Need help with Maximus & Showing Mame CAVE SH-3 roms in list..

[tastysoil]

Hey guys,

I've been working on my Maximus arcade PC setup w/ an X-arcade control setup the past week, and have got it working pretty well. I was hoping you could help me iron out some questions I've run into...

The PC came pre-configured with maximus arcade from X-arcade. It was configured when I got the PC to have maximus hide "non-working" roms and only to show "parent roms" via a some sort of mame database, Which I like…that way it keeps the list of games down to just the ones that work.

I realized that the version of mame that came on the PC when it was purchased from x-arcade was really out of date, so I updated it to a version that was compiled to have the ability to play cave SH-3 roms, but I can't get them to show up in the maximus arcade mame rom list, even though I've had maximus re-scan the media folder on launch.

I'm fairly certain that this has to do with a couple things… firstly, the list of games maximus sees as "working" roms must be outdated… Currently, I am using mame 0.152 so I need to somehow update the list that maximus uses to determine what roms are working. Any tips on what file I need to update, and what to use to update it? Or is there a updated file I can download somewhere?

The other thing I am thinking could be a problem is that those cave SH-3 roms aren't officially "working" from what i've read. So how can I allow maximus arcade to show these "non-working" roms in the list of working roms *without showing* all the other non-working mame roms in the list of playable games?

Am I on the right track with these questions? I'll admit, i'm kind of new to working with all this, so I appreciate any pointers or help you guys can give me.

Thanks a bunch for any help with this!

[JDFan]

I'm fairly certain that this has to do with a couple things… firstly, the list of games maximus sees as "working" roms must be outdated… Currently, I am using mame 0.152 so I need to somehow update the list that maximus uses to determine what roms are working. Any tips on what file I need to update, and what to use to update it? Or is there a updated file I can download somewhere?

The new version of MAME will have the list of working roms in it and when you run the rescan of the media file it will compare the roms that you have in the roms folder to the ones in the list it has. So first question for you --

When you updated MAME to 0.152 what exactly did you do ? (ie. did you just download the new MAME and rescan the existing roms - or did you also update your Rom set so that you have the new roms and properly renamed roms to match the 0.152 list)

When you update the version of MAME you are using you also will need to update the roms and support files (ie. artwork, chd files, etc.) so that any changes that were made to the games will exist in your roms and support files otherwise any game that has changed may no longer work (depending  on the changes) since MAME will be looking for a new list of roms with the changes but you will only have the old files that were made before the changes. - So chances are you'll have fewer working games after the update than you had prior to it. (since you are now using a mismatched set of files (ie. MAME 0.152 and a romset and support files from the old version which no longer matches))

So what you really want to do is update everything by either getting a new set of roms etc. to match the new Mame version or run the various updates from whatever version you were using up to the new version (ie. if you had mame 0.149 you would want to download and install the 0.149 - 0.150 update, then the 0.150 to 0.151 update, and finally the 0.151 to 0.152 update) since you would need all of the intermediate updates from the old version to the new version.   

[tron84]

The other thing I am thinking could be a problem is that those cave SH-3 roms aren't officially "working" from what i've read. So how can I allow maximus arcade to show these "non-working" roms in the list of working roms *without showing* all the other non-working mame roms in the list of playable games?

Use SystemPixel's Cave Sh-3 build, which it is a (cv1k & nonag), CLEAN: non-working games removed build for 152.
Works perfect 

EDIT: & what JDFan said if you do not have the 152 set & forget about it if you do not have the cave roms.

[BadMouth]

Haven't messed with Maximus Arcade in many years, but most front-ends rely on the xml file to tell them whether a game is playable or not.
The metadata in the xml is probably still the official version that has the sh-3 games labeled as non-working.  mame.xml will be located in the MAME folder.

It's a huge file and takes a long time to open and work with, but open the mame.xml file in notepad (wait minutes for it to open), turn wordwrap off (wait minutes for it to reorganize, then search for the effected games and paste "good" over whatever it has next to emulation status=
Use copy and paste.  If you try to type, it will freeze up after each letter.  If you paste, it will only freeze up once.  Wait until it unfreezes, then save.

[tastysoil]

The other thing I am thinking could be a problem is that those cave SH-3 roms aren't officially "working" from what i've read. So how can I allow maximus arcade to show these "non-working" roms in the list of working roms *without showing* all the other non-working mame roms in the list of playable games?

Use SystemPixel's Cave Sh-3 build, which it is a (cv1k & nonag), CLEAN: non-working games removed build for 152.
Works perfect 

EDIT: & what JDFan said if you do not have the 152 set & forget about it if you do not have the cave roms.

Hey guys, thanks a bunch for the reply! The version of mame i'm using is one I found in the "uploads" area of the EMUMovies.com ftp site. It's titled "Mame & MameUI 0.152 64 bits nonage-cavesh3-dinput-highscore" and the romset i'm using is the 0.152 Roms & CHDs from [romsite name redacted]. Is the "SystemPixel" version suggested different then this build?

The way I updated it was to copy the .exe files over the old mame version. I didn't want to mess up any of the configuration files that already existed there, because all the controls were working great with my X-Arcade control.

This romset I got from [romsite name redacted] didn't have the cave SH-3 roms (or Ketsui, Mushihimesama) in it, so I have attempted to find them scattered around on various websites.

In the Maximus Arcade Preferences, under "Options" and then the "Mame" tab it says "Disable unplayable Roms (Using Mame Data)" which is checked off. If I uncheck this, ten billion unplayable roms appear in the maximus arcade mame area, so thats complete chaos.

I will try what BadMouth suggested…I'm guessing that this is the problem.

I'm not finding a Mame.xml file anywhere on my system… (i just did a search for that file name and nothing came up)

Any chance anyone has already done this to their mame.XML file and wouldn't mind sharing it?

Thanks again for all the help and info, you guys are amazing!


EDIT: Just tried the SystemPixel Mame version, and they don't show up with that in Maximus either… It's probably that XML file that is the culprit…
EDIT AGAIN: Another thing to mention is that the Cave SH-3 games DO show up in the mame rom list if I run the mame exe outside of the maximus frontend… just not inside the frontend

[BadMouth]

Just make sure you refresh your gamelist after updating the xml.

Again not sure about Maximus Arcade, but with Mala it copies just the xml metadata it needs into a smaller gamelist file so it doesn't have to parse that gigantic xml file every time you launch Mala.  That file is updated when the main gamelist is refreshed.

[tastysoil]

Ok, i've been messing around with this for a while and can't figure it out. I can't locate this mame.xml you guys mentioned…I don't think it's part of my mame folder.. (is this a file that comes with hyperspin? If so, that explains why I can't locate it)

After doing more research, It seems that Maximus uses a CLRMamePro .dat file to build it's list of roms. I've downloaded a Mame 0.152 CLRMamePro .dat file and updated it over the old .dat that was there using the Maximus Prefrences under the "database" tab. The only problem is that because these Cave SH-3 games aren't officially part of Mames current build, they then aren't part of the 0.152 .dat file, so they still don't load into Maximus.

Is there a way I could generate my own .dat file from the roms I have? I'm not familiar with CLRMamePro, so I'm not sure if this is how it works…

Am I on the right track?

Basically, I just need a way to add the new cave games to the database Maximus generates the rom list from.

Thanks again guys