Question!

[Nemss316]

I had the GUI version of MAME, and every one of my ROMS worked perfectly. I recently added my FE, and downloaded the binary version of MAME. Now I am getting issues w/ a couple games.

1. Killer Instinct 1 and 2 both played fine on my GUI version of MAME, but run very slow on my Binary version. Also, I get no sound. I have a little "ding" sound when the ROM boots, and I get the voices, but no sound.

2. Some of my ROMS simply won't run. Street Fighter 2: World Warrior, Champion Edition, and Hyper Fighting will not load at all. These worked perfect in my GUI version.

I am using a GeForce FX 5200 card, any suggestions??

Thanks.

[DaveMMR]

You're GUI version and command-line version are probably different release numbers.  The roms, for the most part, have to match.  You'll need to update your roms or getting an older release of the command-line version.

[Nemss316]

No, they are both the newest releases from Mamedev. .128 I believe. Maybe I just need an older command line version?

[javeryh]

Sounds like your romset doesn't match your version of MAME.  Stuff like this happens to me every time I update MAME but don't do anything with my roms.

[Nemss316]

I'll try downloading an older version of MAME, and see if that works.

[Flake]

I'm not sure downloading a older version of mame will fix your problem as you are probabaly going to download a version of mame that is older than your roms so you may end up in worse shape.  Are you sure the mame versions were the same?  You say it was .128 but are you sure the binary isnt version .128u1 or higher?

If you can confirm for sure that they are the same version of mame then use the program CLRMAMEPRO - its free and its purpose is to update rom sets to the version of mame you are currently running.  Its not the most user friendly software but if you've made it this far you should be able to figure it out.

[u_rebelscum]

No, they are both the newest releases from Mamedev. .128 I believe. Maybe I just need an older command line version?

Double check the MameUI version number.

[Nemss316]

For the versions, I first downloaded the GUI version of MAME, just to get the ROMS loaded while I worked on the cabinet. I figured that later when I downloaded the command line version, as long as it was in the same release, wouldnt matter. They are both the newest version of MAME.

I'll try and use the CLRMAMEPRO and see if i yield better results. If not, it didn't take me that long to download the roms, perhaps i'll just redownload them again onto an older MAME command line version.

[paulscade]

Is that for sure? (that the ROMs need to match the MAME version)??

I thought that the ROM files were just dumps of the original game ROMs... so they shouldn't change <??>.

I can see how MAME updates would make different games run better/worse.... as the emulator code is tweaked to fully emulate the different hardware components....

But the ROM files changing?

[protokatie]

Is that for sure? (that the ROMs need to match the MAME version)??

I thought that the ROM files were just dumps of the original game ROMs... so they shouldn't change <??>.

I can see how MAME updates would make different games run better/worse.... as the emulator code is tweaked to fully emulate the different hardware components....

But the ROM files changing?

Yep, it is for sure.

The ROM files for MAME are formatted for specific versions. Sounds odd (even to me, but I understand why they do it) but you must realize that MAME is an ever changing (improving?) system and the method of reading ROMs and decoding them changes as well. There are utilities out there that can "transform" a ROM from one version to another. Basically, the MAME ROMs are ROM dumps, but need to be stored in wrappers (IE not many arcade games came on only just one ROM, but as a set).

Odd, yes. But we aren't talking about SNES games here either. (IE SNES is a singular (sorta) system that once emulated is pixel perfect, whereas MAME is emulating hundreds of hardware setups and is nowhere near to being fully close)

..A little bit of a logic run-around. Sorry for it.

[Paul Olson]

.128 was only released 15 days ago, so if you were using MAMEUI prior to that, they are not the same version. The newest is .128u1, which was released 8 days ago. From your post, it sounded like you had probably been using MAMEUI for longer than that.

Not every rom changes with a MAME update, but I don't remember seeing any updates that didn't require at least a few roms to be updated. Sometimes it is only a name change, which clrmamepro can fix, but many times the rom file is changed, or the emulation uses a rom that was not previously used. If your roms don't match your MAME version, you will have problems with something.

[Malenko]

here's my try at explaining it a little better.

They dump a game and then they build a MAME driver around that dump
They get a better dump of that game and update the driver in MAME, the old dump no longer works in MAME

[protokatie]

here's my try at explaining it a little better.

They dump a game and then they build a MAME driver around that dump
They get a better dump of that game and update the driver in MAME, the old dump no longer works in MAME

Yeah, a bit more accurate. (Hence why I apologized for the odd logic run-around). But who knows how someone completely new to MAME will get even that. I WAS trying to keep it simple... (failed).


Since you seem to be more on the know about this: Why do I have to have the "World" editions of a game to get certain region ROMs to work? (I can only presume that this is due to the regional ROM are just "additional" or "replacement" ROMs that are added to the system). Maybe I am alone in finding this behaviour odd... (IE I would think that each region of a game would be a full dump...)

[Nemss316]

Thanks for all the help guys, as usual. I will be out w/ the kids tonight, but I'm going to work on this when I get home. The roms are from a fairly popular site, and I had them working perfectlyabout a year ago when I was just happy playing MAME on my home PC. I'll try downloading that older version of MAME, and putting my ROMS on there, and see if it works.

[Malenko]

Since you seem to be more on the know about this: Why do I have to have the "World" editions of a game to get certain region ROMs to work? (I can only presume that this is due to the regional ROM are just "additional" or "replacement" ROMs that are added to the system). Maybe I am alone in finding this behaviour odd... (IE I would think that each region of a game would be a full dump...)

Dont quote me, but I think it works like this:
World: Full Dump
USA: English Roms
JPN: Japanese Roms

so the USA version uses the World Data for the game and the USA roms for the localization (text and graphics). it makes sense if you look at it like this:

theoretically speaking,
We'll say Street Fighter II takes up 20 MBs
now there's like 80 versions of JUST Street Fighter II.
Would you prefer one 20MB dump and 80 additional rom sets that are 1 or 2 MBs a piece or 80 sets of 20MBs

takes less time to download and less room on the hard drive. Man I hope I explained that well.

[protokatie]

Since you seem to be more on the know about this: Why do I have to have the "World" editions of a game to get certain region ROMs to work? (I can only presume that this is due to the regional ROM are just "additional" or "replacement" ROMs that are added to the system). Maybe I am alone in finding this behaviour odd... (IE I would think that each region of a game would be a full dump...)

Dont quote me, but I think it works like this:
World: Full Dump
USA: English Roms
JPN: Japanese Roms

so the USA version uses the World Data for the game and the USA roms for the localization (text and graphics). it makes sense if you look at it like this:

theoretically speaking,
We'll say Street Fighter II takes up 20 MBs
now there's like 80 versions of JUST Street Fighter II.
Would you prefer one 20MB dump and 80 additional rom sets that are 1 or 2 MBs a piece or 80 sets of 20MBs

takes less time to download and less room on the hard drive. Man I hope I explained that well.

Well I DID end up quoting you.
And yeah, that's basically what I thought. Although, when I was green in the MAME world, I had no end of frustration when it came to this issue (until I DL'd the world edition of a ROM that I had DL'd the region versions for, and they all-of-a-sudden worked. Figured the system out that moment)
Personally, I would rather have the (theoretical) 20 MB per ROM, atleast for the fact that I would know they would work without other ROMs present, and I woulndt have had the headache I did 8 months ago (plus 20 megs isnt much these days). Thanx

[Paul Olson]

Since you seem to be more on the know about this: Why do I have to have the "World" editions of a game to get certain region ROMs to work? (I can only presume that this is due to the regional ROM are just "additional" or "replacement" ROMs that are added to the system). Maybe I am alone in finding this behaviour odd... (IE I would think that each region of a game would be a full dump...)

Dont quote me, but I think it works like this:
World: Full Dump
USA: English Roms
JPN: Japanese Roms

so the USA version uses the World Data for the game and the USA roms for the localization (text and graphics). it makes sense if you look at it like this:

theoretically speaking,
We'll say Street Fighter II takes up 20 MBs
now there's like 80 versions of JUST Street Fighter II.
Would you prefer one 20MB dump and 80 additional rom sets that are 1 or 2 MBs a piece or 80 sets of 20MBs

takes less time to download and less room on the hard drive. Man I hope I explained that well.

Well I DID end up quoting you.
And yeah, that's basically what I thought. Although, when I was green in the MAME world, I had no end of frustration when it came to this issue (until I DL'd the world edition of a ROM that I had DL'd the region versions for, and they all-of-a-sudden worked. Figured the system out that moment)
Personally, I would rather have the (theoretical) 20 MB per ROM, atleast for the fact that I would know they would work without other ROMs present, and I woulndt have had the headache I did 8 months ago (plus 20 megs isnt much these days). Thanx

One version of the rom is the parent romset, sometimes it is world, sometimes Japan, and I think some USA. MAME can use three different types of romsets: non-merged, split, and merged. The most commonly used is split. The parent set contains all of the rom files for that version, and the clone sets only contain the roms that differ from the parent set. Whether it is region, bootleg, or whatever. Mame uses both the parent set and the gamespecific set to run the game. Non-merged aren't used much because they take up too much space. Each version of every romset contains all of the roms for the game. This is the difference Malenko was talking about with the SFII example. You can also choose to have your romsets fully merged, which puts the parent and all clones in the same set. I tried this afew years back, but it didn't work too well. A lot of the clone roms had the same name, so they could not be merged into the same set. This might have changed since then though. Split sets seem to be the best option, but you can experiment for yourself. clrmamepro can rebuild your sets any way you want.

[u_rebelscum]

Just to complicate things a little, but for a better general look at the world regional stuff.

Mame gives many games a parent & clone relationship.  Clones share ROMs with their parent (and thus other clones).  (Actually, there are bios and grandparents too.)  Usually the world version (if one exists) is the parent, and the rest of the games are clones.

There are three ways ROMs (the stuff in the zip files) can be stored in ROM sets (the zip files); Mame doesn't care which you use: Split, Merged, and Non-merged.  Split is as described (parent all ROM, clones only clone specific ROMs), and most places with roms do it this way (because of bandwidth), and is the default for clrmamepro.  Merged combine all of the clones and parents ROMs into the parent's ROM set; some places store this way as it doesn't increase bandwidth, and less zip files to index.  It has some problems if a clone and parent ROM has the same name, though.  Non-merged is as also mentioned: each ROM set has all the ROMs needed to play.  Some people like using this, but the only bonus is if you delete/move ROM sets, the used still work.

If you want to manage ROM (say, update or switch to non-merged sets), use clrmamepro.


Since mame and mameUI are the same thing (one with an added GUI), if a rom set works in one, it will work in the other as long as: they are the exact same version number, they use the same same rompath (or the romsets are exact copies in the different rompaths), and some specific settings are the same (-rompath and sometimes -bios OTTOMH, but maybe others).  So the OP's version numbers are different, or certain settings are different.

edit: pcolson beat me to it, but still posted

[protokatie]

edit: pcolson beat me to it, but still posted

The Empire shall prevail! pcolson is simply a member of the rebel alliance. He WILL be dealt with. (Why is there no Darth Vader smiley???)

Anyways, I figured the basics of what both of you posted, good to get the details. Also good to have something like this pop up every 3 months or so for teh NewBs. (And old NewBs like me).

thanx

[Malenko]

I was just trying to explain it in laymans terms without getting all technical :p

here Katie:



and



maybe saint will add them