Brand New to MAME and needing help...

[Cynicaster]

For the curious, MAME ROM sets change for several reasons.

 

 

That's a pretty good explanation. The only thing I'd add to supplement it is that a lot of the updates these days are strictly in the interest of documenting the old technology as accurately as possible and have negligible impacts to those who just want to play the games. Put another way, the idea of "being more accurate" sounds desirable and could possibly be motivation to update, but in practice, that accuracy increase might not make a shred of a difference in the player experience (other than maybe to require a stronger PC to run the emulator at full speed).

[mr_me]

One of the stumbling blocks in getting things like mame to work is dealng with the misinformation on the internet and filtering through the bad advise to get to the good. For better or worse the trend for technical support is user forums where the developers and experts answers are mixed with all the other stuff. The answers are out there, it just takes another type of skill to find it.

[Keatah]

Probably better considering the support given to the general consumer.

[zzip]

I've been a mame user since the before it was called mame. All I can say is it's definitely a pain in the butt, but once it's wotking, it's awesome.

 

Basically you need the right romsets. If you get ones from older versions of mame, chances are they won't work. Problem is the sites you get them from often don't make it clear which mame version they are for, so sometimes you will have to download several.

 

Once you have it working it will make you paranoid about upgrading, because often some of your roms will stop working, or a favorite feature might be removed.

 

Yes it contains mess, and yes it works pretty well. Again you have to find the right romsets to get it to work. The ones you have for other emulators may not cut it anymore.

 

I just recently upgraded to the latest, and I can say it works pretty well, although the size of the binary is insane! It now contains emulators for everything but the kitchen sink, and at this point it wouldn't shock me if there was a kitchen sink emulator in there.

[mr_me]

For information on MAME goto to their website. They have an FAQ that includes an explanation of why rom files are sometimes not compatible.

 

http://mamedev.org/

 

For support use one of their recommended community forums. The information there should be better.

 

http://forum.mamedev.org/

http://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=1

 

When it comes to MESS and console emulation, I found the system rom files (bios roms) are sometimes packaged differently than other emulators but the game rom files can be exactly the same.

Edited January 21, 2017 by mr_me

[airsoftmodels]

I am running Linux Mint. MAME .160 comes in the repos. It's not that great, for the reasons mentioned above. It doesn't run well with most of the roms I throw at it. Also, it lacks a front end by default. I am not that satisfied with Gnome Video Arcade, the front-end that comes in the repos. I installed Wine, so that I can install any number of MAME versions for windows. I am very happy with MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. Wish I could afford to buy myself a Capcom arcade cabinet and a NEO GEO cabinet, but for now I am really happy with emulating the fabulous beat em ups of the 1990's. Maybe I will invest in an Xgaming X-Arcade joystick.

[fujidude]

I am running Linux Mint. MAME .160 comes in the repos. It's not that great, for the reasons mentioned above. It doesn't run well with most of the roms I throw at it. Also, it lacks a front end by default. I am not that satisfied with Gnome Video Arcade, the front-end that comes in the repos. I installed Wine, so that I can install any number of MAME versions for windows. I am very happy with MAME32 Plus! Plus! 0.119. Wish I could afford to buy myself a Capcom arcade cabinet and a NEO GEO cabinet, but for now I am really happy with emulating the fabulous beat em ups of the 1990's. Maybe I will invest in an Xgaming X-Arcade joystick.

 

Give Q-MAME Cat II (QMC2) a try.