Mame 37b5, Rom folder, Player 2 Controls and Attract Mode

dankcushions

if you're cherry-picking the ones you want to transfer across anyway i see no reason not to go with the more compatible and larger mame2003 0.78 romset collection. i mean, you don't even have to download the whole 0.78 romset collection - you can download the individual roms. if you don't want tekken, just don't download it :P

remember the year of the romset collection doesn't just dictate the latest games that it collects. 2003 (0.78) will also run the games from the 80-90s more accurately than 2000 (0.37b5), as well as run more games from that era.

sirhenrythe5th

@jamietuley there DO exist sites where you can still download single files and so you can cherry pick directly without searching and downloading a Full Rom-Set for 37b5.
Of course we cannot give you links here, but i recommend to search just for something like "old mame roms" i.e. with a search-engine.

Side-Effect: there will be a lot of roms, that have not changed over the time or are still compatible with newer Versions.
I used one of the sites and picked a lot of the roms the site-owner used with an older Version of MacMAME. Over 90% run with Mame4all as well as with AdvanceMame (0.106 Romset under the hood).

So: try & error can bring quit good results without really searching for a special romset. After 100s of upgrades that can be very hard to find any for 0.18beta5 for example.
And you can use Rom-Managers anyway to get incompatible ones to run ;)

Efriim

@jamietuley
In emulation station.

press the "select" button with a rom selected then choose "edit this game's metadata"
choosing delete it will delete the file too. If you change it to hidden it will only be hidden in kid or kiosk mode. You can also "Scrape" and the built-in scraper will search the database for that rom and find artwork and metadata for it automatically.

now back out and press the "start" button.
The first menu item is SCRAPER, in this you can change the database that is searched when using the built-in scraper to search for artwork and metadata (SkyScraper is an optional retropie_package that is more in depth for scraping roms than the built-in and for creating quality art, it can be used to search for preview videos as well).

Go back to main menu.
Enter UI SETTINGS. Here you can change the UI MODE to kiosk or kid mode which will hide some menu items and also any hidden games. There is a screensaver behavior setting that will play the random videos of your roms if you have scraped any videos using skyscraper. Change transition style to instant.

Go back to Main Menu
Enter GAME COLLECTION SETTINGS. Select "AUTOMATIC GAME COLLECTIONS" and check Favourites and Last Played. This will enable all of your favourites to exist together in ES.

If you add the frontendchooser to retropiemenu as I posted earlier it will require a keyboard to navigate. Perhaps @mitu will know how to invoke joy2key.py to enable the controller to be used in an added menu script.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#joy2key?
/home/$USER/frontend-chooser/retropie-frontendchooser

jamietuley

Thanks for the info @dankcushions..

So I think my route would be to cherry pick from the 0.78 romset :)

I have found somewhere that has a ‘full non-merged romset’ and I think I am able to download individual rom zip files..

Just one thing though, take 1942 for example. There are 3 different zip files to choose from 1942, 1942a and 1942b. Then on the compatibility list supplied on the retro pie MAME section the list says that 1942a and 1942b have the parent rom of 1942.

Is it that this list doesn’t refer to a ‘full non-merged romset’? so if for example I just downloaded 1942a, it would run fine without the parent rom 1942?

jamietuley

@Efriim as always huge thanks for such in depth help!!

I shall be sitting down with these instructions tomorrow when I have a day off work :-D

dankcushions

@jamietuley said in Mame 37b5, Rom folder, Player 2 Controls and Attract Mode:

Just one thing though, take 1942 for example. There are 3 different zip files to choose from 1942, 1942a and 1942b. Then on the compatibility list supplied on the retro pie MAME section the list says that 1942a and 1942b have the parent rom of 1942.
Is it that this list doesn’t refer to a ‘full non-merged romset’? so if for example I just downloaded 1942a, it would run fine without the parent rom 1942?

yes, so in this case there are three variants of the game 1942 - 1942, 1942a and 1942b. if these are 'non-merged' romsets, then any one of those will contain all the files it needs to run, with no dependencies. 1942 being the parent of 1942a and 1942b will make no difference.

the parent aspects of MAME only matter with split romsets - see https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Validating,-Rebuilding,-and-Filtering-ROM-Collections#crash-course-in-arcade-rom-terminology

whether you need the BIOS files present or not depends on how the the non-merged romset collection was built.

quicksilver

@dankcushions said in Mame 37b5, Rom folder, Player 2 Controls and Attract Mode:

(i should say that i misspoke before - according to that link you still need the BIOS files for romsets that need them, even when using a non-merged romset. however i believe that one can build a collection where even the BIOS files are integrated)

Are you sure? According to what you linked it says:

"Full Non-merged: All ROM sets can be used standalone because each zip contains all the files needed to run that game, including any ROMs from 'parent' ROM sets and BIOS sets. "

dankcushions

@quicksilver yes it depends on whether it's "full non-merged" vs "non-merged" (see same link). i've never seen any romsites makes this distinction so now I don't want to imply that you are safe to ignore BIOS files. it depends on who built the collection.

reworded my reply a bit.

quicksilver

@dankcushions Ah I see, thanks for the clarification. I have pretty good grasp of mame but I still am learning new things!

jamietuley

@dankcushions thanks for this. The site I'm getting the 0.78 says they are FULL non merged do I guess that's safe cherry picking. I have a selection of my own personal favourites plus I've looked at some top 100 classic arcade games lists and going to grab those also. Im sure I'll add more over time but this should be a good base selection.
Then I can move onto sorting the front end through @Efriim very helpful instructions!
Thanks again to all in this post who have helped.. I'm sure you'll hear from me again soon 😉

Efriim

@jamietuley
It is possible to change the order of the emulator/systems in emulationstation, it is a rather manual process, from the command line
cp /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/
This file contains relevant system information for EmulationStation as well as the alphabetical list of systems.
Now you can edit this using nano recommended only if using the terminal directly accessed by pressing "F4" (type exit to begin emulationstation again)
nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg
(Hold Shift to highlight, Ctrl+K to Cut, Ctrl+U to uncut)
or
through the network share by finding \\\configs\all\emulationstation\es_systems.cfg
and using your windows text editor.

It is important to keep the enclosing brackets <system></system> intact when selecting the text to change the system order.

I would just skip attract mode. There are some pretty good themes in ES and you can still configure the order of the systems.

Pegasus FE is perhaps a better alternative to AttractMode