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So how often do the ROMs themselves get updated?
tetsu96:
Keep in mind also - it's not just new dumps in all cases - it's adding new ROMs, switching sets, renaming ROMs to more accurately reflect stuff, etc... This doesn't happen with all ROMs in every release of course, but it does happen often enough that you should audit your set or use a tool like CMP before you go playing games on any version.
Space Fractal:
Yep, only use that mame version, you have roms for.... If you update mame, update your roms as way, due they constaly many changes they have.
There are very big version jump from .87 to .113, so of course you need to updater your roms. You could even stick with your old mame version, if you do not have any problems like that.
javeryh:
Thanks guys... that's what I thought. I need to learn the inner workings of MAME or at least more than how to install it and launch a game. I'm going to order the .118 romset and recompile MAME .118 for high scores and go from there. I'd love to learn how to use the various tools like how to update a romset, learn what the heck a parent rom is, etc.
u_rebelscum:
If you want to see how often (and when) a ROM set changes, look that game up at MAWS. MAWS includes ROM set changes back until 0.53, but AFAIK does not include name changes. For example, hard drivin' (harddriv) has:
data
version added .037b09
last change(s) .105u4 .077
Usually, there is more details on what the changes are in the "Additional information" section, but in this game it doesn't include info about the two ROM set changes. OTOH, it does list that 0.62 and .076u1 added clones, which might have also included moving/renaming some ROM files into or out of the ROM set harddriv.zip, which AFAIK usually aren't included in the "last change(s)" stat.
And then there's software like ClrMamePro, which can tell exactly which files in which sets you are missing, as well as fix name changes, set changes, etc. It can take two different version sets and try to reconstruct a third set (but can't make missing files magically).
In general, ROM set rarely change, and the ones that change most often are usually the ones that are still under major construction. But going from 0.87 to 0.113 is 26 versions, not including the intermediate releases. And with ~6000 games over two and a half years, "rare" can add up to many games. Very simple example: let's assume 0.5% rom sets get changed each full version (or ~0.125% per minor version if usual 4 minors per full version). 0.5% of 6000 games is 30. If we assume no games are changed more than once, and that no new games are added, 30 * 26 = 780, or 13%. All assumptions, but might help illustrate what's going on.
rockin_rick:
If you don't get new roms, then you should at least run CMP on your romset. It finds roms that fit into a set by running a hash check on each rom, then comparing that hash to the expected hash for a specific rom. If it finds a match, it renames the rom to the correct name and puts it in the correct set. As mentioned, you may have (for some sets) all the roms, but they have been renamed. So right now, mame thinks that they are wrong, but with a run of CMP, it will rename then as needed.
I'd just try to get a full set, though...
Rick
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