Problem with showing screenshots and gamelists

[austin_21b]

I have installed Mala, gone  through the stickied tutorial and still am having trouble. I am only using mala for mame. I downloaded screenshots, placed them in a  snaps folder and told mala where to look for them, but no pictures come up when I go through the game list.
Another thing is the gamelist itself. When I tell it to only display the roms I have, it only shows two of them. When I choose to display all games, most of my roms aren't even on that list. What do I to show my roms?

[TheShanMan]

Sounds like you might be using a layout that doesn't have screenshots?

As for the roms problem, I'm no expert on rom list problems so I'll leave that for someone else to answer.

[austin_21b]

I didn't download any layouts so I'm using the Mala default one.

[NOP]

the stock mala layout (the one with the space theme, and a planet in the background) doesn't use screenshots, which explains exactly why you're not seeing them.

Go back to the mala website and grab a layout that has 'em.  There should be instructions inthe layout and/or wiki on how to get layouts to work.

I'm not 100% sure about your rom problem either.  The "all roms" list is (i believe) taken directly from all the games MAME supports, not the ones you have in your folder.  You can run malaGameList.exe which should be in your mala folder and create your own lists there, and there may be a way to get it to read the roms you have locally-I'm not sure, as I've never done it that way, I use romlister.

[austin_21b]

Just found out I don't have malagamelist.exe. Do I have to completely re-install Mala?

[austin_21b]

I got a new layout with screens working, but I don't have the romlist working yet. I dont have a malagamelist.exe or a malatree.exe in my mala folder. Are these necessary for a custom list?

[SGT]

Do you know why you are missing files?  Since you may not know what else you are missing, sounds like a reinstall of Mala is needed.

[NOP]

malagamelist is likely on the mala website then, or perhaps you've got a crusty version of mala before it was added to the distribution.
You shouldn't have to re-install it - just unzip over the top of the old one, or extract out just malagamelist.*  i don't think there is actually an installation process is there?  (it's been awhile)


The best (imo) custom list genrator is going to be romlister (ok, I'm biased, i wrote it)
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister

Romlister does not scan your drive to see what ROMs you have physically on your machine-it generates list based off the known list of ROMs that MAME supports, so if you've only got a dozen or so ROMs, you might be better off building your list by hand (you can use either romlister or malagamelist for that)

RL's main usage is to tell you what games will work on your particular controls selections.

-jeff!

[austin_21b]

I got malagamelist and malatree as separate downloads from the site. Now the only problem is that I cant use malagamelist.exe to make my own list because the allgames.mlb that is in my Mala folder only contains two of the roms I have. where can I get an .mlb that actually has all the games on it?

[NOP]

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister

Follow the tutorials if you get stuck-I just updated them.  (or ask here, since I'm always available)

edit: sorry I was a bit terse.

I wasn't sure how mala made it's all games list-I guess it must be scanning your collection or somehow seeing only 2 of your roms.

The thing is though, you don't really want a list with ALL the roms in it.  If you don't have a trackball, why even list centipede?  If you don't have a steering wheel, why have pole position in your list?
That's what ROMLister does: it narrows down the complete list to just stuff you want, and/or just stuff you can physically support with your controls.

If you really want to make a list with every ROM that mame supports, in RL you can press the "list all roms" button, highlight them all, and right click to add to your list, then export that list as a mala gamelist, but I really don't recommend that.

edit2:
I've added a "creating an all games list" to the tutorial section:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/RL_tutorial_additionalROMs

-jeff!