MAME .59 is out!

[Frobozz]

I guess there's a lot of us with some serious downloading and others with some serious compiling to do.  

[unusualfire]

hey why don't they compile one that has the right astroids sounds in it?

[1UP]

BTW, to those that immediately replace every rom in their collection every time a new Mame comes out: most of the roms are actually valid from version to version!  I like to wait until I actually run into problems running a game before I commit to hours of downloading.  It seems like laziness that compels people to jam the download sites every time.

Not that it matters much, now that Mame.dk roms are gone...  

[tellarite]

Ok, here is the newbie showing in me but...

Why is there a difference in some of the roms anyways? I thought the point of an emulator was that it worked on the original romset of the game. What's wrong with the dump that we have right now? Are they new dumps? What is different about them?

I know I know, I should probably RTFM, but what gives?

-Tellarite

[qbert]

mame.dk used to have a 'changed roms' and a 'new roms' section. What's the best site to download the roms at this point? The newsgroups are kind of a pain to deal with...

[Frobozz]

Well, lots of reasons.

Some ROMs simply get renamed.  These are easilly fixed.

Some ROM sets have additional or repaired ROMs added.  This is usually because the first dump was missing a rom, or got a bad dump that wasn't discovered until later.

Some ROM sets get a new "version" added in.  Usually not much of a problem.  Just download the new child set and everything works.

Sometimes, the "parent" version chages.  NOW we're talking major hair pulling.  The previous "parent" rom is now a child/clone and some new ROM is set up to be the "parent" because it's newer.  Lots of files change places, since the "parent" is set up to be the only "complete" game in the ROM set, and the children/clones should only have the "different" files.  

And finally, some ROMs are just simply completely brand new.  

That's why it's a major pain in the butt to maintain a ROM set.  

[ArcadeFX]

I don't think it is a big deal at all to maintian a full rom set at all. Once you have a completed set, only thing you need to download is the new and change roms.  Since I have completed v57 set to update to 58 was only about 20 roms and now with 59 it is about the same.

If you actaully look at the listinfo data with each MAME release you will see exactly what has changed or new.  Then just get the new and changed roms.  

Simple as pie.

[SirPoonga]

hehe, arcadeFX, I know what you mean.  I got the entire 58.  To find out new roms I just did a diff on the -listdetails.
Get more info using -listfull though liek if roms changed.


Anyway, I use romcenter now to see what I'm missing.

For those who use rom center, is it normal to have a few yellow roms.  Where they are missing one rom in them.  I went to my normal roms sites and looked at these, they all are the same.

[Lilwolf]

Well, I do a full update every few versions.  LUCKLY I did it last month before mame.dk went down.  

I would download all the roms on ABEM first and then run clrmame and download the rest from mame.dk to clean it up.

but now I've only found about 6 roms on ABEM (or ABEA) and haven't even downloaded them yet.  I haven't updated since there was a big bug on some of the new games in it and was hoping to find someone who has compiled it with the fix.