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Sewermania RPK in MAME 195


etownandy

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I was trying to play Sewermania earlier from the rpk file I found on WHTECH. I'm using SDLMame for Mac v.195.

I get as far as entering my name. Once I hit ENTER, I get stuck on a plain blue screen and appear to be locked up.

Is this a bad dump? Other MB/MBX-optional titles seem to work just fine (including BigFoot, one of my favorites).

 

I'd really like to help Dave find the bomb. :)

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Works for me. Try the zip file (sewerman.zip). It must be put in the roms folder or elsewhere in the ROMPATH (see mame.ini).

 

Run mame as

 

 

mame64 ti99_4a -ioport peb -ioport:peb:slot3 speech -cart sewerman

 

(if you want speech output)

Edited by mizapf
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Works for me. Try the zip file (sewerman.zip). It must be put in the roms folder or elsewhere in the ROMPATH (see mame.ini).

 

Run mame as

mame64 ti99_4a -ioport peb -ioport:peb:slot3 speech -cart sewerman

(if you want speech output)

 

Was a ZIP supposed to be attached to that message? The ZIP on whtech gives me "invalid image."

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Here are the two Sewermania ROMs I'm trying.

 

By way of comparison, I can get Bigfoot to work (including speech) just fine - so I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.

 

The ZIP gives me an "invalid image" error.

The RPK runs up to entering my name, after which is freezes on a solid blue screen.

Sewerman.zip

mbx_sewermania.rpk

bigfoot.rpk

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Was a ZIP supposed to be attached to that message? The ZIP on whtech gives me "invalid image."

 

How do you start it? Note that RPK are deprecated (at least for non-homebrew stuff), so please keep with the zips only. The zips go into the folder where your system roms are, or in any other folder within the rompath (see mame.ini).

 

Please do not write "-cart sewerman.zip" - this does not work.

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How do you start it? Note that RPK are deprecated (at least for non-homebrew stuff), so please keep with the zips only. The zips go into the folder where your system roms are, or in any other folder within the rompath (see mame.ini).

 

Please do not write "-cart sewerman.zip" - this does not work.

/Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/mame64 -rompath /Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/roms -output console ti99_4ev -ioport:peb:slot3 speech -ioport:peb:slot4 32kmem -ioport:peb:slot5 tirs232 -ioport:peb:slot8 bwg -cartridge /Users/afrueh/mame/software/ti99_4a/Games/Sewerman.zip

Fatal error: Device TI-99 cartridge load failed: Invalid image

Andys-iMac:~ afrueh$

 

 

However, the following works fine.

/Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/mame64 -rompath /Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/roms -output console ti99_4ev -ioport:peb:slot3 speech -ioport:peb:slot4 32kmem -ioport:peb:slot5 tirs232 -ioport:peb:slot8 bwg -cartridge /Users/afrueh/mame/software/ti99_4a/Games/bigfoot.rpk

 

Ignore the folder name for mame...I just haven't renamed it in a while. The subject IS wrong, though...this is v 194 not 195.

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/Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/mame64 -rompath /Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/roms -output console ti99_4ev -ioport:peb:slot3 speech -ioport:peb:slot4 32kmem -ioport:peb:slot5 tirs232 -ioport:peb:slot8 bwg -cartridge /Users/afrueh/mame/software/ti99_4a/Games/Sewerman.zip

Fatal error: Device TI-99 cartridge load failed: Invalid image

Andys-iMac:~ afrueh$

 

Again, as I said: Do not add ".zip". :)

 

When you write a period in the cartridge name, MAME assumes that you want to load a RPK file. It is essential that you use it as I wrote above. No ".zip", no path.

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Again, as I said: Do not add ".zip". :)

 

When you write a period in the cartridge name, MAME assumes that you want to load a RPK file. It is essential that you use it as I wrote above. No ".zip", no path.

 

Ahhhhhhhhhhh...OK. Well if I just drop the .zip from the command line, of course, I get a file not found. So I renamed the file, getting rid of the extension, and tried:

​/Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/mame64 -nojoystick -mouse -ui_active -hashpath /Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/hash -rompath /Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/roms -samplepath /Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/samples -output console ti99_4ev -cartridge /Users/afrueh/mame/software/ti99_4a/Games/Sewerman

 

MAME still gives me an "invalid image" error.

 

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Oh this is frustrating.

 

I used a launcher to fire up Parsec. Its console provides me the command line it used to start the game. All of my attempts at running from a command line are based on command lines that work from the launcher. But of course, those are mostly all rpks, where the rules are different. Sounds like after replacing my ZIPs with RPKs, I need to go back to ZIPs, right?

 

FWIW, I keep my ROMs folder separate from my software, because I have over 7000 ROMs and tens of thousands of pieces of software. I treat the ROMs folder as just a repository of BIOS and similar system ROMs.

My ROM path is /Applications/Emus/mame0176-64bit/roms

My software path for the 4A is /Users/afrueh/mame/software/ti99_4a (then a subfolder by category, such as Games).

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If you want to run Parsec, all you do is

./mame64 ti99_4a -cart parsec


You can certainly put your cartridges in a separate folder, as long as you specify it in the rompath. Me, I'm using ~/mame as a base directory, then ~/mame/roms for the system ROMs, and ~/mame/carts for the cartridges. My mame.ini contains

rompath  roms;carts


The rule is quite simple: RPKs are files that can be provided by their path name. ZIPs are files that are stored in the rompath (like ti99_4x.zip, geneve.zip, ti99_fdc.zip, ti99_gkracker.zip ...) and they are looked up by their name. The name is prescribed by the file hash/ti99_carts.xml that is part of MAME. The ZIP file name must match the cartridge name (i.e. if you rename it to sewermania.zip, it won't be found). For some weird and long forgotten reason, cartridge names are set to 8 characters max, but I heard that this constrained was dropped some time ago.

While the ZIPs are loaded form the MAME core, the RPKs are loaded from my own implementation in gromport.cpp (so that's an isolated feature). The core decides by checking for a period in the name whether this is a file (RPK) or whether this is a ZIP. Once those other devs would come to an idea like allowing a period in the game name for whatever reason, the RPK support would immediately break.

For that reason I recommend MAME users to get used to the ZIP cartridges. All classic cartridges (those that were sold back in those days) are available as ZIPs.

The only reason why RPK has not been not dropped is that there is currently no good concept for allowing homebrew software, because this kind of software typically has no entry in the hash file, so the core does not know what to do with it.

Edited by mizapf
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