How to organize roms so system files dont display?

[mark6437]

Basically I need certain roms in my roms folder so other games will play.

Example would be atarisy1.zip needs to be in there for Marble Mdness to run. Another example is obviously puckman needs to be in there so packman will run.

When I generate my roms list in Mala it displays puckman for example and pac man. Then I have to remove puckman from the games list but leave the rom in the roms folder. Another example is pole position.

Is there a way around this? is there a way to have the "system" roms organized so they still let the other games work but wont show up on your games list when you create it?

Thx
Mark

[Neverending Project]

If you use a tool like ROMLister to create your game lists, you have a lot of control over what is added and what isn't. By default it won't include BIOS or system names, and with a checkbox you can exclude clones also. On the settings page of ROMLister there is a function to scan your ROM folder to add roms from a folder.

But puckman is the exception, since it is actually the parent and pacman is the clone.

[NOP]

i would also grab clrmamepro and have it rebuild your rom set so it moves all the required files for a game into 1 zip file.  (I believe this is called "splitting your roms" or similar-it's been awhile)

this can easily double or more the space required to store all of your roms, but space is cheap and easy to get, and having 1 zip file per game is sooo much easier to maintain than having to have your system BIOSes over here, these 3 rom files are taken from the parent rom zip file, then this file file over here is the actual game you want to play.  ugh.

[speedklz]

so merge under clrmame means that a romfile will contain the bios and all other files needed to run it?

[NOP]

I'm not sure if clrmame pro could possibly be any more confusing.

Method 1: Split / Not Merged

In the Split / Not Merged mode, there is an independent file for each ROM set, each containing all the required ROMs for the set.

Method 2: Split / Merged

This takes the duplicated ROMs from each of the clone sets and storing them only in the main set.

Method 3: Not Split

There is one final method: Not Split. If there was an independent file for each set, for MAME version 0.59 there would be a total of 3290 files (the number of sets for v0.59). To reduce that number, ROMs of different sets of a game can be stored in a single file (the main set).



I *Think* this means:
Method 1: every ROM that is required for any particular game gets copied into a .zip file called <gamename>.zip.
This is a big waste of hard drive space, because there are many games that re-use a lot of same ROM files.  This is however the easiest way to keep the games organized, which is the way I was referring to.  And since HDD space is cheap, this is the way I roll.  This means 1 zip file means 1 playable game, always.

Method 2: takes the parent game (let's say PUCKMAN) and puts all the puckman rom files in puckman.zip.  To play PACman, you need to then have pacman.zip, since it has the unique ROM that makes it pacman, PLUS the pucman.zip in your ROMs folder, since pacman also uses lots of the same ROMs as puckman.

Method 3: takes *any* duplicate file and puts all of the common roms together.  If for example, if pacman and puckman and ms-pacman and pole position and galaga and area 51 all use the same ROM file, that file is only found in a single zip, not given to all of the parents.

So, to answer your question, hopefully, a SPLIT under clrmame means that any given ZIP file will contain all the files required to run it.

[speedklz]

THanks.. Thats a little more clear.. and yes clrmamepro is so hard to understand I have read the thing several times over and I am still a little nervouse about using it cause I dont really understand what it is about to do to my roms. 

[DeLuSioNal29]

I have an old machine that I put together and I used Game Launcher for MAME (DOS).  It comes with a program called "MAMESCAN.EXE" that will scan your roms.  You can add switches to the mamescan.ini file to add or remove games automatically.

Here's an excerpt from the docs:

"Using mamescan.exe

mamescan.exe is a command line tool that automatically creates a .map and .rom file for MAME by scanning the ROMs you have installed. It uses the MAME executable to figure out which ROMs are buried inside merged ROMs. By default, only the primary ROMs are included and all clones are skipped. Individual ROMs may be included and excluded by using a constraint file.

You can force the inclusion and exclusion of individual ROMs in the configuration file if you want to override the default choices. In the constraint section of the config file, any line beginning with a '+' forces inclusion and any line beginning with a '-' forces exclusion. For example, the pacman.zip file contains the games pacman (the Namco version) and pacmanm (the Midway version). The "primary" ROM is pacman and the clone is pacmanm, so mamescan will include pacman and exclude pacmanm. Say you do not want to include pacman, but want to include pacmanm. You can add the following lines to the constraint section of the configuration file:

-pacman
+pacmanm
"

I'm sure it doesn't apply to your situation, since mamescan.exe only works with Game Launcher, but I thought I'd mention it.  Perhaps there is another utility out there that will work with a front end that you are using?

DeLuSioNaL29

[turnergw]

Another, perhaps easier way around this is to move the differing types of rom into different sub folders of your ROMs folder.  In mame.ini, you can specify multiple folders which will be scanned for roms, like:

rompath                   roms; roms\bios; roms\clone

Then you can put the bios files (such as atarisy1.zip) in the bios subfolder, clones in the clones folder, and so on, and they will still be accessible by MAME, but won't be picked up by a scan of the 'roms' folder (as long as the front end is configured not to look in sub-directories)

I have mine organised this way and it seems to work well.

[mark6437]

Another, perhaps easier way around this is to move the differing types of rom into different sub folders of your ROMs folder.  In mame.ini, you can specify multiple folders which will be scanned for roms, like:

rompath                   roms; roms\bios; roms\clone

Then you can put the bios files (such as atarisy1.zip) in the bios subfolder, clones in the clones folder, and so on, and they will still be accessible by MAME, but won't be picked up by a scan of the 'roms' folder (as long as the front end is configured not to look in sub-directories)

I have mine organised this way and it seems to work well.

This is EXACTLY what I was looking for! THX!!!

I actually tried this, I put the system files and clones into their own directories but I didnt edit the mame.ini file

THX again

Mark