Mame help needed.

First I'd best start by saying hello to the community. First time post and its about my recent experiences with Mame and setting it up. I recently rekindled an old interest in emulators and I am a bit lost as to where things have gone with mame and its various front ends. At the moment I am using the most recent version of Emuloader and likewise with Mame (0.150b)

I have not included all my old roms as yet because I have a few large chd files I got recently that i'd like to get running - so I'll leave what I know works till I have the difficult stuff out the way first, anyways, my problem at the moment is basically that I have a few chd files (various of the virtua striker series) and I am a bit unsure as to how to have these games appear in emuloader when I do a rom scan because they aint showing their faces as things stand, and I have made a folder and decompressed the chd zip, letting the folder name be made automatically via WinRAR, maybe the folder name isn't the right match though??

I do have a working chd game that shows up - I took a chd folder and its parent rom from an archive to test and it works ok but its the ones I downloaded recently that I am having an issue with. Another general question is mame roms not appearing in emuloaders rom scan. Now, the chd files that I have have also been matched with the Mame exe for that rom version, i.e. 0.144 for virtua striker, but it hasn't made a difference but in general and from past experience, I have always found this a problem. Is this down to individual roms and their mame types or is it an issue with emuloader and mame working together? I doubt it's the latter but a head-scratcher nonetheless.

I have not really tinkered with emulators for about 10 years, its that long but I plan on maybe building a mame driving cabinet if I can get my hands on a decent upright with steering wheel and whatever but have had to think twice about what can be emulated at the mo but that's a future project, right now I need to at least get my head round the issues I have raised and any help would be very much appreciated.


Regards,

tommy

I have not included all my old roms as yet because I have a few large chd files I got recently that i'd like to get running - so I'll leave what I know works till I have the difficult stuff out the way first, anyways, my problem at the moment is basically that I have a few chd files (various of the virtua striker series) and I am a bit unsure as to how to have these games appear in emuloader when I do a rom scan because they aint showing their faces as things stand, and I have made a folder and decompressed the chd zip, letting the folder name be made automatically via WinRAR, maybe the folder name isn't the right match though??

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Long shot here but you do know chd are not games right? chds are hard drive snap shots used by a game or two. To play area51 you run the game not the CHD, but the CHD must be set up right so that the game can use it.

I do have a working chd game that shows up - I took a chd folder and its parent rom from an archive to test and it works ok but its the ones I downloaded recently that I am having an issue with. Another general question is mame roms not appearing in emuloaders rom scan. Now, the chd files that I have have also been matched with the Mame exe for that rom version, i.e. 0.144 for virtua striker, but it hasn't made a difference but in general and from past experience, I have always found this a problem. Is this down to individual roms and their mame types or is it an issue with emuloader and mame working together? I doubt it's the latter but a head-scratcher nonetheless.

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Again long shot here as I really have a hard time reading your sentences( see bold ). That is a lot of butts and commas Though, every version of mame must match the right rom files and the right CHD files. I dont know what you mean by a emulator scanner, do you mean the mame game list? If so then yes, games that don't show up are out of date.

ulaoulao said:

Long shot here but you do know chd are not games right? chds are hard drive snap shots used by a game or two. To play area51 you run the game not the CHD, but the CHD must be set up right so that the game can use it.

Again long shot here as I really have a hard time reading your sentences( see bold ). That is a lot of butts and commas Though, every version of mame must match the right rom files and the right CHD files. I dont know what you mean by a emulator scanner, do you mean the mame game list? If so then yes, games that don't show up are out of date.

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Ok - sorry for the punctuation, commas and all that but its a habit so try and bear with me

What I am trying to say is that I want to run games that consist of chd files. I know they are hd images and that they cannot be run from mame. From what I gather there is always a smaller zip to accompany the larger chd file. The chd file should be in a sub folder in the roms directory and the other smaller zip in the roms directory with everything else.

I think that's about right?

The chd (killer instinct) was downloaded ages ago and has a sub folder in the roms directory with the chd file and a smaller zip file in the roms folder and that works ok, so I am trying to figure how to get the newer sets I recently downloaded to run but cannot see the games, when I run 'create games list' via emuloader these games do not show, others do, just not the newer chd sets I have tried.

The other question was if mame roms required their exact mame version. i.e. Does a rom that states 0.144 (for example) require mame 0.144 version to run? I'm confused because that would mean a complete rom re-audit every time a new mame version came out. Or would it?

Thanks for the earlier reply and hopefully I put it a bit more coherent...


Regards,

tommy

Looks to me like you have the CHD's all set.
"cannot see the games" Again this means they are not the right version. If we are talking games here and not CHD then you just need the right versions of the roms. Try Clrmamepro (cmpro) for auditing games. Even if you have the wrong version of the CHD the game will show up.

The other question was if mame roms required their exact mame version. i.e. Does a rom that states 0.144 (for example) require mame 0.144 version to run? I'm confused because that would mean a complete rom re-audit every time a new mame version came out. Or would it?

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Ok this is your problem, the answer is yes. I know its lame but its the way the mame dev works. The way most of use use arcade set is by using rom torrent sites where they keep uptodate versions. When you want to upgrade to a new version you just update the torrent files. I can't help you with that but some google searching all will come clear.

Hi ulaoulao,

I worked it out eventually, it was the sub directory naming that was wrong but the games still don't show unless I change emuloader to show non-working games but even when I do manage to run the games, they either hang at a black screen just as the game should begin or fail to start up completely with messages about missing parts or bios and I have included relevant bios which took the process past the initial mame messages but as I said, stalls showing only a black screen.

I am assuming the roms/chd are just not emulated as yet maybe - the mame version is matched to the rom type (0.144 in this instance..) and the required bios are working too and a couple of the games almost get there...anyways its Naomi based games and maybe too early for proper emulation as yet(?) I think that's the issue here, though I'd love to be told wrong. My laptop is a decent spec so I don't think that is an issue either though I have a brute of a pc to use in a cabinet eventually if the missus will allow me an upright driving one...and to think, I had an upright outrun years ago...anyways many thanks again and i'll suss out cmpro as you suggest - I think I been there before though and couldn't work it but i'll see what I find.

Many thanks,

tommy

hang at a black screen just as the game should begin - not sure what that is, if a game does nto work it says "game not working" or something like that.
fail to start up completely with messages about missing parts or bios - This means the zip is missing the right files see below.

You may have mixed merged and unmerged sets. Some roms share files with others( merged ) and others have all the parts needed to run ( unmerged )

Again its best to get an auditing tool.