New to Mala but not MAME

[newgen2005]

Happy New Year everyone!!

Just joined the forum, some great stuff on here!

I want to install MALA with MAME and various emulators. I obtained a 17 DVD set which contains MAME dated 13 November, it has all been setup, just needed unrar-ing but I would really like to create my own setup! I have been going through the settings and trying to piece together how it all works but because there are about 24 emulators with artwork etc I am very confused which files I need to keep and which to delete!? Also MALA says I have 7778 MAME games, not sure if that is right? and for some reason Pole Position (all versions) fail to launch even though they are listed and in the roms folder!! any ideas?

Cheers

[harveybirdman]

where to start....  how bout with PP problem.

I'm a novice, but if it were me I would do these steps.

1) First ensure that the rom MALA is trying to load is the ROM for Pole Position that you have (names of roms tend to change over time)

  To find this out, view the ALL GAMES list using the Mala Gameslist feature, right click on the game and it should show name of the rom in the rompath field.

2)  if Mala is pointing to the right rom, but still no goodness, then run mame from a command prompt.  This should tell you if you are missing files from your romset for Pole Position

[drventure]

if Mala is pointing to the right rom, but still no goodness, then run mame from a command prompt.  This should tell you if you are missing files from your romset for Pole Position

+1

Once you can get Mame to run a game from the command line, Mala becomes much easier to deal with.

Also, UncleT's guide was invaluable to me
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=docs%20mala%20guide&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmalafe.net%2Ffiles%2Fdownload%2FMalaEmuSetup_av1.doc&ei=ddUAT57ZNtDo8QP7yazSAQ&usg=AFQjCNFoNtVhKQy2Lq9ZHM6K50l7lGERaQ&cad=rja]
[url]http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=docs%20mala%20guide&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmalafe.net%2Ffiles%2Fdownload%2FMalaEmuSetup_av1.doc&ei=ddUAT57ZNtDo8QP7yazSAQ&usg=AFQjCNFoNtVhKQy2Lq9ZHM6K50l7lGERaQ&cad=rja[/url]

[newgen2005]

where to start....  how bout with PP problem.

I'm a novice, but if it were me I would do these steps.

1) First ensure that the rom MALA is trying to load is the ROM for Pole Position that you have (names of roms tend to change over time)

  To find this out, view the ALL GAMES list using the Mala Gameslist feature, right click on the game and it should show name of the rom in the rompath field.

2)  if Mala is pointing to the right rom, but still no goodness, then run mame from a command prompt.  This should tell you if you are missing files from your romset for Pole Position

Thanks for this, will try what you said and report back!

Cheers

[newgen2005]

if Mala is pointing to the right rom, but still no goodness, then run mame from a command prompt.  This should tell you if you are missing files from your romset for Pole Position

+1

Once you can get Mame to run a game from the command line, Mala becomes much easier to deal with.

Also, UncleT's guide was invaluable to me

[url]http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=docs%20mala%20guide&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmalafe.net%2Ffiles%2Fdownload%2FMalaEmuSetup_av1.doc&ei=ddUAT57ZNtDo8QP7yazSAQ&usg=AFQjCNFoNtVhKQy2Lq9ZHM6K50l7lGERaQ&cad=rja]http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=docs%20mala%20guide&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmalafe.net%2Ffiles%2Fdownload%2FMalaEmuSetup_av1.doc&ei=ddUAT57ZNtDo8QP7yazSAQ&usg=AFQjCNFoNtVhKQy2Lq9ZHM6K50l7lGERaQ&cad=rja]
[url]http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=docs%20mala%20guide&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmalafe.net%2Ffiles%2Fdownload%2FMalaEmuSetup_av1.doc&ei=ddUAT57ZNtDo8QP7yazSAQ&usg=AFQjCNFoNtVhKQy2Lq9ZHM6K50l7lGERaQ&cad=rja[/url]

Thanks for the info, will have a read!

[newgen2005]

I am so confused right now!!

When I try to launch Pole Position through MALA a window flashes, all I can see is that something is missing!! I have downloaded the latest MAMEgui and the games run through that!! I am not sure how to run MAME through command promts!! Sorry if I am being thick but I am a complete novice!! I have right clicked on Pole Position in the main Mala screen and cannot see the options to check rom name, all I can see is the game metadata which displays the rom name and other stuff, which is the same as the name in the roms folder!!!

[drventure]

I just checked and pole position has several versions apparently.

polepos.zip
polepos1.zip
poleposa.zip

and there's also pole position II,

Lets assume you've got polepos.zip

So you should have a folder structure like this

\Mame     <------ your MAME.EXE should live in here
\Mame\Roms\   <----- all your rom ZIP files should be here, including polepos.zip


Open a command prompt, and change to your mame folder (whereever it is, I'll assume \mame)

cd \mame

and run mame with polepos on the command line, like so

mame polepos


Mame should start and load the rom.

If you get errors from mame, you should be able to more easily read them and resolve them with the command prompt open.

[newgen2005]

Thanks again for your help, before I read your response I fixed the issue with the Pole Position games, all I did was download mame0144b.exe and copied it over to the MAME directory losing the old mame.exe!! and they launch now

[newgen2005]

Thanks again for your help, before I read your response I fixed the issue with the Pole Position games, all I did was download mame0144b.exe and copied it over to the MAME directory losing the old mame.exe!! and they launch now

I have managed to launch them through command the way you said!! Nice to see what happens when you launch games this way, when I typed polpos2a it gave me a list of all the games within that set!! then I typed polepos2a and the game launched!! Thanks again for your help!! Now to understand how MALA works!!

[drventure]

The main thing to mala is that all it does essentially is execute MAME with command line options, just as if you'd typed in the command in a command box.

Check the mame options window in mala, on the first BASICS tab, at the bottom, you'll see the command line that will be used to invoke mame.

Just make sure you've got the path to MAME correct, and that the command line options are what you need, and you should be good.

For me, i use

%rom% -skip_gameinfo

[harveybirdman]

sounds like it was a version issue.

just to demystify it, because I wish someone would have done that for me when I was facing similar struggles, This basically means that the version of the rom you had was designed to work with a specific version of Mame, and apparently that wasn't the version you originally had.

The way this newb understands it is that every time there is an upgrade to Mame, a handful of games change as the Mame developers redump, fix, and strive for more perfect emulation.  Generally that means adding files to the game that the new version of Mame will need to play the game.

To deal with this there are a couple of things you can do.  # 1 you can get every game you could ever possible want working in the version of Mame you currently have.  Kind of the "Set it and forget it approach."  The pros are you never have to worry about your games not working, however the major con is that if in the future a game that you want becomes playable or has a major breakthrough (crossing my fingers for the sound in Macross Plus getting fixed) then you can have a major pain point to deal with.  You can either seek the advice of the experts here on running multiple versions of Mame or face the daunting task of upgrading your entire game set. This is especially challenging if you haven't upgraded versions in quite some time.

#2 There is a community of folks that meticulously maintain complete romsets for every playable game in Mame for every update and every version, if you seek them out you can usually find the files you need for whatever updating is necessary.