Need Some Advice Please

awsd12

Not even the romsets mentioned in https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs ? like 0.37b5 ?, O.o

awsd12

lets say i get the romsets and place them in the retropie and non of the roms work can i just deltete everything from my usb and then redo the whole thing ? worst case scenario ???,

dankcushions

@awsd12 said in Need Some Advice Please:

@dankcushions

Not even the romsets mentioned in https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs ? like 0.37b5 ?, O.o

they're for different mame emulators and go in different folders. eg, 0.37b5 goes in the/roms/mame-mame4all/ folder. i'm trying to give you a simple option that will work, but if we go down that road then you might as well read the wiki page instead :)

lets say i get the romsets and place them in the retropie and non of the roms work can i just deltete everything from my usb and then redo the whole thing ? worst case scenario ???,

deleting roms from your usb will not remove them from the drive

awsd12

@dankcushions

hmmm I don't want to read the wiki becuase I have read so many, but im sure if i get that romset it will work no ???, also will i have to format my sd card then do this whole process again ?

herb_fargus

@awsd12 if you don't want to read the docs you won't get very far with RetroPie.

awsd12

@herb_fargus

Hey dude i watch your youtube videos :), I know i won't get far and it's not that i don't want to read them, I have, I just don't understand them, they are very basic in my opinion. Like they don't explain why you use chmplo < == sorry wrong spelling =, or if you have to use it if you have the right romset etc. I would just like some basic, descriptive answers. sorry if i offend anyone but thanks to everyone who replies thanks it helps

rbaker

@awsd12 said in Need Some Advice Please:

lets say i get the romsets and place them in the retropie and non of the roms work can i just deltete everything from my usb and then redo the whole thing ?

First of all, if you do not read the very clear and easy to understand wiki even if you have no experience, you will be forever asking questions like this one. You are then likely to give up when it goes wrong. In answer to the above question, it appears that you are using a USB stick to transfer roms. This is the most frustrating way in my experience. The easiest way by far is to get on a PC and drag and drop the roms to the correct folder. You can then reboot emulation station and your roms will be there for testing. If you do not like them or they do not work, you can just delete them. I will take you through the order that I did things as a complete beginner after installing retropie. You should follow it....

Boot retropie with a keyboard, mouse and iBuffalo gamepad. Follow autoconfigure. I could now navigate menus in emulation station. Time taken: About 20 mins.
I got a 0.37b5 romset and placed it in

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-mame4all

I did this using WINSCP, a program that I had never heard of or used before. There are hundreds of You Tube videos that explain the basics. Time taken: 1 hour to learn WINSCP and get familiar with the folder structure of Retropie and transfer the roms which are about 1.8GB in size.

I was prompted to do this by reading: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Transferring-Roms.

Start up MAME4ALL and browse the roms, select one, run it and then press TAB on the keyboard. From here, I modifed how all the roms would be controlled using my gamepad. Time taken: 30 minutes of trial and test to get the best feel.

I was prompted to do this by reading: https://github.com/RetroPie/mame4all-pi

Play for days until you decide that you want more games, more systems and more authenticity. You can then start tweaking the configs to achieve this - again using WINSCP. In fact, there is so much to tweak that you will never be bored. Dropping into this forum from time to time will allow you to learn many tricks an tweaks for a better experience.

I don't want to read the wiki becuase I have read so many.

This is madness. You cannot say that you want to play retro games but you don't want to read how to do it. I read three wiki entries to get up and running, to suggest that this is not understandable or a burden is quite frankly ridiculous.

I would just like some basic, descriptive answers

All the answers to your first set of questions are in fact fully answered in a very basic form in the wiki. But, in order to present you with an alternative description, please read this:
http://choccyhobnob.com/articles/demystifying-mame-roms/
I personally found it very good. Once read, the wiki section on managing roms becomes even clearer.

Don't like it?

Okay, What about this thread?

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2859/how-to-use-mame-with-retropie-help-guide

If after reading the examples on this excellent thread by @Floob , you still feel like you cannot do it or it is too much of a burden, there is nothing else that can be done to assist you here.

A last resort would be to abandon this site and the wiki and just watch this

and then, follow the suggested future videos.

Zigurana

@rbaker Wow! Talk about asking for shit, gets gold apples!

You have shown more effort in answering this question than the OP put into understanding the whole of Retropie.

awsd12

@Zigurana

fair enough is your comment as it is your opinion

awsd12

@rbaker

Thanks dude I think I get now, I have to read the wikis one by one and if I get stuck after attempting things my self, then ask, got it. thanks for your comment very descriptive and my bad if I came across as a hypocrite. If it is Ok I would like to ask one question which Ive looked to get an answer on was : When you get retropie on a sd card it becomes 55mb roughly in mb's from gbs, when I get roms they are big in size as in gb, wil they fit on my 32gb retropie sd card that is now mb or would i hvaeto select certain roms that fit into 55mb ? thanks once again for explaining and elaborating all other posts :)

rbaker

@awsd12

@awsd12 said in Need Some Advice Please:

When you get retropie on a sd card it becomes 55mb roughly in mb's from gbs, when I get roms they are big in size as in gb, wil they fit on my 32gb retropie sd card that is now mb

Sorry, I don't understand the question. Which roms are GB in size? The MAME4ALL romset on my SD card consists of 2290 roms. The total size of this whole set is 1.84GB. Therefore, a 32GB SD card will cope with that and many other systems in full. For example, my SNES set is 1GB with clones removed. I then have a 0.78 MAME romset for lr-mame2003, that is 7GB in size. I don't currently use all the roms from that set yet but there is enough space if I wanted to. PSX iso files start to eat up space because they are 400-600MB each. What is this 55MB figure that you refer to? Are you saying that when you burn the image, it only takes up 55MB of space? Do you mean 550MB? which is nearer the latest image size? I don't know about the latest version but the 3.8 image that I burned was 2.7GB, also what do you really mean when you say that your card is "now mb"?

wetriner

I think he may be asking about the hidden linux ext4 partition that doesn't show up when you plug the card it because the card looks like it has no space.

The card will have space for more than what it says on your computer(if you're not running linux). Check out how to transfer roms here.
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/First-Installation#transferring-roms

herb_fargus

@awsd12 also in the documentation:

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/First-Installation#install-retropie-image-on-sd-card

awsd12

@rbaker

I mean this https://gyazo.com/dc6f4069b295458ea93c20ed15130d8c , my sd card shows up like this on my pc. 36MB out of 56.8Mb Free. So my question was can I only fit 36MB worth of roms to my sd card ? even though originally it is 32GB, I know its because of retropie but was just wondering. thanks

awsd12

@rbaker

Another question I had was if I get this romset [Do NOT link to roms] then I get this DAT.file https://gyazo.com/08e0508e6f964e2b35eb50855200374c and use it in clrmamepro, will i get romset FBA 0.2.96.71 ?

Cheers

rbaker

@awsd12 you cannot put the SD card in your PC and inspect it after the image is on it. Just burn the image and place it in the Pi. It will automatically expand the file system for you to free up space.

rbaker

@awsd12 If that is a link to roms, you are in breach of the terms and conditions of the forum. You can use clrmame to build any romset using a dat file as described in the wiki. I would follow
@dankcushions advice above with regard to this. The most important thing before you begin this process is to know for sure that you have a correctly referenced set of roms. I started with MAME4all due to it's compactness

awsd12

@rbaker

Hey bud, that is not a link to roms but its a screenshot of the name of roms. Sorry but I have difficultiy understanding but from link you mentioned before from floop it helped me understand abit more really thank you, but question was If i get a romset lets say 0.77 and need 0.78 and i get a datfile to check which romsets will work with 0.78 or does it change them to 0.78? sorry if i am coming across confusing. but what i am trying to say is

"This is done using .dat files. These files hold all the details that verification programs like clrmamepro need to check against the files, so data like, filename, filesize, crc/hash checks, plus other data like manufacturer, game name etc..
With this .dat file clrmamepro can quickly run through this list and tell you if your romsets are valid against that dat file.
So, choose the emulator you want, download the .dat file and check your romset is valid for that emulator - unless you know it is definitely version xxx.

This has now been made VERY easy to do by providing the .dat files for you here:
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

The basic rebuilding principle is like this.
Lets say:
You have a galaga.zip from 0.58 (Feb 2002)
Its has 3 roms inside it.

You need the galaga.zip file for 0.78 (Dec 2003)
Lets say this should have 5 roms inside it.

But the only other galaga.zip you have is from 0.105 (Apr 2006)

The rebuilding process in clrmamepro will look at your 0.105 version, copy out any files that match the requirements for 0.78 and create a new galaga.zip that is 0.78 compatible."

rbaker

@awsd12 clrmame will take the dat file and then use it to inspect each rom file in a source folder that you specify. It will then rename the contents of each rom to match the version you require and place it in a destination folder that you also specify. You then use this new set with retropie in your emulator of choice. If you watch @herb_fargus video on the wiki, it takes you step by step how to use clrmame pro. I have used it to build a 0.78 set.

I had a full verified 0.111 set. I used it with clrmame and generated a 0.78 set. You will get more compatibility if you build down from a higher version rather than up from a power version in my experience.

awsd12

@rbaker said in Need Some Advice Please:

e an

So basically what I mentioned above is what clrmamepro does ?, I can get set 0.77 and clrmamepro will verify and check files that will work for 0.78 but its better to get a higher version for example 0.81 and then use clrmamepro with a dat file to make it into a 0.78 romset ? Do I have to do this for each emulator ?