MAME is unnecessarily frustrating with the endless updates that make files that worked fine before now suddenly wrong. I am running MAMEUI64 0.172 and it runs almost all the games, though Galaga does not work, and all the vector games that worked with Windows XP don't work. Not a single one. I can't figure out why and nobody here had any idea why either. Conversely, some games that I didn't even realize I had now work and appear in the list of games so I think that you'll never get all your roms to work on one version of MAME but this one is close, albeit minus all the vector games.

Are you using a front end? I couldn't get it to do anything via the command line version of MAME.

Way too difficult for me! MAME is unnecessarily frustrating with the endless updates that make files that worked fine before now suddenly wrong.

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with images of the original arcade game's ROM and disk data, MAME attempts.

I am running MAMEUI64 0.172 and it runs almost all the games, though Galaga does not work, and all the vector games that worked with Windows XP don't work. Not a single one. I can't figure out why and nobody here had any idea why either. Conversely, some games that I didn't even realize I had now work and appear in the list of games so I think that you'll never get all your roms to work on one version of MAME but this one is close, albeit minus all the vector games.

Are you using a front end? I couldn't get it to do anything via the command line version of MAME. Way too difficult for me!How hard is it to find chd files? You know how it goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it.Exactly. So long as you don't have the 'newer, because. Newer' mentality just find one that works for you and stick with it. I've been running v122 - a build from 2007 - for over 5 years now.

In the intervening years, a few new games became available in later versions that really interested me (Cave shoot-em-ups), so I got a slightly newer version just to play those games, which took me all of 10 minutes to set up. Multiple MAME versions might seem messy, but it's really kind of transparent when you run a front end.As for CHDs, that gets to be a LOT of data to track down. I briefly looked into it a few years ago, and when I realized how big the files were (collectively), I stopped and asked myself 'wait, what games that use CHDs do I actually want to play?' I couldn't answer the question so I forgot about it. Seriously-are they are any CHD games that are worth a crap? And if so, are they still worth a crap in the context of a home MAME cabinet with generic controls?

Not being a smart ass, I'm genuinely curious if anybody can name a few that I should be looking into. So long as you don't have the 'newer, because. Newer' mentality just find one that works for you and stick with it. I've been running v122 - a build from 2007 - for over 5 years now. In the intervening years, a few new games became available in later versions that really interested me (Cave shoot-em-ups), so I got a slightly newer version just to play those games, which took me all of 10 minutes to set up. Multiple MAME versions might seem messy, but it's really kind of transparent when you run a front end.As for CHDs, that gets to be a LOT of data to track down.

I briefly looked into it a few years ago, and when I realized how big the files were (collectively), I stopped and asked myself 'wait, what games that use CHDs do I actually want to play?' I couldn't answer the question so I forgot about it.

Seriously-are they are any CHD games that are worth a crap? And if so, are they still worth a crap in the context of a home MAME cabinet with generic controls? Not being a smart ass, I'm genuinely curious if anybody can name a few that I should be looking into.I was able to track down a file set waiting to unpack the mame to see if it works on the computer. Then it's a matter of what you said. What do I want to play lol.

Or you pay people to do it for you, depending on requirements it's not that expensive:I can tell you that even just getting the ROMs/Screenshots/etc. From the DVDs to my HDD was a royal pain, I'm glad I didn't try to download the kaboodle as well, anyway sets need to match the mame version to minimize incompatibilities, I only purchase a single set a year and given the 'new' additions are marginal at best I'm a happy camper, whatever version the set is at that's the mameUI version I use.I am considering starting to get the HDD version fully config-ed already. Seems like a better use of my time (13 DVDs is a lot to go through however you look at it).Once the 'mess' part of mame would get up to par then it's gonna be epic, all arcades and all consoles and all 'home' computers (or reasonable computers) in one giant ass emulator!!! Learning a front-end and all its requirements and ideosyncracies is just as bad as mame itself. And each one is different.

At least mame is now somewhat consistent. I'm hesitant to sing praises just yet because I feel there is a lot of work still to be done.On the other hand people want and expect mame to work like a smartphone app. That isn't going to happen either as long as there are traditional PCs around. You're just going to have to muddle through it and get by as best you can. Edited July 3, 2016 by Keatah. 150 bucks though?The DVDs only set you back around 25US$ on mamedvds (or just 15US$ if you skip the CHDs), the lazarus site sells the mame HDD for 100 (with both roms and CHDs), 150 is from romcollector but it includes also the lasergames (all of them, daphne collection included). So you've got plenty of choices depending on what your needs are.keep in mind S&H is separate, but always reasonableIf you prefer downloading them yourself be my guest, as I said I've not yet bought full fledged HDDs yet (likely next time) but I did buy DVDs sets from mamedvds (first time ROMs + laserdiscs, second time ROMs + CHDs) and here on the forums a user bought HDDs from both romcollector and lazarus and he was happy (he actually pointed me at those URLs)It depends on much you value your own time and how long it's going to take to you to do the same thing.

I am not sure how much bandwidth you have at your place etc. So up to you, it's all about choices.I decided I can spend some cash to get someone else to do the grunt work. You may actually like instead doing it yourself, to each his own. Once the 'mess' part of mame would get up to par then it's gonna be epic, all arcades and all consoles and all 'home' computers (or reasonable computers) in one giant ass emulator!!!I don't think this will ever happen.

The MESS part of MAME works with machines (classic computers) which have a more complex interface like keyboard, expansion ports, and other various things. Arcade games have simple interfaces, a couple of buttons and perhaps a potentiometer or optical encoder or two.A classic computer is complex and varied enough to warrant its own stand-alone emulator at this time. Think WinUAE, Altirra, Stella, WinVice, AppleWin, and many many others. Can you imagine the nightmare of cramming all of Altirra's pull-down menus into the MAME & MESS scheme of things?The amount of effort to actually do that and do it correctly is more than they can handle, let alone actually know how to do.

I best believe for the foreseeable future there continue to be stand-alone emulations for the classic computers.-Sure there have been attempts at making all-in-one emulators and they all fizzled. Never gained traction. Even attempts at an 'Emulator O/S' have been tried.I believe the best solution (and compromise) to the All-In-One Emulator is to have a dedicated emu rig and consider each emulator to simply be a module. You can get one of those cute little Intel NUCs or build your own ITX, whatever. At the very least have one single master folder.In time you'll come to think of either the folder or the rig as your big-ass emulator!

That's an excellent writeup and summary.My current beef with mame is when I changed the BIOS locations to /./mame/bios/, the roms for the games or carts now had to go there too. Couldn't put the roms in /./mame/roms/Both roms and bios had to be under the same folder. Well fuck that I want them separate!!Couldn't make them separate. I may be missing something obvious in the ini file.

The documentation, while improving, is not clear on some of the finer details.I noticed that -createconfig doesn't make an ini file with 'softwarepath = software' or 'biospath=bios'. And yet these are options. '-Createconfig' should create all available options. Despite all my bitch'n & moan' I still believe mame to be utterly and totally awesome. I one time had a fantasy dream about being a time traveller going back to the early 80's with an R-Pi hidden inside a VCS cartridge. Then going on tour as the world's greatest programmer and magician. Demoing all the arcade games on hardware that fits in a pocket.

I even had my own custom version of Winux 11 which monitored the timeline to ensure no inversions were happening by way of not showing games that hadn't been invented yet. Edited July 8, 2016 by Keatah. I've mostly had easy times with Mame. But I've been using it since it was just a Pacman emulator However one thing I have not done in decades is try to start from COMPLETE SCRATCH. Zero mame, zero roms.

Like if I started with nothing but a blank hard drive and wanted to get my arcade groove going. Since it's been several years since I touched Mame I figured this discussion would be a good time to try. I thought I'd start small and go for digdug and pacman as mentioned aboveInitial findings:1. I found windows command line binary. Started with that and figured I'd deal with MameUI later. Tried running mame64.exe by itself and whoah. Wtf is this??I'm not sure how this got all populated the way it did, but nothing seems to launch.

My guess is those are all public domain roms? Also what the heck,.Atari 2600 and Genesis?? When did that happen? Ignoring those for now.2. I searched for puckman.zip and digdug.zip on Usenet (e.g.

) and downloaded what I found, and shoved it in the ROMS folder3. From a command linen, ran 'MAME64 PUCKMAN', and 'MAME64 DIGDUG' and on both it immediately complained my romsets were incomplete. For example it said 'pm1-1.7f' was missing from puckman.zip4. Searched google and downloaded puckman rom from5. Running 'mame64 puckman' works great and pacman is running.Anyway. That's it for the first few minutes of trying. I'm annoyed that the roms from usenet didn't work but will look into that later.

My first impressions were that mame seems to have changed a lot over the past years. What the heck is up with it showing Genesis and Atari 2600 platforms? I don't understand that. However once you can find a correct rom like I did for Puckman, it appears to work as it always has with a simple call to the zip file working for the most part with minimal config.My next steps to try are to see how 'easy' or how fast can I get a relatively complete set of roms for arcade games, ignoring CHD's and mechanical, and any of the other odd stuff like that.

I'll check usenet, torrents, IRC, and websites in that order. The last thing will be doing the fluff like artwork/bezels etc. Hp 2850 printer. Just a report.

Edited July 8, 2016 by NE146.