Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?

rbaker

@briankross You should also consider the Arcade folder. I have selected about 100 classics and have placed them in that. You can then have all your roms in just one clean folder and configure each game to a particular emulator depending on the version of the rom. So I have all my vector games in there with everything else but they use Advance Mame with some tweaks as detailed by @caver01 here.

caver01

@briankross Yes! @rbaker is exactly right--if you were already thinking one emulator for all of your favorite MAME games, but are realizing like most of us that it works better (and sometimes the only way it does) is with a specific emulator for a given rom--then you want to use the Arcade folder when you have it all figured out.

Basically, you go about setting up the different emulators the best way you need to according to the games you want to play. Then, you get to the point (especially with guests or youngsters) that it's frustrating to have to memorize what emulator to chose for each game. For example, "Where's Asteroids? Oh, for THAT game, you need to back up and switch over to THIS version of MAME," to which they say, "What's a MAME?" and you are like, hmmm. . . where to begin?

With the Arcade ROMs folder, you move all of your working ROMS from their respective emulator ROM folders into the Arcade folder. Then, you go through each one and hit a key to invoke the RUNCOMMAND when it launches and select the desired emulator. You can set the default, and adjust as needed. Basically, you are creating a single list inside Arcade (as though you have a single emulator running the games) and use the runcommand to launch each game. For instance, you might launch Joust with lr-mame2003, but Asteroids with AdvanceMAME 1.4 for good vector support. Obviously, you plan that all out ahead of time so when someone picks Arcade in Emulation Station, they are launching arcade games, but they don't need to know (or care) whether you are running MAME, FBA, etc.

If you haven't already, it's handy to keep a spreadsheet of each rom, what romset/emulator you are using. That's what I do.

caver01

@dankcushions said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

lr-mame2003 doesn't currently support trackballs, although i'm hoping to fix that soon.

Oh man. . . That's the best news I have heard all weekend! When you are ready to do some testing I am happy to recompile and provide feedback if you want.

briankross

@caver01

You. Rock. :)

briankross

@caver01

I'm ready to make the move to the arcade folder and have a question.

I use lr-mame2003 for all of my MAME roms except centipede and millipede. Inside of my mame-libretro folder I have a mame2003folder that holds the folders cfg, hi, and nvram. Do I just move all of the above in the arcade folder?

If yes, then will the mame2003 roms act as if they were in the lr-mame2003 folder when the runcommand is setup? As in, it'll save high scores, access samples from /pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/ etc?

Does this make sense?

caver01

@briankross Yes. Move that stuff into roms/arcade. It will behave the same as it does in mame-libretro. And since most of your games are 2003 like mine, when you first boot ES and it sees the titles in the arcade folder, launch one, and open runcommand. There, you can set the default as lr-mame2003. Then, you only need to go to centipede and millipede and change the emulator for those rims (to AdvanceMAME I suppose).

The stuff in the BIOS folder remains as-is and gets accessed by 2003 just like it did when you run it against roms in the mame-libretro folder.

briankross

@caver01

Edit: Kept the high scores etc.

Works like a charm, woo! Thank you. I have a pretty short list, but I'll make a spread sheet to keep track.

Since we have a similar setup for MAME, I noticed the graphics appear smoothed out and perhaps an added glow for centipede and millipede in AdvanceMAME. But I actually like the bit graphics better in lr-mame2003. Do you know about this by chance? I'll dig around.

My wife looks at me like I'm nuts so happy to see this all coming together. Then again, she gets to play her favorite game Tetris on NES so... lol. She saw Dragon's Lair (dle21) for the first time and loved it, so it's all working out. :-)

Thanks again!

briankross

@briankross said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

@caver01
Since we have a similar setup for MAME, I noticed the graphics appear smoothed out and perhaps an added glow for centipede and millipede in AdvanceMAME. But I actually like the bit graphics better in lr-mame2003. Do you know about this by chance? I'll dig around.

Found it.

Once in the game using AdvnaceMAME, press TAB, Video, Resize Effect = no, then "save for this game".

briankross

@caver01

When AdvanceMAME games are played, I do notice new folders created automatically.

Edit: It doesn't seem to affect EmulationStation selections, Arcade is the only MAME emulator shown.

caver01

@briankross Those folders are created because the .rc file which you use to configure AdvanceMAME is pointing there for those things. If you were running Asteroids Deluxe with a background, the artwork would have to go in there. Samples too, where needed. I actually changed mine so the config file points to the BIOS folder (this is where mame2003 is pointed, so I am doing the same). It keeps my roms folder cleaner.

My wife is wondering when the project is going to be finished. She's caught on now that it is never finished, and by the time it seems to be, a new Pi comes out and we start again!

I am glad you got everything working. Now, it's about incremental improvements, learning about a game you never heard of, and adding things to it as you go.

dankcushions

@caver01 said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

I actually changed mine so the config file points to the BIOS folder (this is where mame2003 is pointed, so I am doing the same). It keeps my roms folder cleaner.

this is a good place to ask a couple of questions i have about the advmame directories. i was going to update the defaults so these are saved in a sensible place:

        iniSet "dir_artwork" "$romdir/mame-advmame/artwork:$romdir/arcade/advmame/artwork"
        iniSet "dir_sample" "$romdir/mame-advmame/samples:$romdir/arcade/advmame/sample"
        iniSet "dir_diff" "$romdir/mame-advmame/diff:$romdir/arcade/advmame/diff"
        iniSet "dir_hi" "$romdir/mame-advmame/hi:$romdir/arcade/advmame/hi"
        iniSet "dir_image" "$romdir/mame-advmame:$romdir/arcade"
        iniSet "dir_inp" "$romdir/mame-advmame/inp:$romdir/arcade/advmame/inp"
        iniSet "dir_memcard" "$romdir/mame-advmame/memcard:$romdir/arcade/advmame/memcard"
        iniSet "dir_nvram" "$romdir/mame-advmame/nvram:$romdir/arcade/advmame/nvram"
        iniSet "dir_snap" "$romdir/mame-advmame/snap:$romdir/arcade/advmame/snap"
        iniSet "dir_sta" "$romdir/mame-advmame/nvram:$romdir/arcade/advmame/sta"

colons (:) separate multiple paths for the same thing.

so basically, all supplementary files will be in subdirectories of the 2 rom folders, with nothing in bios, rather than deep within within the /config/retropie/.... my thinking behind this is that mame2003 is only split over rom and BIOS folders because of a few arbitrary standards in libretro cores. we don't NEED to do this split for other mame emulators, so i figure it's better to just keep everything in one place.

the only thing i have to check is what happens when you have multiple directories for one setting set in the .rc file - not sure where new files are saved in the first, or all of the directories. if it's all, i might keep the previous /config/retropie/ there also, just so any old files are picked up. not sure who would notice if it stopped working, though...

dankcushions

@briankross said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

@briankross said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

@caver01
Since we have a similar setup for MAME, I noticed the graphics appear smoothed out and perhaps an added glow for centipede and millipede in AdvanceMAME. But I actually like the bit graphics better in lr-mame2003. Do you know about this by chance? I'll dig around.

Found it.

Once in the game using AdvnaceMAME, press TAB, Video, Resize Effect = no, then "save for this game".

does this basically give a raw pixelly image like the other mame emulators? in that case, should this be a default? i could add that to my changes...

caver01

@dankcushions said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

this is a good place to ask a couple of questions i have about the advmame directories. i was going to update the defaults so these are saved in a sensible place:

@dankcushions The defaults are probably fine as-is. I just moved mine to bios because I already had samples and artwork there. It made sense--one less thing to forget.

@dankcushions said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

does this basically give a raw pixelly image like the other mame emulators? in that case, should this be a default? i could add that to my changes...

@dankcushions Yeah, the parameter is display_resizeeffect none and display_rgbeffect none will prevent pixel smoothing. That's probably the best default to be consistent with other emulators. However, I always change mine to display_resizeeffect filter and display_rgbeffect triad3dot, as this is as close as I can get to a CRT shader in AdvanceMAME. Some games look good with it, some don't. Sometimes the triad6dot looks better. It just depends on the game resolution.

I am running far fewer games on AdvanceMAME than I used to. It's coming down to Vector, Trackball/Spinner, and a few oddballs: (can't run Arch Rivals, Sarge, and Xenophobe on lr-mame2003 for some reason).

dankcushions

@caver01 ok good! thanks - i will implement those above defaults after i've tested them.

briankross

@dankcushions

Good idea!

Which file are you editing to change or include directories?

When you have multiple paths for the same thing, will it still recreate folders in the rom folder? (I'm assuming it will). I'm looking to point the AdvanceMAME folders to another logical location so it will no longer recreate folders in the rom folder root directory, cleaning it up a bit.

Riverstorm

Hey guys I've been slowly porting over to lr-mame2003 and I noticed a couple things that I may be configuring wrong as I can't seem to get them working.

One is history.dat (& mameinfo.dat) I put the files in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/ directory but when I check the history it tells me no history file available.

The other is artwork located in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/artwork/ but it doesn't seem to use it.

caver01

This post is deleted!

dankcushions

@Riverstorm said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

Hey guys I've been slowly porting over to lr-mame2003 and I noticed a couple things that I may be configuring wrong as I can't seem to get them working.

One is history.dat (& mameinfo.dat) I put the files in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/ directory but when I check the history it tells me no history file available.

works for me. are you using the latest version? i fixed this stuff semi-recently. you might need to rebuild from source.

The other is artwork located in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/artwork/ but it doesn't seem to use it.

it should be in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/artwork/though i've not tested it.

Riverstorm

@dankcushions said in Need guidance: Best MAME emulator to use for classic 80's games?:

works for me. are you using the latest version? i fixed this stuff semi-recently. you might need to rebuild from source.

I haven't rebuilt in a while I bet that's the issue. I will try that tonight.

it should be in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/artwork/though i've not tested it.

I made a mistake I do have it in mame2003/artwork under the BIOS directory. I tried a few different versions of Artwork (0.37b5, 0.94 and 0.106 basically MAME4All and AdvMAME's artwork) but their really isn't DATs for Artwork. Are you downloading them from a specific place that works with 0.78 by chance?

dankcushions

@Riverstorm

i've not tested it.

:)

no idea how artwork works in mame but that's the code picks it up from at least. it's another thing you'll need the latest version for, probably.