MAME, CPS1/2/3, NeoGeo: so different but many things in common!

RetroArch General
#1

Hello everyone,

I’m a bit lost with MAME/CPS1/2/3 or NeoGeo games and playlist. I know how to launch them, but at the end I don’t understand if there’s a real difference between them.

  1. Is CPS1/2/3 or NeoGeo games are the same than MAME’s game? Do I just need only a full set of MAME only?

2.Right now, I have a specific rom folder for each system (CPS1 roms, CPS2 roms, MAME roms etc…). But regarding playlist, it’s terrible. nothing seems to be recognize when I update the thumbnails… Is there’s a ready to use playlist, with the right name in it, like Aliens VS Predators instead of AVP?

I know it can sound like a stupid question, but I just want to understand. :slight_smile:

Have a nice day.

#2

no that not a stupid question, managing roms/chds/samples and playlists for Mame in Retroarch isnt a easy thing. it will need a much research on things like rebuilding romsets/bios-files [if needed ] and creating Playlists. i recommend you make sure that your contents (romset, samples, thumbnails) match the version of the used mame-core first (cmp). than create a playlist with the AHK Playlist Buddy.

#3

The CPS1/2/3/neogeo individual cores only exist for platforms that are RAM-limited (think: Wii) and don’t have enough space to load the entire FBA core into memory and still have room for large games. I can imagine some people like to use them to have different shaders/settings for their subset of games, but otherwise, there’s no reason to use them instead of the normal FBA cores on platforms with plenty of RAM (such as PC).

FBA is derived from MAME and uses similar ROMs with a lot of overlap but if you want to use FBA, don’t just download random MAME ROMs and expect them to work. Search for the actual corresponding FBA set instead.

Scanning for arcade ROMs is weird right now. I think you need unmerged ROMs torrentzipped, since this is how many of the sets are acquired but this doesn’t help with individual ROMs downloaded from other sources. For those, you’ll need to use some sort of playlist utility or hand-write your own playlist entries.

#4

Thanks for your reply shakalakka and Hunterk. So, it means that I can use MAME for CPS1/2/3NeoGeo and of course MAME roms, alright?

So I need to use Clrmamepro I guess for cleaning my MAME roms and my CPS1/2/3/NeoGeo roms?

Only thing I understood: I just need MAME core since I’m playing on a PC with a lot of RAM. That’s still a bit confuse to me, to be honest. MAME is not working like other emulator, like the NES one: 1 rom + Nestopia = let’s play!

I’ve download (don’t ask me where as I forgot, it was age ago) CPS1/2/3 roms, NeoGeo set (full or not full, don’t know), and a MAME full set (I hope, 45 go!).

Right now i’m tryning to clean my MAME full set in order to have a nice and tidy set, and be able to create a beautiful playlist, so I will be able to display MAME thumnails.

Is it the same process for CPS1/2/3 and Neogeo? Do I need DATs file too?

1 Like
#5

Hello, i will try to give you a little overview…

There are Different Arcade Cores on Retroarch/Lakka (FBA,MAME2003,MAME2014…)

For each of that core you need the matching rom. if you not have the correct game-roms for a game it will not work.

For Start you can Check out Final Burn Alpha Core because it has automatic Playlist support and the Roms are simple to get (much fewer different versions). It plays Neo-Geo, CPS1,2,3 (and much more) with nice performance and decent accuracy on this systems . All based on one “*.dat” File for all the emulating Arcade-Systems (PCBs) together. At Moment RA/Lakka use the v0.2.97.39 Set, i think. And you can use custom playlist and playlist buddy for this one.

Next to hunting down new roms (or a complete set instead) You can also try to rebuild them with your current roms and the matching “*.dat” File in CMP. than scan the roms and add the one whos still missing.

If FBA is not “enough Arcade” to you than you have to build/download a romset for these Mame-versions:

Mame 2003-Core (mame0.78), Mame 2010-Core (mame0.139), Mame 2014-Core (mame0.159) Mame 2016-Core (mame0.174)

and handle it with AHK Playlist Buddy (this will copy the needed thumbnails as well in most cases).

P.S.: sometimes wrong roms (for a different System) will work but there are MANY which might not.

#6

Thanks for your reply.

For Start you can Check out Final Burn Alpha Core because it has automatic Playlist support and the Roms are simple to get (much fewer different versions). It plays Neo-Geo, CPS1,2,3 (and much more) with nice performance and decent accuracy on this systems . All based on one “*.dat” File for all the emulating Arcade-Systems (PCBs) together.

Where to find a .dat file for CPS1/2/3 and NeoGeo? Here: https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/tree/master/dats ? There’s nothing related to NeoGeo or CPS!!! Only Megadrive, GameGear, TurboGraFx etc…

But once I have this FBA .dat file, what I’m supposed to do with it? Using in ClrMamePro to sort the good and bad roms? (I just try for the first time yesterday evening on a unknow Mame set of 45 go… Took hour and I didn’t know exactly what i’ve done!)

I will stay focus with NeoGeo games right now, to be sure to understand how to do it exactly.

#7

Hello,

The dat File you needed can be found on your link! its the first entry in the list (the one tagged with :"Making a few things similar to upstream … ") it contents all arcade systems. the files under this are for home consoles only.

And as you expected you have to use this dat and ClrMamePro to “sort” the roms(rebuilder). and then check your roms with a scanner. Output an “miss.txt”. if your roms are on this list you are missing something. here you must download another (newer) version of the game-rom and rebuild it again (this time using the adds folder setting in CMP for the new romfile), It can be hard job to get all the roms working. I Spend a lot of Time in Rebuilding Roms-sets for Hours and Hours and Hours… and this are only about the roms. for few games you need samples to run them correctly (can be found on progettosnap).

if you have the time, disc-space and a high speed internet connection, i would recommend you strongly load a complete new romsset and then maybe use the categoy sorter to “shrink” it a bit. then you dont have to care about getting/rebuilding the right roms, bios and samples. but keep the fba version in mind on searching romsset.

ps: Seems for me you are digging in right place but you need get only a little deeper :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue: further explanations in using of CMP can be a little tricky for me because my really bad english. But here is a nice tutorial https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/30220-how-to-update-your-mame-romset-to-a-newer-version-with-clrmamepro/ they use mame but with Final Burn Alpha it is the very same process.

#8

Thanks for your reply. With your help, I understand the way i have to go.

For beginners like me, I found this tutorial, pretty simple and accurate, but in french (I’m, so it’s not really an issue for me):

So, finally:

-I’ve downloaded some NeoGeo roms few years ago. Don’t know where, neither the version. They are in my Neo Geo Roms folder. -I’ve downloaded the FBA .dat file (FB Alpha v0.2.97.39 (ClrMame Pro XML).dat) -I use CMP to “rebuild” my set. In the rebuilder option, I went to “system”, then select “NeoGeo” only for my NeoGeo roms (all my NeoGeo roms will be rebuild in a new NeoGeo roms folder).

-Then did the same for FBA:

Please see below: https://youtu.be/YlySQFE6EUM?t=3m23s

-So now, I’m supposed to have sort my roms in 2 folders: Neogeo and FBA. Actually, I have only 4 files in FBA, and 176 in Neogeo.

I don’t know what I should do now, especially with my 4 roms in FBA (ms5pcb.zip, pbobble.zip, svcpcb.zip and svcpcba.zip)…

PS: I’ve tried to be accurate in my step in order to help others beginners like me. :slight_smile:

#9

seem to me your 4 fba-roms are just fillied with neo-geo bios-rom content (think because they are mainly NG-Clones). These behaviour shows that your Roms are way to outdated and CMP isnt able to create correct roms from your current set because its missing actuall content (cmp can only made things in the zipfile such move/remove/rename) but its unable to add content thats not located in specified rom/add folders. But you can try the neo-geo games for now (they should changed not to much in past). But if there is missing content too, the games wont run.

#10

Alright, so it’s better to download a more recent version of my neogeo games?

#11

yes i think its the best way.

#12

Need help with screen resolutions but cant post is there any topics on here ?

#13

You should be able to make posts after browsing the forum for 10 min. You can use the search function to try and find related topics, or just post your question here.