MAME XML cheat

Nathan1031982

First off, I searched and didn't see this pop up at all, so sorry if it has been asked and/or solved before.
Now then, I have seen how to do cheats in MAME, and got the cheat.dat file, and was able to do everything properly with that. The thing is, I want to add a cheat that removes, IMO, pointless censorship in a game, and as far as I have seen, it's only available in XML format. However, everything for RetroPie uses a different format, and I can't find anything on converting the code from XML for use.

I would prefer to have information or tools do do this myself, in case I find out about another game I would like to do this with, but if someone wants to convert it for me that's fine as well. At this point in time, it will be the only cheat I have as I deleted the downloaded cheat.dat file since it doesn't have this one.

The specific game is Mega Twins, and the censorship is related to the game originally having captive women that you can rescue. The code is as follows :

<cheat desc="Reactivate Captive Women">
<script state="run">
<action>maincpu.mw@01F258=4E71</action>
<action>maincpu.mw@01F25A=4E71</action>
</script>
<script state="off">
<action>maincpu.mw@01F258=6600</action>
<action>maincpu.mw@01F25A=0354</action>
</script>
</cheat>

Folly

@Nathan1031982

You can use the xml data directly.

First of all you have to enable cheats in the mame.ini.
Then you have to run the game in mame with verbose mode.
After that you look into the /dev/shm/runcommand.log

It will tell you that it is looking for the cheat here :
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame/cheat/cheat/mtwins.xml

With a few try's I found that the xml data was missing something. (looking again into the runcommand.log)
Comparing it with other cheats I found that it was missing the mamecheat ID in the xml.
So I only added that and it looks like this now :

<mamecheat version="1">

  <cheat desc="Reactivate Captive Women">
    <script state="run">
      <action>maincpu.mw@01F258=4E71</action>
      <action>maincpu.mw@01F25A=4E71</action>
    </script>
    <script state="off">
      <action>maincpu.mw@01F258=6600</action>
      <action>maincpu.mw@01F25A=0354</action>
    </script>
  </cheat>

</mamecheat>

I did not play the game but in the cheat menu I could enable and disable the cheat.
It probably will work.

I advise you to take a look at our project :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-and-mame-standalone
The loaders that are installed with this script have automatically verbose mode on.
So finding problems is as easy as looking into the runcommand.log.
We also added the option to install and enable cheats with use of a default cheat.7z file which contains many cheats. (yours is not in it though)
The cheat you have can simply be added, separately, in the same directory adding cheat/mtwins.xml.

Folly

@Nathan1031982

I did not notice that you tagged your message with mame2003. (lr-mame2003)
I used mame standalone in my post.

I will have a second look.
Can't promise that I can find a solution for this.

Is it an option to use the latest regular lr-mame ?
You can just add the cheat in :
/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame/cheat/cheat/mtwins.xml

So basically you want to convert the xml to dat format, am I correct ?
Did you have a look here :
http://cheat.retrogames.com/guides.htm
http://www.mamecheat.co.uk/forums

Nathan1031982

@Folly Regular lr-mame doesn't load the ROM, so I would need to find another version of it.
In terms of the links provided, I have tried, but haven't found anything helpful so far.

Folly

@Nathan1031982

My rom works with lr-mame and mame.
You just need to find the correct rom.
You can find 0.243 roms in mame-merged.