Neo Geo folder - is it worth it?

MrSkyle

Just fishing for personal opinions on this one.

I have both MAME and FBA romsets placed into their respective rom folder, regardless of overlapping titles (easier for me to simply load the emulator and then choose the rom rather than the opposite). Therefore, I don't make use of the "arcade" folder.

However, the "neogeo" folder kinda bugs me. Neo Geo games are all emulated via lr-fbalpha and are included in the FBA romset, rendering the "neogeo" folder as useless (to me) as the "arcade" folder.
However, the Neo Geo was also a console in itself and even has an ES theme.

On one hand, there is no need to reproduce Neo Geo-exclusive roms in their respective folder, since they are already part of the FBA (and maybe MAME) romset. On the other, it would be a nice way to show off one's game collection, both from a presentation point of view (ES theme, system completeness) and from an organization standpoint, by having only the Neo Geo titles filtered in one folder and doubling as a console rather than an arcade system (hope this makes sense!).

What do you guys do? Separate the Neo Geo roms and place them into the "neogeo" folder? Or simply use the "fba" and "mame" ones? Or just the "arcade" one?

obsidianspider

I use the Arcade Folder and the Neo Geo folder. I don't have anything in the MAME folder.

caver01

@mrskyle I use Arcade for everything. For me, a Neo Geo game is just another arcade game. I found early on that people with whom I share my arcade system have no idea about emulators (they don't understand and they don't care). So I don't even use MAME folders, as this would lead to even more confusion when they cannot find Asteroids because it is in a different MAME folder. And FBA? What is an FBA? That is the attitude some of us are dealing with, so having Arcade and Runcommand is very convenient.

MrSkyle

How do you compile the romset for the arcade folder? I mean, there are exclusive roms to both MAME and FBA romsets, not to mention that some only work (or work better) with one emulator and therefore require the specific romset version.

Alturis

@caver01 said in Neo Geo folder - is it worth it?:

... cannot find Asteroids because it is in a different MAME folder. And FBA? What is an FBA? ... having Arcade and Runcommand is very convenient.

+1 No one who hasnt personally setup a RetroPie rig is going to know or care about emulators. They just want to know where to find an arcade game versus some console they remember.

arcade folder for me too.

Alturis

@mrskyle said in Neo Geo folder - is it worth it?:

How do you compile the romset for the arcade folder?

I manually put all the roms needed for a given game into a single zip file. Unless its FBA in which case I leave the bios dependancy in BIOS folder.
All my games are hand picked from a given a romset and tested as to which seems to do the best emulation and then I leave runcommand defaulted to that for each rom zip.

caver01

@MrSkyle following up on @Alturis comment above, there is definitely an administrative challenge to maintaining a clean and working Arcade folder. I made a copy of the compatibility list for MAME in Google sheets so I can keep track of what romsets were used to source individual titles. Because everyone has a different idea about what arcade emulator works best for their hardware and configuration, there is no definitive combined set. For example, I use AdvanceMAME for all vector games, but my default MAME is lr-mame2003.

quicksilver

@mrskyle it mainly boils down to personal preference. I like having neogeo separately because it was also a home console. All other arcade games go in the arcade folder, which for me mainly uses mame2003, vector games on advmame and some others on fba. Once you setup which games run on which emulators you never have to change it again.

dmmarti

For me .. one of the reasons I use the neogeo folder is because I set it up to boot as if it's a Neo Geo AES home console system instead of the Neo Geo MVS arcade system.

When you do this (as an AES instead) there are additional options in some of the games.

Also, by having it set to AES, you don't have the "insert coin" like the arcade versions do. The game will just boot up like normal.

lostless

@dmmarti i chose aes or mvs depending on the game. In use a unibios so I can change during boot. But advantages of mvs is unlimited continues. Keep feeding coins.
Are can be used for fighting games for a 2 player vs mode. Or games like super base ball which turns off the timer.

cyperghost

@mrskyle I think there are several reasons to keep ARCADE, NEOGEO and other separeted. As I installed also a CPS1 and CPS2 folder it makes so far sense to keep a "collection" of a game system running.

To install CPS1 and CPS2 I simply copied settings from ARCADE to have a full set of emulators chooseable. Now to the point - CPS2 is a very old romset ... therrfore I use lr-fbalpha2012 for this. CPS1 runs fine on lr-mame2003, ARCADE is also a lr-mame2003 romset and NEOGEO runs very good with lr-fbalpha

caver01

@cyperghost This is going to come down to personal taste and who the player/audience is. I would be lost among the collection screens for CPS1 and CPS2. My friends have no idea what these mean. One person's organization is another's confusion. I see both sides.

@MrSkyle You will have to choose a setup that works best for you.

cyperghost

@caver01 That's true but it's more simple to get one romset running under one system.
So in my case I have to select each ROM with the dedicated emulator if I would put them all in ARCADE for ex.

Of course I could rebuild all to get a mame2003 romset ;)
Just personal taste but helpfull to see different views at all :D

thelostsoul

I use FBA, MAME and Neo Geo for Arcade games. I like to have Neo Geo separately, because its a console on its own too and I have all settings and games related to Neo Geo on one place. I don't mind if it is using the same core as FBA. I even have different button mappings for Neo Geo. I also setup it with the AES BIOS, so it works like the console with normal continues (no coins needed or supported) and the options menu. I like them to be separated from regular Arcade coin games, the differences and changes are big enough to distinguish them.

thelostsoul

But I have a question, not sure if I should create a new thread.

As I mentioned above, I use FBA and MAME folder for Arcade games, because I don't need to change and select an emulator for each rom and all emulator related roms are at one place. But at the same time, I would like them all showing up in Arcade folder only, but the way they stay where they are, just showing them in Arcade. Is this possible?

caver01

@thelostsoul I would say anything is possible, but this is not how it is designed to work. You would have to customize a lot of things. For example, I am thinking of using a bunch of dummy ROM files in Arcade, but modifying launch commands to include the actual paths to the real roms. This seems like a big mess to maintain, and you would still need to use Runcommand to select the launching emulator. You would, in effect, be selecting the launch path by doing so. They would probably each need custom config files too. Then you would have to remove the default systems unless you wanted both to show up.

Maybe there are easier techniques, but to me, a setup like this would be harder to maintain than just keeping track the details and combining the ROMs in the Arcade folder.

mitu

@thelostsoul said in Neo Geo folder - is it worth it?:

Is this possible?

You could create a custom collection ("All Arcade") and add there any ROM from the FBA/MAME folders. This way you have your unified view and each ROM will be launched with the right emulator. As opposed to adding them also in the Arcade folder and keeping separate config-per-rom settings for the emulator used.

thelostsoul

I am doing a lot of custom collections, but I wanted this one to be automated like the other systems. I also want to have Arcade as main system and hiding FBA and MAME. In my mind, nothing should be touched and working like it is, but just all of them are put together to showed up like "ALL GAMES", only showing up FBA and MAME.

Maybe the easiest way is to put all roms in Arcade folder. Is it possible to put symbolic links or something like I saw with Genesis and to Mega Drive folder?

mitu

@thelostsoul The issue with the Arcade folder, as @caver01 explained, is that you must manually configure the MAME emulator used for ROMs (not all, but the ones that are not run with the default for Arcade). You can put all your Arcade roms in arcade and then make sure each ROM works.
Symbolic links won't help in your case, becase the emulator choice is per system (arcade) and it's not deduced from your symlink.

thelostsoul

Thank you for your replies. I think there is no easy way to do this. Sorry for hijacking this thread.

Back to topic, yes Neo Geo folder is worth it; reason are said abov.