Neogeo ROMs

steptoe

This explains it somewhat

A non-merged set is one that contains absolutely everything necessary for a given game to run in one ZIP file. This is ordinarily very space-inefficient, but is a good way to go if you want to have very few sets and want everything self-contained and easy to work with. We do not recommend this for most users.

A split set is one where the parent set contains all of the normal data it should, and the clone sets contain only what has changed as compared to the parent set. This saves some space, but isn’t quite as efficient as

A merged set takes the parent set and one or more clone sets and puts them all inside the parent set’s storage. For instance, if we combine the Puckman sets, Midway Pac-Man (USA) sets, and various other related official and bootleg sets all into PUCKMAN.ZIP, the result would be a merged set. A complete merged set with the parent and all clones uses less disk space than a split set.

I prefer split sets, as each ROM then has what it needs for THAT game. I've tried merged in the past but this caused issues with some ROMs being corrupt, by corrupt I mean a bad dump of the original ROM as that may be the ONLY dump in existence until the MAME team manager to find a good dump. With some older arcade boards this may be impossible or very very difficult to dump correctly or just not financially viable due to PCB collectors refusing to lend their board to get a good dump. Also, some regions are not happy about working with PCB dumpers from outside their region (Japan is a good example which means the MAME team needed supports in Japan or other regions to buy boards on their behalf and send it to be dumped) and eBay sellesr in Japan not willing to post outside Japan

I've been a follower of MAME since v0.1 when pretty much the goal was to get Pacman to run on an emulator and it gradually went from there to what it is now, along with FBA, Neo Geo and so on supported

edmaul69

This post is deleted!

edmaul69

@polygaryd There are two libretro core final burn alpha emulators. If you dont have both then download the one you are missing. Then try setting the other emulator for the roms that dont work.

Riverstorm

@steptoe said in Neogeo ROMs:

I prefer split sets, as each ROM then has what it needs for THAT game

That's not quite correct for split sets, except for the parent as it needs no other ROMs but if you're playing a clone it will require the parent in a split set if it contains merged up ROMs. It depends on the game.

Non-merged has everything it needs for a game except the BIOS files unless you set them to merge also in your ROM manager.

It sounds like you want Non-Merged for a complete standalone game. Split will add extra games to your game list.

polygaryd

HI guys, I researched a lot since posting my issue(I researched a lot prior to posting my issue also I was just researching the wrong things i suppose). I have learned that the roms in the list i posted were missing some files in each zip according to clrmamepro after I figured out how to read the results of the scan properly. I have almost every game in the list working now without changing the emulator to a different version. I had to re download the games in the list i posted and convert them with clrmamepro using the same dat file as before. I used the same method to convert the roms to the proper fba version as i did before and now they work.

From all this i can only conclude that my rom set had a lot of bad roms in it as i checked and i had the parent and child roms needed to make a non merged set they just didnt work because of missing files. after getting the roms to work in a non merged set i went to a split set to save space and its working out great.

I'm pretty sure i found @steptoe post in another forum about non merged, split and merged roms sets looks identical to the one i read previously anyway. should have serched for that before i asked the question. I just figured if i was posting something for non working roms in a non merged set I'd ask what the difference is anyway.

Thank you for the responses you guys are great for help without flaming me.

oh and for any non working roms i will try the other emulator as suggested.

Thank you again

barbudreadmon

@edmaul69 said in Neogeo ROMs:

There are two libretro core final burn alpha emulators. If you dont have both then download the one you are missing. Then try setting the other emulator for the roms that dont work.

Worst advice ever about arcade emulators, please avoid posting this kind of crap, you are causing damage.

When a rom don't work with fba, it's because you have the wrong romset, the right way to solve this is to fix the romset, not changing the emulator...
There are a few case where fbalpha2012 is useful for performance issue on older hardware, but certainly not because of a rom that won't work.

edmaul69

@barbudreadmon how is that worst advice? My roms arent from a specific set and i have had them since the early 2000’s. They dont work on one of the final burn alphas but they all work on the other. The other emulator might have worked with his romset. With nintendos crap its getting harder to find roms so he might be stuck with his romset. Also some people dont want to download new roms if they dont have to. I wasnt giving you this advice so please do me a favor and dont start crap with me just because you dont like my advice.

barbudreadmon

@edmaul69 said in Neogeo ROMs:

@barbudreadmon how is that worst advice?

Because that's against what the retropie documentation recommend.
Because that's a lazy solution for people who don't want to follow the documentation, and please don't use recent rom site closing as an excuse, full romsets are still easy to find, and fixing a romset with clrmamepro takes a few minutes.

Good for you if you are managing like this, but don't recommend it to the others, thanks...

Edit : also, as the author of lr-fbalpha, it pisses me off when people come to report lr-fbalpha2012 issues on lr-fbalpha github because they followed this kind of crappy advice without fully understanding what they are doing. Use only 1 version of lr-fbalpha, except if you know really well what you are doing

edmaul69

@barbudreadmon we have multiple emulators for a reason. So people can choose between them and choose what works best for them? Why should he be forced to use the emulator of your choice?

legacy

Roms are now getting harder to source these days since the big clamp down. Enjoy your rom sets.

barbudreadmon

@edmaul69 said in Neogeo ROMs:

@barbudreadmon we have multiple emulators for a reason

The reasons are performance and compatibility, not lazyness. Someone recommending to switch emulator instead of fixing the romset, while authors of emulators and retropie have been recommending to fix romsets for years, is just toxic.

Riverstorm

@polygaryd - Glad you got it sorted. It sounds like you'll be using ClrMamePro from here on out. :)

@barbudreadmon - Everyone misses their mark occasionally out here, welcome to the internet! ;) I've read many of @edmaul69 posts over the months and his hits completely outweigh his misses. Nobody's perfect, even with a perfect manual we'll explore outside the bounds. I've appreciated his help more than once reading different posts.

Unfortunately we alI read and sometimes share incorrect information, it happens. I guess sloth is not something that comes to mind. Anyway regardless Polygaryd was inspired enough and found his solution, and the correct one I might add, so it wasn't a total loss after all. :)