Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Front End Support => Maximus Arcade => Topic started by: msu_jester on December 22, 2015, 04:07:59 pm

Title: Help with NES Games
Post by: msu_jester on December 22, 2015, 04:07:59 pm: I'm running MA 2.10 on 64-bit Windows 10 with versions 164 and 148 of MAME (via batch files).

I am trying to configure NES games to run via MAME (really MESS I imagine, but that is now part of the core MAME build).

I can run games from the command line with 'mame -cart [name of file]', no problem.

I can not figure out how to get them to run in MAME. The biggest initial challenge is that MA does not acknowledge the ROM when it performs a scan of the ROM directory.

If it would load the game into the game list, my thought was to modify my batch file to look for the specific games and add the -cart parameter.

Anyone done this? Any advice?
Title: Re: Help with NES Games
Post by: B2K24 on December 22, 2015, 06:03:40 pm: If you have the nes.xml in the hash folder of mame. Then all of the games in the entire nes list essentially turn into set names which is the exact same way MAME Arcade games work. You can open the nes.xml with notepad ++ to see what these names are.

Here is one example of a game named 1942 which is also an Arcade game in MAME.

Code: [Select]
<software name="1942"> <description>1942 (Jpn, USA)</description> <year>1985</year> <publisher>Capcom</publisher> <info name="serial" value="CAP-19, NES-NF-USA"/> <info name="release" value="19851211 (JPN), 198611xx (USA)"/> <part name="cart" interface="nes_cart"> <feature name="slot" value="nrom" /> <feature name="pcb" value="NES-NROM-256" />  <feature name="mirroring" value="horizontal" /> <dataarea name="prg" size="32768"> <rom name="cap-19-0 prg" size="32768" crc="c4e8c04a" sha1="d608f769333b13da9c67f07599e405944893a950" offset="00000" /> </dataarea> <dataarea name="chr" size="8192"> <rom name="cap-19-0 chr" size="8192" crc="03379b76" sha1="d2a6ca1cdd8935525f59f1d38806b2296cb12a12" offset="00000" /> </dataarea> </part> </software>
So to run the Arcade game it would be *mame64 1942*
To run the nes version it would be *mame64 nes 1942*

The key here is to have the nes software list rom folder located in mame.ini rompath and the front-end must have the capability to show games from the list.

mame.ini ---> rompath J:\MAME ROMs;J:\MAME CHDs;J:\SOFTWARE LIST ROMS;J:\MESS CHDs;I:\MESS CHDs

Now I don't know anything about MA front-end, but QMC2 and MAMELOAD TNG both support launching from software lists rather easily.
Title: Re: Help with NES Games
Post by: msu_jester on December 22, 2015, 07:17:39 pm: Thanks for the reply. I checked out nes.xml, and interestingly there is no entry for Super Tecmo Bowl, which is the game I am trying to run.

I can easily get the game to run via command line with mam64, so I know it works, but it isn't in the XML file.

I honestly don't understand how MA goes about pulling the ROM information in. If I did, that would be a big help. Generally , whatever ROM I put in the ROM folder within the MAME directory structure just show up, but unfortunately, with the NES game, it does not. I have tried leaving it as a .zip file, and as a .nes file (and adding .nes to extensions to be scanned in MA).

I'm a bit stumped on this one.
Title: SOLVED - Re: Help with NES Games
Post by: msu_jester on December 22, 2015, 08:38:41 pm: Figured it out.

I had to setup an NES emulator (I was trying to do this under the MAME emulator since MAME runs NES now with the inclusion of MESS).

While the MAME emulator will not "find" NES roms, the NES Emulator, when pointed to the MAME executable will "find" both MAME and NES roms.

Of course, it loads the MAME games names as the filename, but I easy remedied that by loading in my main name list from the MAME configuration.

All is good.
Title: Re: Help with NES Games
Post by: B2K24 on December 22, 2015, 08:47:43 pm: I believe the problem is you were searching for Super Tecmo Bowl but it's actually called Tecmo Super Bowl. There's 3 different versions on the nes.xml

Nestopia is really good if you have Goodsets that are 7-zipped and merged because you can choose the exact game you want to launch in all those compressed archives.

However, I prefer nes with MAME because of HLSL/GLSL, load/save states, fast forward, etc. And I'm most familiar with it.

If you have time to tinker with stuff I highly recommend QMC2. It's very versatile and you can customize it from changing the Font and size and about a million of other things as well.

If interested, here's a guide here ---> http://wiki.batcom-it.net/index.php?title=The_%27ultimate%27_guide_to_QMC2 (http://wiki.batcom-it.net/index.php?title=The_%27ultimate%27_guide_to_QMC2)