MAME, proving more hassle than its worth.

Jay

Totally lost with mame, versions, rom sets? one minute it works, update then it doesn't, How do you get the latest rom set to run the latest pack, without roms that used to work stop working???

So i have a mame 2003 set, a 0,219 set, a 0.020 set, merged, unmerged, split, non split.

Why do you have to have 10 versions of it to run certain roms?

what exactly should i have? It says batocera runs 0.219 but 90 percent won't even load.

I've even filtered out all the rubbish using launchbox. 128gb down to 14gb usable ROMs. And still most won't boot

BZZ

Jay What version of Batocera are you on ? 5.25? Are you on PC x64? What exactly are you updating ?

Jay

Yes im currently on 5.25, using an odroid N2, would be a PC but its been stuck with hermes for 2 weeks.

Problem i am having is i have no idea what romset i should be using.
90% of them just wont load.

Another issue i am having is i am filtering out all the junk to just leave playable good stuff, but then cvertain ones that work are then disappearing from the list?

I used this guide here..

BZZ

Jay It is long and pointless exercise to clean rom set. Go to archive.org and download 0.78 rom set zip only. Nothing to clean just download and copy paste. Looking at supported systems libretro/mame078plus is the one you want to be using. If you read the _info.txt this is what it says:
_The system uses libretro mame2003 as default core: compatible ROMs must come from set 0.78
Special files for mame2003 core:

Add your samples files in /userdata/bios/mame2003/samples/_

I have the 078 set and 99% of roms work. I dont say 100 cause i simply didnt try them all but all i tried started and work fine.

voljega

Also do not forget to set the mame version you want to use in the EmulationStation menu for the mame system

Jay

Isn’t that an old set? I thought the latest supported was 0.219?

How big is the 0.78 set. My usual site says 57gb

BZZ

Jay 0.78 rom only first source i found on archive.org is 30gb (non-merged). Whatever set you’ll find there will be ‘duplicates’. Most full sets for Mame will include few languages and versions or revisions of the same game. Your cleaning will be choosing if you wanna keep them all or just the 1 you play.

Jay

Well i do quite like having different rom versions, for instance one of my faves is salamander, used to play that in the arcade all the time, but there is a US version of it that is different, its nice to load the different versions. Just weird when you have 25 versions of it, like a rc1 b b1 blah blah. Be nice to say have WORD US EUR, Maybe jap but scrap the rest.

BZZ

Jay In that case once you download you can simply delete the ones that are not world / us / eu and then clean the multiple revisions/hacks that the pack might contain. I just re-downloaded 0.78 and it has 4705 zip roms. I started by hiding them all. and then selected 20 that my son or me are most likely to play and scraped them. I have 3TB HDD for roms and with that pack got up to 97% of the drive being full.

voljega

You can also use this tool I wrote to keep only one version of each games :
https://github.com/Voljega/BestArcade
https://github.com/Voljega/BestArcade/releases

Jay

Ok great ill give that a go, i did what you said and id say 95% of roms will now load wich is great. Just a few here and there that dont.
The current folder size is 29gb, not to bad considering ill be using an 8tb.

Ill see if i can just clean it up a little. Get rid of all that weird playchoice stuff.

Jay

I did notice somewhere in mame there are options like you say to hide certain things. I found it once but have no idea where it is anymore.

Maybe cus I’m still on the n2

BZZ

Jay If you mean hiding roms, it is done faster via external scraper like ARRM. You select all and do ‘tag as hidden’. Done.

voljega

Well the roms will still be there and take a lot of room for nothing

BZZ

voljega He said he has 8tb… unless he download full sets for all systems and scrapes them with all extras it will take awhile to get there…

voljega

yes true…. I still would recommand my tool as it is only keeping the minimum to make it work and it is reusable each time you have to change or redo you set

Jay

Yeah 8tb is alot to fill, its for just about having a nice clean interface and not scrolling through tons of rubbish.

Anything i have tried so far seems to delete stuff i dont want deleted as well. Problem is getting into it all, im still at work all day long and hard to take it all in on an hour an evening,

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6j6ddy6e9dfmywy/IMG_20200506_192825.jpg?dl=0

The beast

jebbyderinger

The different versions of MAME are included because it’s a tradeoff between processing power required and accuracy. 0.219 will run more games, and more accurately but most will run slower (Best for Intel x86/64 systems).
I also can hardly get anything to work in 0.219 on Batocera, most freeze while loading despite using a 2.5ghz i5. My 0.139 romset works great with the exception of all the games that were properly emulated in later versions.

BZZ

jebbyderinger Indeed ;-) There used to be more cores in Mame, however they were removed. Not sure you were on forum then but there was a heated discussion about this. I didnt mind cause I simply change my rom set and didnt play it that much but many people were annoyed ;-) Just like I was when topic of removing BIN from PS2 (read file) was raised ;-) Lets see where Batocera goes.