help me graduate from Mame32 to the 'real' mame?

[gavkiwi]

Hi all, after 6 years of playing arcade classics with Mame32, I think im ready to try command line, regular old Mame....but to be quite Honest I dont really know where to start 

All of my MAME favorites in firefox, reference Mame 32.

can someone please point me in the right direction to get the latest version of 'command line' mame?

I think I could figure the rest out with a read me :p

thanks 

[8way]

You can allways get them from here http://mamedev.org/release.html

[gavkiwi]

thx 8way

[gavkiwi]

I get the message 'the selected game is missing one or more required rom or chd images'. I dont get it, it 'the game(s)' work fine in mame32. I dont get it 

[Ummon]

Are you using a different version of mame? Guess what? Some may've changed. Also make sure your roms folder is in the same folder as your mame exe.

[ahofle]

Is there some reason in particular you are looking to use the command line version as opposed to the UI?

[gavkiwi]

Are you using a different version of mame? Guess what? Some may've changed. Also make sure your roms folder is in the same folder as your mame exe.

Yes, I have the roms in the same folder as mame.exe

also @ ahofle...I was wanting to use a 'front end' and also, I was wanting to use a mame.exe that played most of the roms I have (750) or so, in mame32 for example, it only shows approx 535....classics like Bubble Bobble dont show up in the available list at all, but did with older versions of mame

[nipsmg]

that's your problem then, the roms are in the same folder as MAME.

You should have a folder structure like this.

.\MAME
.\MAME\ROMS
.\MAME\Artwork
.\MAME\Snaps
.\MAME\Samples
.\MAME\Flyers
..... etc

Put MAME.exe in the root mame directory, NOT in the roms directory.  It by default searches for roms in a "roms" directory one level below its location.

[massive88]

that's your problem then, the roms are in the same folder as MAME.

You should have a folder structure like this.

.\MAME
.\MAME\ROMS
.\MAME\Artwork
.\MAME\Snaps
.\MAME\Samples
.\MAME\Flyers
..... etc

Put MAME.exe in the root mame directory, NOT in the roms directory.  It by default searches for roms in a "roms" directory one level below its location.

True, but also it doesnt matter if you define the roms path in your mame.ini file, you can set it to be whatever you want.  If you dont want to touch the mame.ini, then you need to have them in a subdirectory as described above.

For instance I have all my emulations setup as
.\Developer\Emulator\exe
.\Developer\zzRoms\zips

So for Mame its:
.\Arcade\Mame\mame.exe
.\Arcade\zzRoms\roms

So in my mame.ini I have it pointing to .\Arcade\zzRoms\roms to find my roms.

However your versions my be in question as well, make sure your romset matches your mame binary version.

[ddrtist]

Well, I have always used MAME Plus! because I find it give me the best results.  I use Mala as my front-end for MAME Plus! (.122) and with the full romset for .122 it works perfectly. 

I would check out Mala (www.malafe.com)?  It has a lot of cool features and you can make customized game lists and stuff.

[TheShanMan]

gavkiwi, there is no difference between mame32 (now mameui) and command line mame, except mameui adds a front end. The key is you need to have the right version of the exe (mameui or mame) for the roms you have - apparently you don't, and apparently you have one version of mameui and a different version of mame. There is no problem running mameui from a different front end - that's what I do. When the FE launches mameui, it passes the rom name on the command line, which tells mameui to bypass the UI and go straight to the game.

I prefer using mameui because that's what I used before switching to mala, and because I prefer to set game options there rather than hoping the FE will set them properly.

[protokatie]

I prefer using mameui because that's what I used before switching to mala, and because I prefer to set game options there rather than hoping the FE will set them properly.

Seconded. I use the MAME "Front end" as a diagnostics and setup tool, but use AtomicFE as the true front end (For obvious reasons).