The roms versions are ridiculous

ruicunha

Its easy to get retropie running, the problem comes when you try to get roms from internet.

1st Tehre are so many useless rom versions for mame, each rom set has 90 % of garbage (poker, pinball, puzzle, etc...) to get rid of all that junk is impossible without any rom lister program.

2nd after you clean your rom set, normally you dont have the same stupid rom version of mame.

3rd even with cps2 rom sometimes the ones you donwload from sites dont work, and you cant figure what versions they came from.

4th Everyone has retropie to play with roms they find online, but when someone asks for roms, it seems like a forbidden word.

To end all this bull, just make links of complete rom sets for every emulator on retropie so for once everyone at leats can have all working roms.

jonnykesh

@ruicunha Stop whinging ffs! Nobody is forcing you to use RetroPie. If you haven't got the capacity to figure it out for yourself, despite all the documentation then that's bad luck for you.

To end all this bull, just make links of complete rom sets for every emulator on retropie so for once everyone at leats can have all working roms.

Yeah, that's not going to happen. Go buy a SNES Mini or something.

thelostsoul

@ruicunha Asking and refering or giving away roms is forbidden. Take it, eat it. Sorry, but these are the rules here. Search in Google for complete romsets for the specific emulator version, thats all we can say.

Please don't post links to roms. Otherwise the site owner can get into trouble, if he is unlucky.

ruicunha

im not asking for links, im my country most roms sites are blocked, wich makes it harder to find them.

retropie was created to be used with game roms where users will have to piracy them in order to play, but talking about rom sites is forbiden, its like seling guns but not allowing you to buy ammo.

No one is whining and noone forced me to buy retropie, im just saying that all this mame rom versions make it so hard to get all this working.

in 1 week i managed to get almost everything working with video snaps and new themes, problem is the diferent ridiculous and useless rom versions out there.

jonnykesh

@ruicunha

You are whinging
Get a VPN
That's how MAME has always and will always work. You need the correct ROMs that match the version of MAME you want to use. There is no shortcut or way around it.

thelostsoul

@ruicunha This situation was always like this, since I can remember snes emulation from 2002 or so. We can't change the situation.

herb_fargus

@ruicunha said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

retropie was created to be used with game roms where users will have to piracy them in order to play

This is not true. I play all sorts of scummvm games from original CDs and ports/original games. The use can be completely legitimate.

And gee whoda thunk that emulating thousands of different pieces of hardware would prove complicated!

rbaker

@ruicunha said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

the problem comes when you try to get roms from internet

How is this relevant on this forum? Read the docs

no one forced me to buy retropie

You paid? Its free. Read the docs.

problem is the different ridiculous and useless rom versions out there

There are different versions of mame for different uses. I guess you once again need to go and ...you guessed it...read the docs.

That said, you might find this link quite useful ;)

Alturis

@ruicunha said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

To end all this bull, just make links of complete rom sets for every emulator on retropie so for once everyone at leats can have all working roms.

First, I do agree that the documentation is not organized well or user-friendly for people first ramping up on RetroPie or MAME in general. It could be improved for sure.

But posting links to copyrighted material to be downloaded without permission from the owners of said material is probably the fastest way for Retropie to be shut down. It is a software suite of tools and open source packages for retro gaming enthusiasts to enjoy playing games.

In theory, one would already own copies of the games they play but just need a platform to emulate and run them on after extracting the rom data from the media sources. Thats how you got all your roms right? ;)

In my estimation, the reason most people find it an attractive activity is the difficulty and complexity involved to get it all working correctly. It was never intended to be a package deal that you just double click and you are off and running. This same mental state of mind permeates into the way in which data and information is organized on top of the fact that its all done for free by volunteers working together without a guiding body.

So the end result is messy and organic. It's part of the deal.

Edit: Frankly its quite impressive how nice the retropie.org.uk site IS organized knowing that its all just people contributing together.

jonnykesh

@alturis said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

First, I do agree that the documentation is not organized well or user-friendly for people first ramping up on RetroPie or MAME in general. It could be improved for sure.

Feel free. The wiki is editable.
I think the documentation is excellent for a free, open source project.
Perhaps it does expect a certain level of prior knowledge or at the very least some reading.
RetroPie is a project developed by hobbyists for hobbyists. If people want a "plug-and -play" solution then RetroPie is the wrong software for those type of people.

Alturis

@jonnykesh Yeah that is basically what I was saying. ;)

Alturis

@jonnykesh said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

Feel free. The wiki is editable.

There. I rewrote and expanded the Step 2 section here:
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Arcade/

Not public yet but that paragraph drove me crazy when I was first trying to get arcade games running. So many references to unexplained things. Tried to summarize the basics and typical hangups in just a few small paragraphs without just linking to other reading sources.

markwkidd

@alturis said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

Not public yet but that paragraph drove me crazy when I was first trying to get arcade games running. So many references to unexplained things. Tried to summarize the basics and typical hangups in just a few small paragraphs without just linking to other reading sources.

Nice to see some new documentation contributors! I have just a few corrections to your edit. The more you say about Arcade emulation, the more astrixes and provisos you have to mention due to the nature of the beast.

Parent zips are not needed if you have a Non-Merged Reference Set.

Neither Parent zips nor BIOS zips are needed if you have a "Full Non-Merged Reference Set" or you have rebuilt a regular Non-Merged set to be Full Non-Merged.

Fun fun fun.

AndersHP

Dude, you are just throwing your frustrations out there.

I agree that MAME is a hassle to sort, but that's just the way it is. I'm new to all of this also, but for MAME2003, in the docs, there are a light DAT file that does what you want, and Clrmamepro and romlister are powerful tools for rebuilding romsets.. Also for console games!

I can understand your frustration, but with MAME, you just shouldn't rush it. Get your retrogaming urges satisfied by playing console games (because they just work), while you get your MAME setup up and running.

I can recommend reading my own thread regarding sorting of roms. A lot of good links to useful guides and programs. And theory from all the patient guys on this excellent forum.

Alturis

@markwkidd said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

Parent zips are not needed if you have a Non-Merged Reference Set.
Neither Parent zips nor BIOS zips are needed if you have a "Full Non-Merged Reference Set" or you have rebuilt a regular Non-Merged set to be Full Non-Merged.

This is EXACTLY the kind of terminology I was trying to avoid. I didn't even use the word "rom" when possible. I wanted to leave it up to the "Further Reading" to learn more details like that. My main focus was to succinctly hit on the key points that often trip people up when they are first trying to get MAME games working. Typically this would be testing the waters by either getting a random game running or their favorite game running.

I really think that bit about quickly explaining Parent and Bios dependancies should be there right front and center. The point is that people are much more likely never to continue reading about how to build Non-Merged sets (nor was I interested in building a set of all games when I first started - you just want to get the games working that you want) and obviously split sets are what they are going to find on the internet as they are smallest in size.

Your shorter version would be fine I guess. Just need to mention it at least.

"Each game zip contains multiple files needed for that game and many games share some of those same files. It is critical that you refer to the compatibility list for the emulator you are using (see chart below) and check the "Parent" and "BIOS" columns."

markwkidd

@alturis said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

@markwkidd said in The roms versions are ridiculous:

Parent zips are not needed if you have a Non-Merged Reference Set.
Neither Parent zips nor BIOS zips are needed if you have a "Full Non-Merged Reference Set" or you have rebuilt a regular Non-Merged set to be Full Non-Merged.

This is EXACTLY the kind of terminology I was trying to avoid. I didn't even use the word "rom" when possible. I wanted to leave it up to the "Further Reading" to learn more details like that. My main focus was to succinctly hit on the key points that often trip people up when they are first trying to get MAME games working. Typically this would be testing the waters by either getting a random game running or their favorite game running.

I really think that bit about quickly explaining Parent and Bios dependancies should be there right front and center. The point is that people are much more likely never to continue reading about how to build Non-Merged sets (nor was I interested in building a set of all games when I first started - you just want to get the games working that you want) and obviously split sets are what they are going to find on the internet as they are smallest in size.

I think that's a valid approach to the docs but that's a different approach than the one we have been using. During the last major overhaul there was a consensus from team RetroPie that the Arcade docs should tell users to start with the best possible set rather than trying to tell them anything about Parents, Split sets, etc.

For the historical MAME emulators, it's much harder these days to come across a Split set that requires Parents. I'm not sure it's actually helpful to introduce it at the beginning.

What about a line to the effect of: If your Arcade collection uses Split romsets, jump to "Advanced Terminology" to learn about Parent and BIOS romsets.

Alturis

@markwkidd

it's much harder these days to come across a Split set that requires Parents

Again I would not even use the word "Split set" in that initial paragraph. Someone reading that introduction for the first time will have no idea what you are talking about.

I am still new to the scene so I may be unaware of where to find a non-merged set online but every set I have found has been split. Seems very logical as its saves download size obviously.

Alturis

How about:

Each game zip contains multiple files needed for it and many games share files from other zips. It is critical that you refer to the compatibility list for the emulator you are using (see chart below) and check the "Parent" and "BIOS" columns. Or refer to Further Reading below for how to create whats called a "Non-Merged Set."

dankcushions

Each game zip contains multiple files needed for that game. Some games also have a "Samples" column entry which is referring to a zip file containing a set of audio files included ...

samples column entry where? i have to say, i hate the edits done so far. 'reference set' is not a defined mame/fba term and only refers to a specific romsite's listings.

dankcushions

re: original topic. the right mame and fba romsets are so trivial to find. beyond that the only fiddling you may want to do is clearing out what you don't want, and we have a amongst the best documentation on the internet for that.

i don't know what else we can reasonably do without breaking laws.