MaLa- Daphne games in the MAME gamelist?

[XYXZYZ]

Okay, I 'm trying to get Daphne games to be listed in the same gamelist as the MAME games in MaLa. I followed SGT's handy guide here - http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=68419.0  And it worked great!

But I had a problem, none of the emulators would have sound when I launched them from MaLa. (They worked fine on their own) So, at that point I realized I was using 1.0, and 1.04 is available. I made a fresh install of the new version, and the sound issue was fixed. But when I try to launch Daphne games, (Using the same method as above) I get a big command prompt full of text that  disappears instantly.  The games do show up in the list, still.

Should this still work, or has something changed from 1.0 to 1.04? Should I be doing something different?  I couldn't find any relevant thread with the forum search.

[SGT]

The command prompt full of text is probably mame.cmd when it errors out.  You can trying inserting a line in mame.cmd with the word "pause" in various places so that you can determine which line is causing the error.  You may need to tell Mala to use a normal window for Mame instead of a hidden window to properly see the error after you insert some pauses.  If you get the window to pause, hopefully you can see exactly what the error is.

You can post your mame.cmd and the pertinent entries of your mame.xml or combined.xml (whichever you use) along with a screenshot of your mame settings if you want to.

In Mala, is your mame command line %rom% %path%?  Notice the space between the two entries.  Also you mentioned that the games show up in the list.  Do they show up after right-clicking and choosing "refresh main game list"?  If they no longer show up, the entries in your xml file may not be there any longer.  If you created a combined.xml file which has your new entries, is Mala still pointing to that xml file?

Just a lot of shots in the dark...

[XYXZYZ]

Okay, I had just written up this big long post detailing the problem, and in one last look to make sure the information was accurate I noticed that I forgot to change "D:\" into "C:\" in the CMD file when transferring it to my cabinet's computer. 

I once heard that AT&T had some major fiasco, losing millions of dollars, because some guy forgot to put a semicolon in one line of code...

[loadman]

You can trying inserting a line in mame.cmd with the word "pause" in various places so that you can determine which line is causing the error.  You may need to tell Mala to use a normal window for Mame instead of a hidden window to properly see the error after you insert some pauses.

Good tips 

[pie taster]

SGT,

I'm trying to work through this, and my problem seems to be that %path% variable does not seem to be being passed to the command line.

my cmd file is as follows.

echo "Command is %1 %2 "
if "%2" == "C:\Emulators\Programs\daphne\roms" goto daphne
pause

mame.exe %1
exit

:daphne
SET DAPHNE=C:\Emulators\Programs\daphne\daphne.exe
cd ..\daphne
if "%1" == "lair" start/wait %daphne% dle20 vldp -framefile C:\Emulators\Programs\daphne\dldvdrom\dl_framefile.txt -fullscreen -blank_skips -blank_searches -preset 1
exit

But %2 does not seem to be passed in. 

I confirmed it is set in the command line option.  Below are some screen shots.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[SGT]

I think first you need to know what Mala has stored for the path for Dragon's Lair.  Go to the gamelist editor and tell me what is displayed for both the rom and the path for Dragon's Lair.  Your rom name will be different than mine, so don't sweat it.   Attached is a screenshot on where to get this info:

[pie taster]

The Path field was blank.

I put the fully qualified path value  in the "Path" field in the Game List editor, and that has caused it to work!

Is that where it normally gets set?
 

[NOP]

is there any reason you need to key off the path?

Why not just change this:
if "%2" == "C:\Emulators\Programs\daphne\roms" goto daphne
to
if "%1" =="lair" goto daphne

unless there is a mame game called lair that would confuse it.  Since you know the romname is getting passed just fine, just key off it.

[SGT]

The reason to key off of a path is so any roms in that particular path will go to that emulator.  Otherwise you have to add an entry for every single rom.    If you have 100 roms that you want to run with an earlier version of mame, you can simply move these roms to the new subfolder and you do not have to add 100 entries to the batch file.

Same holds true for Daphne though there aren't that many roms, I'd still prefer only one line in the batch file to handle all the daphne roms.  Its also much easier to maintain.  For example whenever the new M2 emulator adds more games I only need to move the rom from the mame rom folder to the m2 rom folder and it works without me having to do anything to the batch file.  With all my emulators that I use, adding a line for every rom would be a nightmare.

[SGT]

The Path field was blank.

I put the fully qualified path value  in the "Path" field in the Game List editor, and that has caused it to work!

Is that where it normally gets set?
 

Normally when you refresh the main game list, Mala populates the path field automatically.   I'm not sure how to refresh a custom game list unless Mala does it automatically.   I don't know why your path field was blank, but someone else had the same situation a few weeks or months ago.