Trying to get my head around Mame and fba

[chubsta]

Please bear with me, I am not the brightest person, in fact I have issues which mean I cannot always process information correctly and get very confused.

I have installed a fresh retropie on a pi 3bplus. All has gone well and I have installed the roms where I believe they should go, hopefully using the correct sets according to what I have read in the docs.

I have different sets of roms in arcade, fba, and a Mame folder. Not all seem to work but enough to make me think I am doing something right as I guess the ones that don’t may be incompatible and I need to choose the correct emulator when the rom boots.

So, my question is about streamlining my setup - I don’t like having three different sets of roms and three choices in the menu for arcade, how are other people setting up their arcade games, there seems to be an awful lot of duplication in my setup and I am not sure which games work best with which emulator without trying to trawl through a compatibility list.

I am happy having a separate neogeo menu item, I guess retropie looks in the three rom folders but does it matter which one the neogeo roms are in?

Any advice on how to have the arcade games setup better than I have it would be greatly appreciated, I use a Mac so any tools suggested would have to be compatible with OS X.

[rbaker]

@chubsta All roms should be placed in the Arcade folder and then an emulator chosen to run them. One folder, all games, all emulators. Read this:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7247/guide-arcade-games-and-how-to-play-them-a-non-technical-mame-fba-tutorial

[steptoe]

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/MAME

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/lr-fbalpha

The one big thing that catches most people out is you MUST use the SPECIFIC ROM release for that emulator. This is for the changes between releases and code updates that NEED a very specific ROM set

For lr-mame2000 which uses 0.37b5 ROM set and supports pretty much everything most people are used to in the arcades and should run everything in this ROMset with ease, or AdvMame that supports 0.106 ROM set for MAME. This has the majority of later games that the PI may or may not run at full speed depending what game your playing. The newer the game the more hardware requirements due to all the extra hardware the actual arcade machine used

FBA is better in some respects for better game support or better emulation which is why people use them both, again you MUST use a very specific ROM set. Usually 2.97.43

Finding the ROM set is quite easy as they have been around for years, but you CANNOT post ROM links or even search suggestions on here as its against forum rules

There is also a ROMset that has the best of MAME/FBA and removes all non-working, duplicates or clones and anything more than 2-player, but again you'll have to look for it. I found it by accident looking to start from scratch but somebody beat me to it and did exactly what I was intending to do

MAME is about arcade preservation as a lot of early hardware is now impossible to find, and trying to find one that actual works is even harder. This is what MAME is all about as well as giving people the chance to play games they will quite possibly never have seen

[MajorDangerNine]

@chubsta said in Trying to get my head around Mame and fba:

I have installed a fresh retropie on a pi 3bplus. All has gone well and I have installed the roms where I believe they should go, hopefully using the correct sets according to what I have read in the docs.

You need to stop hoping and get to knowing you have the right ROMs. Hoping is where almost everyone fails when it comes to arcade emulation.

I have different sets of roms in arcade, fba, and a Mame folder. Not all seem to work but enough to make me think I am doing something right as I guess the ones that don’t may be incompatible and I need to choose the correct emulator when the rom boots.

Having them in all those folders is not how you want them. You either want them all in arcade with their emulator set per-game, or, for simplicity's sake, have the latest FBA ROM Set in fba and one of the MAME ROM Sets in mame-libretro such as MAME 2003 Plus.

Some ROMs don't work when it comes to MAME because MAME is first and foremost an archival project.

The other problem is that there are a total of three ways a ROM ZIP can be structured (Non-Merged, Split, Merged), and can be further altered by including the BIOS in any of those three. You want Non-Merged with the BIOS included so that the single ROM ZIP runs like the consoles and handhelds.

So, my question is about streamlining my setup - I don’t like having three different sets of roms and three choices in the menu for arcade, how are other people setting up their arcade games, there seems to be an awful lot of duplication in my setup and I am not sure which games work best with which emulator without trying to trawl through a compatibility list.

Now that's where I can help. I've done all that work for you, though expect some flaws due to my lack of putting in 100% effort.

I've got:

• A guide to CLRMAMEPRO to make the arcade ROMs Non-Merged with the BIOS included.
• A way to sort out generally one ROM per-game that is also sorted out per-emulator.
• A way to set emulator defaults for either the arcade or fba and mame-libretro setups.
• A gamelist, screenshots, and Neo Geo UNI-BIOS defaults for Arcade.
• Some info on MAME 2003 Plus' optional samples.
• A gamelist, box art, and Neo Geo UNI-BIOS defaults for Neo Geo.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/20348/all-in-one-overclocked-rpi3b-arcade-rom-set-setup

I am happy having a separate neogeo menu item, I guess retropie looks in the three rom folders but does it matter which one the neogeo roms are in?

I use that entry for running Neo Geo in Console mode. It's covered in my guide above if you want to do the same.

Any advice on how to have the arcade games setup better than I have it would be greatly appreciated, I use a Mac so any tools suggested would have to be compatible with OS X.

The guide I linked to above now has full Mac support after my most recent updates.

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Hope I was helpful.

[chubsta]

@MajorDangerNine thanks for the great info - when I said 'I hope' I have the right Romsets, I am pretty certain I have but with anything downloaded from the internet you are relying on someone else work and can never be sure to start off.

I am glad you suggested the file system you did as I have also decided to go down the fba and mame-libreto folder route, have emptied arcade, I have used Mame since 0.29 so am happy with the merged/non-merged stuff, I always use non-merged even though it takes up more space, I have had issues with missing files years ago so learnt a lesson there.

Ill check out that guide - I did mess with clrmamepro many years ago but ended up messing up my sets so was obviously doing something wrong, perhaps now is the time to learn how to use it properly!

I used to have a pc Mame setup which I would always update when the new version came out but it is easier running the standard Mame with the latest Romsets because you are not choosing which emulator may be working best for that game etc, the pi system of using old sets and emulators built on old builds is great for making them run on such an underpowered machine but not quite as straightforward

[MajorDangerNine]

@chubsta Welcome.

It sounds like you'll be able to handle things well.

Message me back if you have any issues. My updates to the setup guide have been somewhat haphazard, but I'm pretty sure everything is right.