One MAME dat to rule them all?

Amishgamer

I've been googling about this, and haven't found it, so please forgive me if it's right in front of my face or something.

I'm wondering if anyone has put together a MAME dat or xml file which filters out not only dupes and NeoGeo, but also any game that won't realistically work on Retropie (Mame 0.78) due to control limitations (example: Midnight Resistance or 720) or because of hardware limitations (Killer Instinct or pretty much any game needing a CHD file).

Does such a thing exist? If so, where can I obtain it?

dankcushions

@amishgamer it doesn't, and i don't think it really could, as everyone has different ideas of what such a dat should contain. eg, some dupes you'd want (pacman vs puckman, mwalkerb vs moonwalker, etc), some people have different controller capabilities, etc. i created the original 'lite' 0.78 dat but quickly realised that it wasn't fit for my purposes (or anyones, probably)

you could create something pretty close to your criteria using clrmamepro.

MajorDangerNine

@amishgamer I'm working on something like that, though it isn't even ready for a preliminary release and is tailored to my personal preferences.

These are the current personal preferences.

Games: All Killer, No Filler list and cosmo0's Arcade Manager's "set-lite-noanalog.csv" lists.
Emulators : lr-fbalpha, lr-mame2003-plus, and lr-mame2010. In that order of preference.
Controls: Up to 8-way directional digital movement.
Performance: Only what runs full speed on my overclocked RPi3B.
Quality: Only what is well emulated visually and audibly (to my inexperienced eyes and ears). Also, the controls have to work.

I have other personal preferences to add in the future like "USA>World>Japan version preference" and "Up to six gameplay buttons only (not counting coin and player)", but right now I'm focused on pruning the games that don't run full speed or aren't emulated well.

VictimRLSH

There are some GREAT game with controller issues though. I have finally gotten used to playing Forgotten Worlds with mouse+controller analog stick (but not on Pi, I play that on PC). Front Line is another that is well worth getting to work, but has some controller wackiness.

Amishgamer

@eckaji I might be interested in collaborating in such a worthwhile project, but you kinda lost me at the mention of the overclocking. I'd love to overclock my pi, but there seems to be no consensus about what good, stable, OC settings are. Digressing here, but I'm really confused about why that is. The software is standardized as are the boards. It really shouldn't be that big of deal. Every time I try to OC, I'd get infrequent but random freezing. So, until the community can adopt an OC standard, I really don't want to OC.

But, I wish you nothing but the best of luck and success with your project. It would be great for the community. And, I also want to thank you for turning me on to Arcade Manager. It did help greatly with organizing my arcade roms, as well as finding bezels that don't cut off the edges of the game screen area.

mediamogul

@amishgamer said in One MAME dat to rule them all?:

I'd love to overclock my pi, but there seems to be no consensus about what good, stable, OC settings are. Digressing here, but I'm really confused about why that is. The software is standardized as are the boards.

The process of manufacturing CPUs produce certain variances that allow some to be overclocked more than others. No two are ever exactly the same. This is often referred to as "the silicon lottery".

Riverstorm

@amishgamer said in One MAME dat to rule them all?:

I'd love to overclock my pi, but there seems to be no consensus about what good, stable, OC settings are. Digressing here, but I'm really confused about why that is.

Each Pi will have a slightly different stable overclock. It can take hours to find it. You can use larger increments to get close but to fine tune, that's where small gains require larger amounts of time. Once you reach that max OC then you should let it burn in for several hours.

It's definitely not for everyone as OC'ing is like a small little hobby in itself.

Riverstorm

@mediamogul said in One MAME dat to rule them all?:

This is often referred to as the "Silicon Lottery".

I usually loose that lottery.

mediamogul

@riverstorm

Ha! I hear you. I've never had anything that overclocked all that well and remained stable.

VictimRLSH

@mediamogul Crossing fingers, but my new B+ is still quite stable at 1500, I might bump it by 25 in a couple days.

MajorDangerNine

@amishgamer Well, I'm thinking about eventually turning off my overclock and retesting for people who aren't overclocking, but that would only come after I've personalized my collection further by switching out all games possible to their USA versions and testing those for any problems.

I recently finished my preliminary testing and made some simple copy batch files for those that may be interested. You'll need to have verified and built the three ROM sets into Full Non-Merged ROM Set (BIOS and Parent files included in every ROM ZIP) for them to be useful. Keep in mind this collection was tested on a moderately overclocked RPi3B.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GOkGI8QDRgjsvoxYsr-MgRaZRuVEThbD/view?usp=sharing

I could make DATs if someone really wants me to and asks nicely. Know it would save those that might need them a lot of time.

Also, here are some emulator default files.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18_MaM5u_0qZgMcOKHcOyTGwFGCc4A7UZ/view?usp=sharing

Edit: Fixed dupes in batch files.

Edit 2: Fixed emulator default files.

mediamogul

@victimrlsh said in One MAME dat to rule them all?:

Crossing fingers, but my new B+ is still quite stable at 1500, I might bump it by 25 in a couple days.

Nice. Have you done any stress testing?

VictimRLSH

@mediamogul I'll have to put it through sysbench a few times and see how it holds up before bumping it some more. Played some N64 stuff and a few of the more demanding arcade games. Ninja Baseball Bat Man is a VERY fun game, but also a HUGE system hog. My gaming PC can barely play it full speed.

MajorDangerNine

@victimrlsh Are you able to run Ninja Baseball Bat Man full speed on your overclocked RPi3B+?

VictimRLSH

@eckaji Still not quite, which makes it a good test for the CPU at least. I realize that with MAME, the GPU gets zero attention. I love to play that game though, so I still use MAME on my PC.

MajorDangerNine

@victimrlsh I checked it out again. Turns out that the lr-mame2010 version ran the best compared to the lr-mame2003-plus and lr-fbalpha. versions. I had full speed gameplay in both lr-mame2003-plus and lr-mame2010, but the transitions had less slowdown in lr-mame2010. It seems I was too hasty in writing this game off and didn't even check the gameplay.

Of course, I only played it for a minute like all the other games I've tested. No idea about further in.

First imperfect game (that I know of) that I've decided to include in my arcade collection.

VictimRLSH

@eckaji The gameplay is an absolute riot. The GOOFIEST beat-em-up ever.

Amishgamer

@eckaji I'm going to jump off the deep end and test this with you. Though my pi isn't overclocked, I feel that accomplishing this project is very important to the community, so I want to help.

I copied everything over. I haven't played anything yet. I got Skyscraper running right now and that will take a while. But, one thing I found right off the bat is you have some duplicates between your FBA and your 2003 list. I chased them down. Here they are...

astyanax.zip
battroad.zip
berlwall.zip
bounty.zip
cop01.zip
ctribe.zip
ddribble.zip
flstory.zip
fround.zip
gmgalax.zip
hachamfb.zip
hatris.zip
intrepid.zip
karatour.zip
kbash2.zip
machomou.zip
madmotor.zip
metlclsh.zip
mrflea.zip
mx5000.zip
pballoon.zip
pipedrm.zip
roundup.zip
sasuke.zip
sbasketb.zip
sprcros2.zip
suprmous.zip
thedeep.zip
theend.zip
tnzs.zip
tumblep.zip
xyonix.zip

MajorDangerNine

@amishgamer Yeah, I forgot to use Clone Spy for automatic removal. Found out about that two days ago. Also, there are a few more differently named duplicates that I'm slowly removing for a full release.

I'm currently working on my ideal ROM set of USA>World/Europe>Japan, but I suppose I can fix up those batch files in the meantime.

Also, I just found out about this simple program for building ROM sets. https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/15233/mame-set-rebuilder