Mamewah and .rar files?

[Bomber]

Sorry if this has been asked before. I can't find the answer anywhere so here goes...

Is it possible to point Mamewah at a .rar file containing multiple roms? I know you can do it if each rom is contained in a zip file, but what if you have .rar file containing multiple roms? I guess what I would be after is using a .rar file as the rom path instead of a folder?

I know I could just unzip them all into a folder, but I'd prefer to keep them compressed like this if possible.

Also, would it make any difference if it was a .rar, .zip or .7z file?

[Silver]

The problem with rar files is, although they have superior compression to zip, it is not an "open" format like zip - there is not freely usable soure/library's to incorporate it into other programs.

7z is wonderful (in LZMA mode) for compression but is *hideously* slow. 7z 'optimised zip'mode - while 10% better than regular zip is not in my experience 100% compatible as suggested.

Personally I would love to have everything in rar as its much smaller without a significant speed loss, but until it becomes open/GPL'd or whatever I do not think this will happen.

[screaming]

No, MAMEWAH will not support that out of the box.

That said, recent versions of MAMEWAH do have the ability to automatically run a command before running the real emulator executable.  Using that feature, I'm sure you could devise a solution using that will unzip the indivitual ROM from the main ROM zip file.

  The only this that will affect will be the list generation though.  You'll have to make sure your game lists are all set up before you start messing with the "External Application" feature.

-Steve

[Minwah]

I know I could just unzip them all into a folder, but I'd prefer to keep them compressed like this if possible.

Just use zipped roms in one folder.  This will offer the best compression/reliability/usability comprimise.

[Bomber]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm running an older version of Mamewah so will try what Screaming recommended with the latest version. If I don't have any joy I'll just unzip them all into a folder.

[screaming]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm running an older version of Mamewah so will try what Screaming recommended with the latest version. If I don't have any joy I'll just unzip them all into a folder.

  Out of curiosity, what's the point of having 1 big ZIP file of all your ROMs? It doesn't seem worth the extra time and aggravation of getting it all to work, especially when often times files that are compressed more than once will end up netting you a larger file in the long run.

-Steve

[Bomber]

Well it saves a little room but not enough for me to worry about it. This is just the format they are in currently so I wondered if it was possible. Seems to me like the quickest and easiest thing is to unzip them all into a rom folder so that will be my job for tonight.

[Minwah]

Seems to me like the quickest and easiest thing is to unzip them all into a rom folder so that will be my job for tonight.

I would definately do this, and you can zip them back up (individually) if you're concerned about space.

Almost all emulators support (separate) zipped roms, very few support all roms being zipped in one file.  If that makes you feel any better

[Bomber]

Don't worry Minwah - I wasn't thinking about jumping ship