Duplicate ROM to run with 2 different control sets

[bratwurst]

I've been playing around trying to solve this one myself and can't seem to figure it out.

I built a 2 player cab, but want to be able to play a few 4 player (2vs2) games like NBA Jam with different setups.

For example, in NBA Jam TE, I would like to be able to play 2 human players vs 2 CPU opponents, and also have another version to run a game with 1 human player and CPU teammate vs another human player and a cpu teammate.

So I would need in my game list:

NBA Jam TE 1p and 2p vs CPU
NBA Jam TE 1p vs 2p
(in reality, the controls in the game would actually be mapped to player 1 and player 3)

I tried to make a copy of the ROM in question, and rename it.  I couldn't get it to show in the game lists.  Is it possible to do this somehow?  I'm running MAME 0.136 and MALA 1.71

Thanks for any and all help.

[BadMouth]

You could try creating a duplicate entry (with the new name for the rom) in the mame.xml file.
Just copy & past the original, below the original, then change the rom name.
That will make it show up in the "all games" list.

I'm not sure how MAME will handle the modified rom name though.

If there are different versions of the rom, you could use one of the clones as the other version.  (EU, world, US release, different revision, etc)

You can change the name in the mame.xml file to however you want it to show in the list.

[bratwurst]

Thanks for the help.

I went into the mame.xml file and found NBAJAMTE and copy pasted a whole new entry. 

So I made the following changes in red:

   <game name="nbajamte" sourcefile="midtunit.c">
      <description>NBA Jam TE Player vs CPU(rev 4.0 03/23/94)</description>
...snip rest of game info...

added a duplicate via copy paste and added in red:

   <game name="nbajam1v2" sourcefile="midtunit.c">
      <description>NBA Jam TE 1p vs 2p(rev 4.0 03/23/94)</description>

I copied the rom and renamed it to nbajam1v2

Ran Mame, only the original NBA Jam TE showed up, and with its original name.

Did I do this wrong?

[BadMouth]

Did I do this wrong?

I'm sure I don't know much more than you do.  
I'm pretty sure you won't be able to get the rom to work if you change the name of the zip file,
but it should have showed up if it was in the xml file.

Is the list you are looking at in mame itself or in a front-end?
I don't think mame uses the xml file, but your front end will if you tell it to.
Make sure it's set to show the clones, not just the parent.

I got the thing about modifying the xml file from here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=68419.0

I know this could be pulled off in MALA by using one of the clone roms (nbajamt1, nbajamt2, nbajamt3, etc)
and just changing the description field.

What front end are you using?

[BadMouth]

bah!  I played around with it and the altered names won't show up in the list unless I change the rom name.
It must be checking it against something in mame.  I'm sure there has to be a way to do this.
The only ways I can think of are overcomplicated.  Hopefully somebody with a better working knowledge will chime in.

[nitz]

Here's how I would do this in Mala - can probably be adapted to any front end I would think.

Thanks for the help.

I went into the mame.xml file and found NBAJAMTE and copy pasted a whole new entry. 

So I made the following changes in red:

   <game name="nbajamte" sourcefile="midtunit.c">
      <description>NBA Jam TE Player vs CPU(rev 4.0 03/23/94)</description>
...snip rest of game info...

added a duplicate via copy paste and added in red:

   <game name="nbajam1v2" sourcefile="midtunit.c">
      <description>NBA Jam TE 1p vs 2p(rev 4.0 03/23/94)</description>

I copied the rom and renamed it to nbajam1v2

Ran Mame, only the original NBA Jam TE showed up, and with its original name.

Did I do this wrong?

First, I would do just what you did here - that's weird though that it showed up with its original name. It might just be that you have to "refresh" your frontend or gamelist somehow.

Create a file named nbajam1v2.txt and zip it so you have nbajam1v2.zip. Place that in your rom directory.

Say you've got mame in C:\emus\mame. Make C:\emus2\mame or whatever you want and copy your mame stuff into there. The only rom you would have to copy is nbajamte.

Create a file mame.cmd in your C:\emus\mame folder and instead of having mame.exe as your emu, point your frontend to mame.cmd.

In the mame.cmd file, type

if "%1" == "nbajam1v2" goto nbajam1v2

mame.exe %1
exit

:nbajam1v2
cd c:\emus2\mame
mame.exe nbajamte

Now every other game in your list should still run as normal, but selecting NBA Jam TE 1p vs 2p(rev 4.0 03/23/94) in your list should make the mame in the emus2 folder run instead and since this is completely seperate from your "regular" mame, you can have all the alternate settings you want! 

[bratwurst]

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been out away from a machine for a while.  I will try this today.