Getting Mame to run with Mala?

[JustMichael]

I feel like I am just
Yes I did look at the how to set up MaLa to run with Mame but I still can't seem to get MaLa to work with Mame.  I am trying to use MaLa 1.05 with Mame .134.  I have MaLa pointed at Mame correctly and MaLa calls Mame and Mame seems to start running and then exits back to MaLa.  I have tried to see what is happening by turning verbose on in the mame.ini and the lowest line I can see says something with Display1 in it.  I only have 1 monitor and my desktop resolution is set at 1680x1050 (32bit color).  I think mame is crashing but I can't understand why.  I can bring up a dos prompt and change the directory to where Mame is and run it with "mame 1943" for example and mame runs just fine.  Now I try to run it with MaLa and it just don't want to run.  If anyone has some idea how to fix this please tell me.  Thanks.

[ivwshane]

Are you running mameui (formally mame32)? If you aren't, I'd suggest doing so.

Can you run mame by itself just fine?

[SGT]

It sounds like Mala isn't passing the rom name to Mame or Mame has the wrong rom for the game you're trying to run.  Is the rom path set correctly in Mala? Also have you refreshed your main game list (right-clicking and choosing refresh main game list).

When I want to find out what Mala is passing to Mame, I create a batch file called mame.cmd using notepad with the following contents:

Code: [Select]

echo %1
pause
mame %1
pause
exit
I place this mame.cmd into the same folder where mame resides.  I set Mala to run mame.cmd instead of mame.exe.  I set the window to be normal and NOT hidden.  I then refresh the mame game list.

Now when you choose a game in Mala, the black window will stay up.  When it first runs it should "echo" or display the rom name.  It it doesn't there's the problem, come back here for help.  After this first echo, it pauses until you press a key.

Next it attempts to run mame with the rom name.  After mame exits with its error the black window should pause allowing you to read what the error is which will further allow you to troubleshoot.

[JustMichael]

Parsing mame.ini
Video: Monitor 00010001 = "\\.\Display1" (primary)
Direct3D: Using Direct3D 9
Dicrect3D: Configuring adapter #0 = NVIDIA Geforce GTX 275
Proposed video mode not supported on device \\.\DISPLAY1
Unable to initialize Direct3D.
Unable to complete window creation


When I turn on logging the error.log file only contains:
Physical width 1680, height 1050

Seeing this I have tried forcing the resolution in the mame.ini file to 1680x1050 at "resolution" and "resolution0" and also tried 1680x1050@60 but still does the same thing.  I also tried with switchres on and off and no change there either.  I wish I could see what video mode it was trying.

Ok now this is getting weird. 
I finally gave up and set Mame to run in a window by changing "window" to 1 just to see what would happen.  MaLa ran mame ok when it ran it through the .cmd file.  I then hit alt-enter to maximize Mame.  I exited Mame and MaLa and then I set Mame back to full screen in its ini and MaLa runs Mame full screen through the .cmd file now.  When I try to have MaLa run Mame directly, mame crashes as before.  I tried to set Mame to run in a window and it crashes when MaLa tries to run it directly.

I changed the .cmd file to only:
mame %1
exit
 and had MaLa run the .cmd file.  I can run Mame from MaLa through the .cmd file just fine but when I try directly Mame just crashes.  I have even tried having MaLa run Mame through the .cmd file first and then exiting both and setting MaLa to run Mame directly and Mame crashes.

So right now I stand at:
MaLa +.cmd + Mame = FUN!
MaLa + Mame = Headache!

At least I got it working in a round about way.  Now I need to find an ArcadeOS type skin for MaLa and some attract videos for the games.