Need some serious help with mame and Mala

[AppleQueso]

Yeah that'll run pretty much anything you'd need from Mame.

[CRTGAMER]

I just got the neogeo bios so that is working now. And YES, I am looking to have a dedicated MAME machine that I can just hide the OS and use my arcade sticks from booting with no mouse or keyboard needed. What frontend would you recommend? I'm looking at gameex right now as an alternative.

I agree Mame32/MameUI is not as pretty but it can be set to Maximum view size to fill the screen. I like it because it is very functional due to all the powerful list params I posted earlier. There are even selectable Screen Shots and History that can be viewed in the MameUI and Mame32 Front End. The Mame Front end is set to the same keys used in a game. If a full Arcade Controller is used, its already emulating the keyboard.

Arrow Keys - To scroll down the game menu list/ Used for direction control in a game
Return - To select a game / Used for Player One Start in a game
ESC - To get back to the Front End / This will need to be added to one of the buttons

I set my Arcade Stick by the older Mame default params for Coins and Start. The 1 key is for Player One Coins and the Return Key is for Player One Start. ESC is tricky, it has to be off to the side so it does not get accidently pressed. What key do other Front Ends use to get out of a game?

[loganm187]

I need some serious help with this MAME stuff. I have xmen and battletoad arcade roms and MAME keeps requesting CHD files. I KNOW THESE GAMES DON'T HAVE CHD files. What is going on? If there is anyone on this forum that could help me out via skype or chat somewhere I would be VERY grateful!

[AppleQueso]

Mame32/MameUI stuff.

MAME32 is going to make it glaringly obvious that you're running everything on a PC. That's kinda not at all what he wants.

I don't know why you're so adamant on pushing MamueUI/Mame32 all the time when people start asking about frontends. If they're asking about ways to make MAME a little more user friendly for general use or something that's one thing, but it really has no place in a cabinet build or mame-only system where you want the OS to stay hidden.

loganm187: I went ahead and downloaded the newest version of mame and the battletoads rom to try it out. I get the same problem you're getting, asking about missing ROM files and CHD images. I'm not totally sure what's going on there, as I've definitely played this game via MAME before. Hm.

[CRTGAMER]

MAME32 is going to make it glaringly obvious that you're running everything on a PC. That's kinda not at all what he wants.

I don't know why you're so adamant on pushing MamueUI/Mame32 all the time when people start asking about frontends. If they're asking about ways to make MAME a little more user friendly for general use or something that's one thing, but it really has no place in a cabinet build or mame-only system where you want the OS to stay hidden.

Agree that it shows the fact that the arcade roms are emulated with the OS appearance. The OP also had an issue that MameUI Menu has to be operated with a Keyboard and Mouse. I posted a way to make it work with an Arcade Stick.

I tried a couple of Front ends on Mame Cabs and found they were okay and friendly as just an alphabetical or genre listing. This works if only the total amount of games are not huge. However, when one has almost a 1000 games then the MameUI Frontend makes better sense when searching by Year, Genre, Controller, Manufacturer etc. Even having a mini keyboard in a inconspicuous slide out tray becomes useful for pulling a particular game. For example typing in GAL jumps the list down to find Galaxian more quickly.

@ logan - I know you want to hide the OS to give the complete appearance of a multi Arcade Cab, just pointing out the list capabilities in Mame itself that an add on Frontend cannot do. Just something to consider if you plan on loading up a lot of games.

As for the CHD error, this is one of the headaches of Mame. Ever new Mame adds support for more games but it leads to changing the layout of existing Roms, errors such as the CHD or in some cases removal of Roms. Now I'm wondering if there are Hard Drive versions of those Arcade games.

Sometimes its handy to have an older Mame as an alternate load for games removed. For example Pong was removed due to not true emulation. Some Gambling Games were also removed since they were considered not true games.

[AppleQueso]

As for the CHD error, this is one of the headaches of Mame. Ever new Mame adds support for more games but it leads to changing the layout of existing Roms, errors such as the CHD or in some cases removal of Roms. Now I'm wondering if there are Hard Drive versions of those Arcade games.

This was my first thought, however the website i used had up-to-date romsets, so it's hard to say. I'll have to dig into it more later.

[loganm187]

Yea, With the newest version of mame it will not play battle toads, but I downloaded an older version and it plays Battle toads just fine, but will not play killer instinct 1 or 2! I have the CHD files as the new version of mame see's it and runs them fine, but the older version just says the CHD is missing. GRRRRRR. I was talking to people that use the hyper spin Front end and they said using MAMEUI is easier and makes no difference once Hyper spin is installed because it creates an .ini file once installed with mameui anyway. Some of what i just said might be worded wrong as i'm just learning this lol

[AppleQueso]

Yea, With the newest version of mame it will not play battle toads, but I downloaded an older version and it plays Battle toads just fine, but will not play killer instinct 1 or 2! I have the CHD files as the new version of mame see's it and runs them fine, but the older version just says the CHD is missing. GRRRRRR. I was talking to people that use the hyper spin Front end and they said using MAMEUI is easier and makes no difference once Hyper spin is installed because it creates an .ini file once installed with mameui anyway. Some of what i just said might be worded wrong as i'm just learning this lol

Yeah it can get kinda crazy.

you can always just keep multiple versions of MAME around, if you have a frontend that supports multiple emulators in a single list it won't even be noticeable.

[Nyukki]

Your pc specs sound like they should be good enough to run hyper spin pretty decently. I use hyper spin and gameex on my htpc, both are very easy to setup if Mame is your only concern. Hyperspin looks awesome, but if you experience any lag then I would go with gameex due to lower requirements.

Gameex, though less flashy, is great for finding new games because every time you select a game it recommends similar games or games from the same year, publisher, genre etc. If I'm playing on my own I use gameex and HS when friends come over.

One problem I encountered when getting Mame roms to run is that the roms were not from the same set as the emulator. Basically, if you're running Mame 0.145, then you need the 0.145 romset otherwise many roms won't be compatible due to certain updates to the emulator. Do some googling to find the romset that matches your emulator and vice versa.

Good luck in building your cab. Something I've been wanting to do for ages. Upload pics when you're done!

[Nyukki]

For some reason when I go on the forum with my iPad I can't see the last page of threads. I see the Mame version issue has already been addressed.

FYI for my setup I'm using quite an old Mame emu and romset from UG's hyperspin project (0.139 I think) and it plays everything I want to play flawlessly, plus it's been hacked to get rid of loading screens and it saves my high scores.