How to MAME in Retroarch

RetroArch General
#1

I have been looking everywhere for some concise and direct information on how to get the right roms and the right bios files working for arcade games in retoarch. I have been experimenting with retoarch and MAME core 2014, and I have found some ROMS work just fine without me seeming to do anything. Other roms don’t work at all not matter what I try. It is confusing and frustrating.

I understand that the ROMS I download need to be compatible with my version of MAME, and that the 2014 version of MAME is 0.159. Looking for 0.159 rom sets has proved difficult, however, and many games from emuparadise that are rated for other versions work just fine.

I understand I need bios files to run certain games, but I don’t know which games require which bios files.I also don’t know where exactly to put the bios files. Is it in the system folder, as I did for my other emulators? Is it in the same directory as the rom as is standard for standalone MAME? Neither seems to be working for me.

I don’t know how to verify the integrity of my roms and my bios files. I don’t have a way to trouble shoot what went wrong when my games don’t work.

The most common error I have run into, is the rom loads and nothing happens (black screen), or the rom loads and says something like “Loading (0%)” and never progresses.

#2

I understand that the ROMS I download need to be compatible with my version of MAME, and that the 2014 version of MAME is 0.159. Looking for 0.159 rom sets has proved difficult,

then maybe use a different core for a MAME version you can find? retroarch has several MAME cores.

the simplest way to get mame to work properly is to get an entire romset for the core you’re using, and stick all the .zip files in your roms directory and then everything should work.

#3

You can download the next one you can find and convert it to 0.159 (Non-Merged) with the right dat file and ClrMamePro. I downloaded 0.161 and did this, and haven’t had a problem with any game I’ve tried so far.

#4
  1. MAME BIOS files go in the same folder as your games.
  2. To verify the integrity of your ROMs there are a few options but the most popular tools are probably Clrmamepro and Romcenter. Now you have a starting point you can lookup a tutorial for one or both of those tools that will help you more than a brief forum post ever could.
#5

i think even if you are able to fix or update romsets using clrmamepro, the roms will still not get detected by retroarchs scan directory option, since playlist is based on checksum of the whole rom-zip and not if the romset is complete or has the complete romfiles with right crc each. any-way Retroarch’s scans by this method sometime soon?

#6

The second AutoHotKey script in the second post of this thread is a pretty easy way of generating a playlist from a folder of MAME ROMs.

If you want the playlist to have gameplay and title screen images, run the first AHK script in that post before running the playlist AHK. Detailed instructions are over there.

#7

I am curious as to why nobody has mentioned ume2014 which if I understand correctly is universal machine emulator with mame and mess intertwined. I haven’t tried it yet but wouldn’t that be the best core to use?

#8

Because he didn’t ask which emulator to use. Even if he had of done why would anyone recommend something they have no experience of using?

While I’m at it … you appear to have the writing style of an older person and yet that forum name?

#9

[QUOTE=Duckeenie;51388]Because he didn’t ask which emulator to use. Even if he had of done why would anyone recommend something they have no experience of using?

While I’m at it … you appear to have the writing style of an older person and yet that forum name?[/QUOTE]

Because he didn’t ask which emulator to use. Even if he had of done why would anyone recommend something they have no experience of using?

While I’m at it. You appear to have the writing style of an older person and yet … that forum name?

#10

I have a 161 set and everything i’ve tried works with the MAME 2014 core. There wouldn’t have been many changes between 159 and 161. But as the user above said, you can use one of those rom auditing tools to convert the set to a previous version of your choice.