How to add a different ROM into MAME (and keep the original)

[jimmer]

Lets say I have a Defender Pink label rom. It runs on exactly the same hardware as the Red label ROM.

I know how to add it into williams.c so that it replaces the RED label ROM, by giving it the same name and changing the CRD SHA1 codes.

But how do I add it as an additional ROM  ?

I added in williams.c:
ROM_START( defenderp ) ...... definition ....
and a line at the bottom
GAME( 1980, defenderp,  defender, defender,    ......

But it didn't appear in my game list.   So what additional source files do I need to modify ?




 

[jimmer]

And to answer my own question:

there is just 1 more file to alter;  obj/windows64/mame/mame/drivlist.c

add the new ROM name in 2 positions
and either delete an existing ROM or change the ROM count at the bottom of the file (not tried)

[Haze]

technically you should be editing mame.lst, the file you're editing is generated during the compile.

[Howard_Casto]

Weren't you guys going to add something that allowed you to do this without re-compile?

[Haze]

only for removable media, ie the softlist stuff in the MESS part.

plus various mamedevs don't want that part of the functionality used in MAME anyway.

[jimmer]

technically you should be editing mame.lst, the file you're editing is generated during the compile.

OK thanks.

Previously I looked into making a smaller compilation. I couldn't work out how to do/use tinymame.
It would be nice if I could simply do a hatchet job on one of the MAME files.
Do you have any advice?

[Haze]

tbh it's a bit messy at the moment, there are dependencies you probably won't see / realise until you find things not building or working.

there have been various discussions about this on mamedev as of late, including talk / experiments towards improving the dependency detection so that devs can make easier use of the tiny build function (and likewise mobile targets etc.) but right now you really need to know what cores you need, and what drivers are related to the ones you want ;-)

There are no actual runtime benefits to cutting out games tho, any modern OS will only load in what it needs and there is absolutely no performance difference.  A good frontend can filter things you don't want to see by driver already (which is significantly easier than modding thing not to compile)  The only reason you'd actually need a reduced build is if you need a quicker compile because you're doing development on a limited box.

[jimmer]

I can't remember what I was trying to do (probably something that I now know how to do properly) but getting a compilation error after an hour of waiting put me off.  Much rather have a fail after 30s

The main use would be if I'm helping someone else set Mame up, and like me they only want 5 or 6 games.

[Haze]

I can't remember what I was trying to do (probably something that I now know how to do properly) but getting a compilation error after an hour of waiting put me off.  Much rather have a fail after 30s

The main use would be if I'm helping someone else set Mame up, and like me they only want 5 or 6 games.

Still don't really see the benefit.. If you're going to be giving them MAME with 5 or 6 games it doesn't really matter what you give them.  If you give them a build with 5-6 games supported they can run those 5-6 games, if you give them a build with everything supported then they can still run those 5-6 games (the rest won't show up if they don't have the ROMs)

The advantage of giving them the full thing of course is that they can later decide they want to drop some extra roms in, whereas if you give them a build reduced to 5-6 games that's all they'll be able to run with it, ever.

[Howard_Casto]

Gotta agree with Haze on this one... there is some benefit in adding hacked roms into mame (the old misfit mame, ect) but taking out games/drivers doesn't really make any sense.  Just add the few games you want to play manually to a front-end... the end user will never interact with mame's command line directly.