Trying to organize my arcade rom library. There's so much information that I'm lost.

xwons

I've been reorganizing and trimming all my libraries in retropie. I only kept the roms listed in the hyperspin xms lists, renamed the roms accordingly, and added video previews (snaps) and marquees. So far so good.

Now I wanted to do the same for my arcade games. But since technically they are not from a "console", there's not an hyperspin list. The fact that specific romset versions are needed for each emulator also complicate things.

Right now, I have three entries in retropie: I use mame4all for Mame roms, FBA for neogeo and capcom roms (mame was too slow for these), and neogeo for a few neogeo roms that fba doesn't run (or couldn't run in the past).

My Mame library is full of duplicated entries. I really don't need four small revisions of each game, and I don't care of a Japanese version if I already have one in English. But as I understand, I cannot just delete the ones I do not like, since some roms depend on others.

So I've spent several hours reading about Mame and I'm more confused than ever.

I have the following questions: is there currently a single emulator that can most rom files in a raspberry pi 3? (I used a raspberry pi 1 and 2 when I configured all that). I mainly play neogeo games (metal slug, king of fighters), but I'd also like to keep older games.

I saw there are some libretro compatible cores. Which one is better: lr-mame2000, lr-mame2003, lr-mame2010, lr-mame2014 or lr-mame2016. Is their performance comparable to that of mame4all-pi? I looked for compatibility lists in the retropie website but didn't find anything.

Is there an easy way to delete duplicated roms from a romset?

I also noticed that there's an "arcade" folder in retropie. I like that, as having Mame or FBA as "consoles" was inconsistent in the interface. Can I just put the roms there? What emulator is responsible for that folder by default?

Sorry, I am quite lost at the moment. Ideally, I'd like a single "Arcade" entry with most roms (specially Neogeo and Capcom), without repeated entries, and all of them scraped with videos and marquees. Is that currently possible in a RPi3?

Thanks in advance

rbaker

@xwons said in Trying to organize my arcade rom library. There's so much information that I'm lost.:

Ideally, I'd like a single "Arcade" entry with most roms

You can do all that. It's all described here: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Arcade/

Pay attention to the runcommand where you can then select the emulator of your choice for each rom....https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/runcommand

xwons

Ok, that helps a little.

So, when I launch a rom from the Arcade folder, I'll automatically be prompted which emulator I want to use?

Also, different emulators use different romsets. Wouldn't putting two different romsets in the same folder be quite messy?

It would be great if all neogeo and capcom games would be launched with pifba by default, and lr-mame for all the rest.

I finally found compatibility lists. Are there important performance differences between lr-mame2003 (the recommended) and lr-mame2003 (the most compatible)?

mitu

@xwons said in Trying to organize my arcade rom library. There's so much information that I'm lost.:

Ok, that helps a little.

So, when I launch a rom from the Arcade folder, I'll automatically be prompted which emulator I want to use?

Not explicitly, you do this through the Runcommand, as @rbaker mentioned. The Runcommand launch menu can be triggered by pressing any buttons just before the game starts.

Also, different emulators use different romsets. Wouldn't putting two different romsets in the same folder be quite messy?

Could be, but that depends on the games you want to play. Neogeo games are better handled by FBAlpha, some other games by Mame2003 and some games might only be running in AdvanceMame or lr-mame2010.

It would be great if all neogeo and capcom games would be launched with pifba by default, and lr-mame for all the rest.

If you have a Pi3, use lr-fbalpha instead of pifba. You can do that if you have the list of the games + emulators you want to run for them. You can set a default for the arcade folder, then add exceptions for those that need another emulator.

I finally found compatibility lists. Are there important performance differences between lr-mame2003 (the recommended) and lr-mame2003 (the most compatible)?

Huh ?

xwons

Thank you.

I saw that lr-mame2010 is compatible with most of the games I want to play, so I could use that emulator for all of them, instead of using two emulators. However, in another thread I read that lr-mame2010 is slower (and more accurate) than lr-mame2003, the recommended for the raspberry pi. I just wanted to know how slower it is.

Apart from that, if I want to trim my collection (eliminating clones and duplicates) I found a tool called RomLister (https://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/) but it starts by asking me a xml file and I have no idea where to get it.

mitu

@xwons said in Trying to organize my arcade rom library. There's so much information that I'm lost.:

Apart from that, if I want to trim my collection (eliminating clones and duplicates) I found a tool called RomLister (https://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/) but it starts by asking me a xml file and I have no idea where to get it.

I think the .xml file it needs is the .dat file specific for the emulator, describing the ROM set that's compatible with it. You can find the links to the files in Docs, on each emulator page (Mame/FB Alpha).

Clyde

@xwons said in Trying to organize my arcade rom library. There's so much information that I'm lost.:

Apart from that, if I want to trim my collection (eliminating clones and duplicates) I found a tool called RomLister (https://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/) but it starts by asking me a xml file and I have no idea where to get it.

Validating, Rebuilding, and Filtering ROM Collections in the Retropie Docs explains a lot of this and more.