Newbie question about mame version and romset to use

dankcushions

@meaning said in Newbie question about mame version and romset to use:

Hi,

I searched the internet for some retropie / mame information but was not really able to get a clear answer on this.
I just installed retropie 3.7 from SD image and run emulationstation quite fine.
now I'm confused about the version of mame I should use to run my mame games.
i belive the performance issue is not really a problem as the pi 3 I have should be powerfull ennough to emulate most games.
So, shall I select Ir-mame2010 as emulator as it seems to be the most up-to-date and supports way more roms as the other proposed emulators ?

no. it's marked as experimental for a reason; a lot of fuctionationlity isn't there and it does not come pre-installed so you have to manually compile it. the various mame choices are summed-up pretty well in the documentation: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/MAME#emulators-advancemame-mame4all-pi-lr-imame4all-lr-mame2003-lr-mame2010 - personally i prefer mame2003 on an RPI2/3.

Also, I'm confused about the romset to use. I currently have a 0.169 full romset. Can I upload it to my pi and will these roms work with lr-mame2010? Or do I need to convert the roms using clrmame ? Or will only the roms listed in 0.139 work, and roms added after that not work ?

no. you need to use the right romset for the emulator, or convert a wrong one. all detailed on the wiki. https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

meaning

Hi Dankcushions!

First of allthank you for replying that fast ! I will stick to your advice and use mame2003!

Regarding the second part, I will use my 0.169 romset and convert it using clrmamepro ! I'll keep you updated if I have any issue with it ! :)

Thank you again !

meaning

Ah, well my 0.169 set is all .7z format... damnit. :D
Will clrmamepro handle it ? and is mame2003 on the raspberry pi handling 7zip ?

Or is there a way to convert all these .7z files to zip easily before I continue ?

thrussmeister

Im just going through the same process i'm using lr-mame2003 and am using a .78 romset, everything seems to be working fine apart from Tapper so ill be playing with clmamepro this weekend. On your second part i had to open all my roms from 7zip to zip , you should be able to do that by just right clicking and going to 7zip , then you should get loads of zip files. I then used the https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/MAME link to check compatibility and ensure i have the right parent and bios roms...I've been going through this learning for a week from knowing nothing so please feel free to shout if i can help

meaning

Hi there !

@thrussmeister , thank you ! I've followed your link and used clrmame to rebuild my romsets based on the right dat files. Hopefully it will work now.
I can't test it right away as I currently don't have my power adapters for my pi...but I'll keep you updated.

Regarding the 7z issue, it is maybe nice to underline that clrmamepro handles it all alone ! no need to do anything else than :

select the 7z rom source in clrmame
keep all the compress and re-compress check boxes checked
make sur you select .zip in the dropdown menu

From now on, clrmame will read the 7z, rebuild the set, and zip the files correctly into the destination folder. And voilà ! :)

meaning

By the way I still have a newbie question :

I did follow the above tutorial and rebuilt a romset for mame AND pifba.
So, what am I now supposed to do ? put the mame set in the arcade folder on my pi sd...sounds logic.
Where do I put the piFBA roms ? in the same folder ? arcade ?

Thanks ! :)

iconrumble

@meaning I personally have my mame roms on mame-libretro and final burn alpha roms on fba
Check https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/MAME and https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/FinalBurn-Alpha for the acepted rom folders for each specific emulator

thrussmeister

So you need to ensure you put the roms you've built in the relevant folder, so for me I built my roms to lr-mame2003 so they need to go in the MAME Liberto , here will tell you the ROM folder https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/MAME you need. All my neogeo roms I run in MAME and have no issues I haven't even bothered with FBA

I wouldn't just drop them in either as I seem to have so many problems so i'm actually picking the roms I need and building the games I want at the moment its a long task but well worth it.

I've now got the fun of figuring out resoltuions etc!!!! I hope one day I can enjoy playing it.

dankcushions

@meaning said in Newbie question about mame version and romset to use:

By the way I still have a newbie question :

I did follow the above tutorial and rebuilt a romset for mame AND pifba.
So, what am I now supposed to do ? put the mame set in the arcade folder on my pi sd...sounds logic.
Where do I put the piFBA roms ? in the same folder ? arcade ?

Thanks ! :)

there's an FBA folder you can put them in :) in fact, what you should do is put the mame set in the mame-libretro (assuming you build a 0.78 set for 2003?) folder, and the fba set in the fba folder. when running an FBA game for the first time you'll want to use the runcommand to change the default FBA emulator to PIFBA, if that's the romset you've built: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/runcommand

the arcade folder could also be used but that's more for when you want to consolidate all your arcade roms to one place, yet have the full range of FBA/Mame emulators to choose from in the runcommand. if you're using complete sets of FBA and MAME this won't really work as there will be overlap and you won't know what emulator to use for each file easily :)

meaning

I actually rebuilt my romset based on the advmame 1.4 (0.106) dat.
I hope this is a decent choice ?
So I need to put the mame roms in advmame folder, and the fba roms in pifba folder, and at first start, select the right default emulator. right ? :)

If I made a mistake by choosing advmame 1.4 (I actually selected this one because more roms are supported and it is not tagged as experimental...) please let me know .

Thanks again !!!

dankcushions

@meaning said in Newbie question about mame version and romset to use:

I actually rebuilt my romset based on the advmame 1.4 (0.106) dat.
I hope this is a decent choice ?
So I need to put the mame roms in advmame folder, and the fba roms in pifba folder, and at first start, select the right default emulator. right ? :)

If I made a mistake by choosing advmame 1.4 (I actually selected this one because more roms are supported and it is not tagged as experimental...) please let me know .

Thanks again !!!

i don't use advmame but many do so you should be fine! yes, place in mame-advmame as per the docs, but with that you'll probably want to do the runcommand stuff for mame as well as Fba, as there are a couple of versions of advmame and you want to make sure you're using advmame 1.4 to match your romset, not advmame 0.94 or whatever the other version is.

iconrumble

@meaning Place your PiFBA ROMS in fba folder, not "pifba"

meaning

@dankcushions Any tutorial about the runcommand ? I have actually no clue what you are speaking about... does it mean I'll need to run a specific command at rom launch to make sure the game runs correctly (fullscreen, etc.) ?

dankcushions

@meaning said in Newbie question about mame version and romset to use:

@dankcushions Any tutorial about the runcommand ? I have actually no clue what you are speaking about... does it mean I'll need to run a specific command at rom launch to make sure the game runs correctly (fullscreen, etc.) ?

i already linked it :) https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/runcommand

meaning

oops... :)
Thanks ! gonna check this one now.

meaning

Well...I selected advmame 1.4 as default emulator.
But some roms (even if I converted my 0.169 romset to 0.103 and followed the guide you provided) don't load :/

Example are the king of fighters series. I get no error message, I just get back directly to emulationstation. Any clue of what could be the cause of this ? :(

thanks guys !

dankcushions

@meaning said in Newbie question about mame version and romset to use:

Well...I selected advmame 1.4 as default emulator.
But some roms (even if I converted my 0.169 romset to 0.103 and followed the guide you provided) don't load :/

Example are the king of fighters series. I get no error message, I just get back directly to emulationstation. Any clue of what could be the cause of this ? :(

thanks guys !

advance mame 1.4 needs the 0.106 set, not 0.104, but most games should probably still work. have you transferred the entire set to your pi? if not, are you using a parent rom? do you have the neogeo.zip bios file in your roms/mame-advmame/ directory also?

meaning

Hi there,

Actually, neogeo roms are working, but it looks like ALL the other roms are not working at all :(
(yes, even old ones like wonder boy or street fighter 2...)

I've went back to clrmamepro and checked the .dat file I did use to rebuild my 0.169 romset, it was the 0.106 .dat. -> so this should be OK.

So, basically I should now have a 0.169 romset rebuilt to 0.106, but no roms are launching, I sytematically get back to the emulationstation interface after a few seconds. No error message, nothing.
It is also good to know I did create a split romset. no merge.

So here I am again...
Is there a way to check if I rebuilt the roms the good way using clrmame?

PetroRie

You need to rebuild those games. It's explained step by step in the following page:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

I followed exact these steps for the 0.37b5 romset and it worked. I found a source for MAME 0.78 and I'm going to copy them to my Pi now using lr-mame2003.

meaning

@PetroRie , I did rebuild the roms using clrmamepro.
As it was not working, I figured out how to get a 0.106 romset. Now, more roms are launching, others don't...

I really miss playing wonderboy on my cabinet :/