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

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