Kinda new to the whole MAME/Frontend/Emu thing, but longtime gamer, need help!

[clickybuttons]

Hi everyone! This is my first post. I've been a lurker here for many months. Truly seems like the best place to get info.

A little background on me- I've been gaming since 1980 when my parents bought an Atari 2600 for the family for Christmas... I still have it, and it still works.

In the early 90s I went nuts with the whole SNES thing (never liked Genesis)... I played SNES and NES religiously from like 1990-1996, and then I guess I grew out of it... life happened, and got boring.

So I found that I had some free time and a little extra dough and decided to build a MAME cabinet... basically I bought a used cabinet from a local dealer of arcade games... it was old, kind of beat up, but does the job. I'm currently working on making it pretty and painting it up... new marquee, sideart, the whole nine.

Several months ago I set up a computer for MAME and console games, etc (bought an X-Arcade Dual Stick, which I love). I have it connected via S-video to a 20" tube TV, and it looks wonderful. The whole system works great for the most part, but here are the problems I ran into... and by the way, I've always been a bit weary posting about this, because I know that talking about roms and emulators is very much frowned upon. So I'll try to be as vague as possible, while providing details. Hopefully I am not breaking any rules with this topic.


problem #1 - getting all MAME games to work within a frontend, such as Maximus Arcade. I can only get a few to work, and the rest do not. Now I know the games work, because I use MAME UI64, and all the games work in that, but I hate that it's not a frontend... I hate having to use the mouse and keyboard to play games. I'd rather have them listed in Maximus Arcade. The only games that do not work in MAME UI64 are some fighting games. Oddly, they work in Maximus Arcade, but ONLY those do (using Mame Plus Plus). I wish everything just loaded in MA! A vast majority of my games work only in MAME UI64 (and PS, I have used countless versions of MAME, old to new, and all its variants). I had the best luck with MAME UI64. But oddly, certain fighting games (well-known, fast-paced classic violent games, if you know what I mean)... they do not work, unless I run MA, and use Mame Plus Plus.

problem #2 - ALL console games work in Maximus Arcade. All of them. Never a problem with console games (NES, SNES, N64, you name it). MAME? Constant problems. And I read that this is very common. So basically, to play any console games, I use MA. But again, I wish all games would work within MA. I don't know if I set anything wrong in the configuration as the configuring is always somewhat confusing to me.

problem #3 - Within MA, nullDC (the Dreamcast emulator) never loads the screens correctly. Always, the "command line" window (not the actual Dreamcast BIOS/load screen) loads in front of it, and I can never get the loading screen to load in front of that. Sometimes I get really weird behavior when I try to load a game. Hard to explain. So basically, Dreamcast games are impossible to play from within MA. If I load nullDC by itself from the Windows desktop, it works perfectly.

So, my solution to all of these problems isn't really ideal... I have three icons on my Windows desktop... one is for Maximus Arcade (which again, perfectly plays all console games... NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Playstation 1, Atari 2600, and the MAME fighting games that don't run in MAME UI64.... then, the second icon is the MAME UI64 icon which has a vast majority of my MAME games (except the ones that only work in the other MAME emulator).... and the third icon is the nullDC icon, so I can play my Dreamcast games.

Just wondering exactly how I need to configure Maximus Arcade to make everything work... or, should I try another Frontend? I really love the capabilities of MALA, but I cannot get it configured properly for the life of me, as it can never find any games, even though I point the proper folder.

Thanks for any help at all... again, I hope I didn't violate the forum rules by talking about roms and emulators... even though they have been discussed a million times in various threads.

Thank you again, and great to be here! I'm sure I'll be posting much more in the future.

-Clickybuttons

[bizkonson]

hey man.
long story short my story is similar to yours but i started with the arcades and then went to the nes snes bla bla bla...
anyways make sure you are using the most updated version of mameui  --->http://www.mameui.info/
there was a problem with a few of the "really bloody fighting games" on the first release of 147 and the second upgrade fixed it
that might fix this issue.
second MA is great i was using it as well until it stopped reading my controllers hehehe nothing was just sitting there dead 
was directed to another front-end call Hyperspin  -->http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/  . its awesome! especially if you like great FX in your front end and the previews and graphics!
its a bit more complicated to set up then MA but its worth it and if you donate a few $$ to them you'll get the Hypersync add-on and it pretty much does all the setup for you (preview videos, backgrounds and so on.

the two suggestions above will solve your front end and using multiple programs for different games problems.

but my question to you is when you say all the Mame games working you mean all of them? i cant drop names here but ive got a shitload  of games not working (well not shitload) but some of the newer ones that require CHDs don't work especially the gun one's :\ yours working?

[BobA]

Hi everyone! This is my first post. I've been a lurker here for many months. Truly seems like the best place to get info.

A little background on me- I've been gaming since 1980 when my parents bought an Atari 2600 for the family for Christmas... I still have it, and it still works.

In the early 90s I went nuts with the whole SNES thing (never liked Genesis)... I played SNES and NES religiously from like 1990-1996, and then I guess I grew out of it... life happened, and got boring.

So I found that I had some free time and a little extra dough and decided to build a MAME cabinet... basically I bought a used cabinet from a local dealer of arcade games... it was old, kind of beat up, but does the job. I'm currently working on making it pretty and painting it up... new marquee, sideart, the whole nine.

Several months ago I set up a computer for MAME and console games, etc (bought an X-Arcade Dual Stick, which I love). I have it connected via S-video to a 20" tube TV, and it looks wonderful. The whole system works great for the most part, but here are the problems I ran into... and by the way, I've always been a bit weary posting about this, because I know that talking about roms and emulators is very much frowned upon. So I'll try to be as vague as possible, while providing details. Hopefully I am not breaking any rules with this topic.


problem #1 - getting all MAME games to work within a frontend, such as Maximus Arcade. I can only get a few to work, and the rest do not. Now I know the games work, because I use MAME UI64, and all the games work in that, but I hate that it's not a frontend... I hate having to use the mouse and keyboard to play games. I'd rather have them listed in Maximus Arcade. The only games that do not work in MAME UI64 are some fighting games. Oddly, they work in Maximus Arcade, but ONLY those do (using Mame Plus Plus). I wish everything just loaded in MA! A vast majority of my games work only in MAME UI64 (and PS, I have used countless versions of MAME, old to new, and all its variants). I had the best luck with MAME UI64. But oddly, certain fighting games (well-known, fast-paced classic violent games, if you know what I mean)... they do not work, unless I run MA, and use Mame Plus Plus.

If you use a command line mame you should be able to get all your games working with MA.   I have no problem with almost all of the games except those that require more CPU than is possible to get for a decent price.

problem #2 - ALL console games work in Maximus Arcade. All of them. Never a problem with console games (NES, SNES, N64, you name it). MAME? Constant problems. And I read that this is very common. So basically, to play any console games, I use MA. But again, I wish all games would work within MA. I don't know if I set anything wrong in the configuration as the configuring is always somewhat confusing to me.

I would be glad to provide my config for command line mame.

problem #3 - Within MA, nullDC (the Dreamcast emulator) never loads the screens correctly. Always, the "command line" window (not the actual Dreamcast BIOS/load screen) loads in front of it, and I can never get the loading screen to load in front of that. Sometimes I get really weird behavior when I try to load a game. Hard to explain. So basically, Dreamcast games are impossible to play from within MA. If I load nullDC by itself from the Windows desktop, it works perfectly.

Sorry don't use nullDC

So, my solution to all of these problems isn't really ideal... I have three icons on my Windows desktop... one is for Maximus Arcade (which again, perfectly plays all console games... NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Playstation 1, Atari 2600, and the MAME fighting games that don't run in MAME UI64.... then, the second icon is the MAME UI64 icon which has a vast majority of my MAME games (except the ones that only work in the other MAME emulator).... and the third icon is the nullDC icon, so I can play my Dreamcast games.

Just wondering exactly how I need to configure Maximus Arcade to make everything work... or, should I try another Frontend? I really love the capabilities of MALA, but I cannot get it configured properly for the life of me, as it can never find any games, even though I point the proper folder.

Thanks for any help at all... again, I hope I didn't violate the forum rules by talking about roms and emulators... even though they have been discussed a million times in various threads.

Thank you again, and great to be here! I'm sure I'll be posting much more in the future.

-Clickybuttons

Try the fix in this thread to get MAME working

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,120313.0.html

[clickybuttons]

Thanks... I found the fix... it wasn't so much the long/short path config in Maximus Arcade, as it was storing the roms in the same folder as my Mame emullator. I had the Roms in a folder simply called "roms" and the emulators in "Emulators"... by putting all the mame roms inside the emulator's folder under "Emulators" ... everything worked perfectly inside Maximus. I found a thread about it on another forum, and I was thrilled to find it working. Such a simple solution, haha.

Thanks!

[clickybuttons]

Yeah, I mean ALL of them are working... even the ones that require CHDs.... I found a site that had every necessary "b10$" file (I wish I would have bookmarked it) and every necessary chd.

The popular sites that show up in web searches.... avoid them like the plague, they are no good.