How to get past "OK" on games with mame problems (not disclaimer skip)

[maxstang]

This may be dumb, but I can successfully get past the disclaimer and instruction OKs in MAME, but I run a few games (like Galaga)  that have the "There are known problems with this game..."  message that appears and needs to be OK'd also.  Is there a way to do this automatically?  Thanks for the help.  

[DaemonCollector]

You have to use a Custom version of mame with about 4 lines of code altered. Im not sure which ones allow you to do it as I alway just compile my own version. I know NoName does, but there is no current version of it out.

[SirPoonga]

You can just wiggle player 1 joystick left then right.  This is addressed in the mame faqs.

[maxstang]

Sorry for posting the wrong forum.  Thanks for the help.  My controls are a keyboard hack and I don't use the O and K keys (couldn't).  I'll look into the compiling idea.  That may be beyond my skill level.  

[shmokes]

Or...as SirP mentioned you can just wiggle the joystick.  The left and right arrow keys on the keyboard will also take care of the OK prompt.

[DaemonCollector]

Yea, no matter what you have them mapped to as keys, as long as its left and right it should work, I didn't metion that cause you said you wanted it skipped automaticly.

[SirPoonga]

again, read the amme FAQ on mame.net.  Tells you all about it.

[Howard_Casto]

unfortunately rtfm isn't clear enough for some people sirp

[paigeoliver]

unfortunately rtfm isn't clear enough for some people sirp

Also unfortunately the default mame setting have about six things that are WRONG for basically all users.

The biggest ones are.

Defaulting to the OK screens.
Defaulting to mouse not working.
Defaulting to joystick not working.

I can understand the motivations behind the OK screens, but turning off mouse and joystick input by default is just stupid. A default configuration that must be changed by almost all users is obviously set wrong.

A hardware equivalent would be if your motherboard defaulted to turning off the onboard floppy controller and the secondary IDE channel, because you might not have anything hooked up there. Almost everyone does, but hey, YOU might be the exception, so set it up for the exception instead of the rule.

[rchadd]

i agree with you there paige. i really don't care what CPUs etc the damn game had - i just want to play it!

not enabling mouse input as standard for at least the trackball games is plain dumb.

i assume the legal notice is just there really to cover the devs arses. how many people are legally entitled to play the roms anyway? a very small minority i expect.

just a pity it is not possible for distribution of version of mame with all that crap removed. personally i would like to remove all the rom start up memory check stuff as well - you know just go straight from the FE to the title screen.

[Tiger-Heli]

This may be dumb, but I can successfully get past the disclaimer and instruction OKs in MAME, but I run a few games (like Galaga)  that have the "There are known problems with this game..."  message that appears and needs to be OK'd also.  Is there a way to do this automatically?  Thanks for the help. 

Note:  You can bypass most, but not all, screens using left then right, AFAIK.  But there are a few that will require either no-name mame or a custom compile.  If you choose a custom compile, helpul info is here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~alank2/mame/  And a lot of other useful tweaks, see the readme.html

http://free.hostdepartment.com/S/SirPoonga/hacks.html

my page

[Tiger-Heli]

personally i would like to remove all the rom start up memory check stuff as well - you know just go straight from the FE to the title screen.

Funny you mention that - the alank2 link that I posted has a -fsf option which blanks the video draws so you can skip the startup frames.  You have to manually add the data into the gamename.ini folder, though . . .

[rchadd]

why can't you just make tweeked binary available?

i assume something to do with mame distribution licence.

having to recompile the mame source code is just too daunting for most people.

[Minwah]

why can't you just make tweeked binary available?

i assume something to do with mame distribution licence.

having to recompile the mame source code is just too daunting for most people.

Yes it is against the license.  Frankly I agree with this - the stuff is there for a reason.  You must remember that even WITH these warnings you still see many many posts like 'why are the graphics in Daytona messed up' etc.  Understandably this must p*ss the dev's right off.

I think most people who are genuinly into MAME don't mind compiling their own build - the guide at mame.net is excellent IMHO.

I agree with Paige about mouse/joystick in old versions...not quite so straightforward with the new device_ options.  More importantly these should not be set like this by default:

sleep                   1
high_priority           0

I think it would also be better if double clicking mame.exe created mame.ini (rather than mame -cc).  It's amazing how many people don't still know mame.ini even exists, or how to navigate a damn command prompt in order to make one.

[SirPoonga]

unfortunately rtfm isn't clear enough for some people sirp

Also unfortunately the default mame setting have about six things that are WRONG for basically all users.

The biggest ones are.

Defaulting to the OK screens.

not enabling mouse input as standard for at least the trackball games is plain dumb.

i agree with you there paige. i really don't care what CPUs etc the damn game had - i just want to play it!

Ok, with responses like this you obviously don't understand the purpose of mame.  It is not to be able to play the games more than documenting them.  And those screens are documentation!

The mouse and joystick part is merely a left over from the dos days when a computer most likely did not have a joystick or mouse.   If you enable them it disables keyboard control over that part then.  With those defaulting to off you should be able to play the game on any computer for the most part.

[paigeoliver]

unfortunately rtfm isn't clear enough for some people sirp

Also unfortunately the default mame setting have about six things that are WRONG for basically all users.

The biggest ones are.

Defaulting to the OK screens.

not enabling mouse input as standard for at least the trackball games is plain dumb.

i agree with you there paige. i really don't care what CPUs etc the damn game had - i just want to play it!

Ok, with responses like this you obviously don't understand the purpose of mame.  It is not to be able to play the games more than documenting them.  And those screens are documentation!

The mouse and joystick part is merely a left over from the dos days when a computer most likely did not have a joystick or mouse.   If you enable them it disables keyboard control over that part then.  With those defaulting to off you should be able to play the game on any computer for the most part.

Ok, well why are they still turned off then? It has only been, what 6 years since it worked that way?

As for the purpose of mame being documentation, sure it says that in the docs, but read the developers webpages and blogs and it tells a very different story.

[rchadd]

Ok, with responses like this you obviously don't understand the purpose of mame.

[Minwah]

I and many others just want to play to the damn games.

That's the point really...the MAME devs don't care what you or anyone who 'just wants to play the games' think.  Actually I can fully understand why, and appreciate that fact.  My only gripe is the hypocrisy in this area shown by *some of* the MAME devs at times.

[SirPoonga]

I and many others just want to play to the damn games.

That's the point really...the MAME devs don't care what you or anyone who 'just wants to play the games' think.

[paigeoliver]

I and many others just want to play to the damn games.

That's the point really...the MAME devs don't care what you or anyone who 'just wants to play the games' think.  Actually I can fully understand why, and appreciate that fact.  My only gripe is the hypocrisy in this area shown by *some of* the MAME devs at times.

Well, to read Nicola's OWN words when he started the whole thing was that he wanted to be able to PLAY the games. You can go through google and read all the old posts back when mame first started, the man never talked about documenting anything. Matter of fact, searching the 100s of usenet posts nicola made in the early days shows not one usage of the word "document" or "documentation".

The fact is that he put that in the read me to cover his own butt, and it created a self sustaining monster.

To quote Aaron Giles' homepage.

The only reason I wanted to see consoles or computers emulated was to gain access to the better arcade ports. But now I suddenly had a way to play the real arcade games on my computer! I was in heaven.

[SirPoonga]

That's all nice, but that doesn't mame's goals never change.  I'm sure a project you have worked on the goals have changed.

[Flinkly]

i know you all love to talk about the intricasies of mame, but i for one am interested in a real answer to this mans question.

[SpamMe]

i know you all love to talk about the intricasies of mame, but i for one am interested in a real answer to this mans question. ...

See the links tiger-heli posted a ways up.

[SirPoonga]

Or do a search, it's been answered many times before.

[maxstang]

Didn't mean to start a fire.     I did search on this topic and didn't find a specific answer.  I really appreciate that there are this many motivated people on this board with answers for those of us just starting out.   Thanks to all. 

[u_rebelscum]

Also unfortunately the default mame setting have about six things that are WRONG for basically all users.

The biggest ones are.
[snip]
Defaulting to mouse not working.
Defaulting to joystick not working.

I can understand the motivations behind the OK screens, but turning off mouse and joystick input by default is just stupid. A default configuration that must be changed by almost all users is obviously set wrong.

FWIW, it has been tried to address these complaints, but rejected.

When mame improved the inputs, for one main version (+ a couple u versions) the default was enable mouse for mice games, ect much like you want.  However, there were so many user setup complaints the default was changed back to just the keyboard.  (And almost all the complaints came from newbies, too.)

[shrug]  Not everyone can be pleased at the same time.

And Paige, you'd be surprized by the percentage of Mame users that only use the keyboard.  Not even an encoder, but an actual keyboard.