to keep in mind for games with bios or parent roms is that you have to unzip the rom and bios/parent, then put all the files from the bios/parent into the rom folder and re-zip (for example, you would need to do this for all the neogeo games). I chose advancemame because it works best with my x-arcade tankstick, as the ir emulators don't have good mouse support for the trackball.

ferdnand

Hello, really like retropie now, thing to remember put all Roms in "arcade folder",then you can select which emulator for what ROM works best.... just my two cents, Roms are centralized, my ROM set is "mame4droid_37b5", will double check again how everything works... I have a few Roms I play regularly, will test and report back... my setup is on a rpi2, Recalbox on RPI 3.... separate system to check....

Hope this helps, don't forget to put bios in the arcade folder also

thrussmeister

I'm having the same thing but I'm my own worst enemy (I have OCD) so I'm going through the compatibility list and my romset line by line to get all the correct ROM's i.e. removing alternate languages or versions I don't need. I'm doing a letter a night so organising, adding to retropie, checking each rom and scraping it. I'm up to about M now by the time I'm finished ill have the most perfect and well organised MAME set. Generally lr-mame2003 works fine with the odd issue like tapper working on lr-mame2010

GreenHawk84

This is a nice thread but excuse my ignorance, what are "Lite" games?

dankcushions

@GreenHawk84 said in How to get the best MAME Romset?:

This is a nice thread but excuse my ignorance, what are "Lite" games?

it's the set described in the link above: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs#lr-mame2003

GreenHawk84

Oh thanks @dankcushions, the lite .DAT seems awesome for RPi setups. I would like to use this for my new arcade cabinet. I don't know where to begin though, :( noob.

I guess I can start by acquiring .78 ROMs.