Getting Started with MAME

[Anonymous No.517260]

hey guys, wondering if someone can help me (and hopefully others) out

i just got a new computer and for the 3rd or 4th time, i'm looking at trying to get a large MAME library set up. my old machine that i'm transferring everything off of is set up pretty well but a ton of games give me errors like "missing CHD" etc even though i have the games.

with so many versions of MAME, bioses (wtf is the plural of bios?), etc. i was wondering if anyone knew of a good torrent or other source for a MAME "starter kit" as it were? alternative suggestions are welcome too.

tl;dr: give me MAME. and talk about MAME.

[Anonymous No.517268]

bump for yea me too

[Anonymous No.517281]

I tried setting up MAME a few times, but it always involved too much tinkering for my taste, then I discovered Final Burn Alpha and since then I'm happy.

[Anonymous No.517307]

I think I got my stuff from a torrent called something like Deepgames MAME.

[Anonymous No.517308]

Would be handy to have. Almost all the roms I find appear broken. Best of luck though OP.

[Anonymous No.517316]

whats the best rom site for individual mame roms?

[Anonymous No.517317]

I use Mame32. Got it from a giant torrent with a bajillion games and already configured.

[Anonymous No.517318]

>>517281
OP here. i had never heard of Final Burn Alpha - going to try to d/l and give it a shot.

however, not to dispute your tastes, it's understandable for there to be a bit of tinkering in a single program that can emulate so many different pieces of hardware. thanks for letting me know about this other program though!

[Anonymous No.517327]

>>517316
romnation.net is my usual go-to. it's hit and miss as to whether the games will work (sometimes you have to download all available regions/versions and test them one by one) but relatively ad-free and quick downloads

[Anonymous No.517337]

>>517318

Yeah, I guess for MAME you need more enthusiasm than I can muster. It might be a more versatile emulator, but FBA is really all I need since all I want to play is CPS1/2/3, NeoGeo and maybe Gradius III from time to time.

[Anonymous No.517468]

the best way to use mame is to download all the roms instead of downloading games one by one

register at pleasuredome.org.uk and download [FREE] MAME 0.148 ROMs (Torrentzipped-Split)
it's 43 GB in size, that's all the roms, just move them to mame's rom folder

if that's to big for you to download there's a merged set that's way smaller but then you have to unmerge the roms I don't know how

you should use the same version of mame as the roms you have, in this case mame 0.148

[Anonymous No.517602]

The problem with MAME is that as a project, it's more about archiving and documenting the games than actually playing them. Sure, if you're dedicated enough you can get it up and running to play all your arcade games, but they're always demanding that you keep your ROMs up to date, as newer versions will straight up not load older ROM sets. It's manageable if you're like me and don't mind tinkering with shit until everything works just right, but if you want to just download any game off any random site, pop it in, and have it "just werk", you're in for a lot of frustration depending on the game you're trying to play.

[Anonymous No.517639]

>>517602
And for what it's worth, I use this site:

http://www.gametronik.com

It's French, but easy to navigate nevertheless. They appear to have completely up to date ROM sets, and better yet, they have a Final Burn Alpha section, which is what I use to play most arcade games, although on the whole MAME has a lot higher compatibility.

[Anonymous No.517662]

>>517281
Pretty much this, Mame is a real chore to get working every once in a while when the rom you download doesn't load.

[Anonymous No.517710]

>>517602
>>517639
>>517662

it isn't a chore and you don't get any problems if you use it like this >>517468

the idea isn't to update the emulator while keeping your old roms

I still have the 0.145 full set and I use it with MAME 0.145, if I update it everything will work like shit because I'm not supposed to use newer versions with this roms

if you want to download games one by one don't use mame, rom sites don't tell you for what mame version their roms are so it will be a pain in the ass to get games working like that

[Anonymous No.517732]

I heard that the Cave shmups wont work on most versions of MAME. Do I have to use one in particular for those?

[Anonymous No.517739]

I'd love to get me some torrent with a recent (not necesarily the latest) version of MAME and the whole romset it supports working fine. I wouldn't bother updating if I had a fully working romset with its respective MAME version.

The same I'd wish for DeMUL (NAOMI) and Final Burn Alpha. But everytime I try one of these torrent packs >>517468 , I end up tinkering for most of my favourite games anyway.

I've given up on a complete working romset, now I only keep my favourite games working on a single MAME version and forget about it. I feel like I reached a point where I've spent more time fixing stuff and looking for missing files than actually playing.

[Anonymous No.517742]

>>517732

There is ShmupMAME which should handle them just fine. You could also try FBA.

[Anonymous No.517762]

>>517732
i think this was the last version that included cave. they made too much progress and got games from this gen running, so they got in trouble

[Anonymous No.517775]

>>517742
first i've heard of shmupMAME. do you need bios, etc. for this or just the roms?

[Anonymous No.517780]

>>517260
>wtf is the plural of bios?
>plural of bios?
>bios
are you fucking retarded

[Anonymous No.517795]

>>517780
>BIOS
>Basic Input/Output System
>System
>Singular
go back to /b/, /v/, or whatever other shithole you crawled from

[Anonymous No.517816]

>>517775

Fuck if I know. I'm using FBA and have no problems.

[Anonymous No.517854]

>>517795
BIOS files is the correct term dickwad
also it might be better to get MAME romsets based on Android/iOS compatibility as that way you know which version of MAME to get

[Anonymous No.517881]

shmupmame uses old rom sets and drivers.

uses mame 143u9. google slowpoke edition. i tried a lot mame builds and that`s the one which seem to work best.

get romcenter to fix and audit the roms

mamegui+ is a nice frontend with m1 support

[Anonymous No.517884]

>>517854
thanks for the correction, cockbite.
really though, there's no need for that kind of shit on /vr/ unless you're contributing to the discussion (like you did in your second post)

[Anonymous No.517894]

>>517881


>>517732
for mame sh3 games

[Anonymous No.517903]

Alright who wants to play online on Kaillera?

[Anonymous No.518045]

>>517260
>>517260 (OP)
what i do, might work for you
use the command line
if you're on windows that's the cmd.exe
navigate to the folder with your mame.exe
then try to start the rom
> mame.exe frogger
if you're missing chd files, it will output the ones you're missing
then google them
it will usually direct you to a rom site, i use edgeemu.net
download the missing files to the appropriate rom dir
open command line and try again
it's tedious but it usually works