ok, so I investigated some more and the root cause are imho faulty rom names.
My current minimame binary file is mame 0.175 based.
I had 3 people reporting something similar.
Let's take your wcbwl12 rom :
:~/workspace/mamexmlmod/Release$ cat mame.xml | grep wcbwl12
:~/workspace/mamexmlmod/Release$
no hits... no rom -> default settings
Let's take this example :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11119/rgb-commander-confused-by-clone-roms-how-do-i-check-rom-name:~/workspace/mamexmlmod/Release$ cat mame.xml | grep xmen2p
<machine name="xmen2pa" sourcefile="xmen.cpp" cloneof="xmen" romof="xmen">
<machine name="xmen2pe" sourcefile="xmen.cpp" cloneof="xmen" romof="xmen">
<machine name="xmen2pj" sourcefile="xmen.cpp" cloneof="xmen" romof="xmen">
<machine name="xmen2pu" sourcefile="xmen.cpp" cloneof="xmen" romof="xmen">
no exact match -> default settings
and I had a 3th case by mail : simpsn2p
:~/workspace/mamexmlmod/Release$ cat mame.xml | grep simpsn2p
:~/workspace/mamexmlmod/Release$
no hits -> default settings
cat mame.xml | grep simps learns us that it is likely that this rom is actaully named <machine name="simpsons2p" sourcefile="simpsons.cpp" cloneof="simpsons" romof="simpsons">
I've modified the setState method to cope with these faulty rom names and set the state even if there is no hit and if preconfiguration data is available else it reverts to default.
but ideally one should use correct rom names.
It still needs to be tested. If it works out fine it'll be included in the next 0.4.0.4 beta1
EDIT The 'faulty' rom feature has been confirmed functional.