Mame rom/chd/sample/other organization questions.

[Anon752]

Hey everyone, thanks for taking the time to read my noobish mame questions.

I have been using mame forever, but only with the standard roms, and never with a full set. I finally decided to fix that.

I now have a complete rom set for 0.148, complete chd set for 0.148 and a complete sample set. As well as complete manuals, artwork, and all the other extras for 0.148.

Now my questions:

1. Do the chd's just go in the roms folder that I am using currently? This would make the folder full of both zip files and sub-folders with the chd files in them. Is this correct?

2. Do I just put the sample files in the samples folder as zip files or do they need to be sub-folders as well?

3. Artwork, I have a lot of it. How is the artwork folder organized?
Artwork files: artwork.zip, artwork preview.zip, bkground.zip, bosses.zip, cabinets.zip, cpanel.zip, flyers.zip, gameover.zip, howto.zip, Icons.zip, logo.zip, marquees.zip, pcb.zip, scores.zip, select.zip, snap.zip, titles,zip, versus.zip

4. I would like to have my mame games and artwork not tied to any one install of an emulator. Does mame make it easy to de-couple the rom, chd, sample, and artwork directories from the application folder?

5. I currently have all of the mame roms as merged sets via romcenter. Do most people keep them split? Merged?

6. If I want to keep them merged and merge them after adding in the chd folder and sample files to the samples directory, will everything end up in those zips or will it still keep the samples and chd files separate?

7. In my new collection I have also ended up with a cheats.zip full of xml files named after roms. Where do these go and how to I use them?

And last but not least, am I completely doing this wrong? Did I miss something?

Thanks in advance for any answers.

[WitchHunter]

Mame use some default paths, if none exist the emulator check the main directory where the emulator reside.

You can change those paths: just modify mame.ini with a text editor. If you miss it you can create a new one typing "MAME.exe -cc" (or create a link to mame.exe, select propriety; add -cc, then run the link).

Only roms and CHD are needed, stuff like samples and artworks increase the “experience”.

If you use default paths:

1) Yes, CHDs goes on sub-folders inside the roms/; so you've archives files plus a sub-folder for (almost) each CHDs.

2) No need to decompress, put the archives inside samples/

3) The Artworks.zip contains a collection of archives? Extract the Artwork.zip inside artwork dir. "Standard MAME" use only those artworks (they are scans of pieces of papers/plastics glued over the cabinet screen to enhance the graphics). Other stuff like screenshots, titles, icons are used by Mame front-ends like MAMEUI.

4) For each install edit the MAME.ini and set the paths (anyway most 0.148 romset won’t works on 0.147 or any other version, it may require rom renaming, adding bad dumps, etc.)

5) Most people use split sets; after the 7Zip support most peoples choose to Merge the romset (it save lot of HD space).

6) Keep separate. If you like you can put roms+samples+artwork inside the same zip, but when you try to update your romset Ctlrmame and Romcenter detect the artworks as unneeded files and you’ll waste lot of time to rebuild your set. Also most of DATs files used to check you collection want them separate.

7) Put in the same directory of mame.exe, you must enable them adding "-cheat" or "-c" to command line or via mame.ini (tutorials: http://cheat.retrogames.com/index.htm)

[Anon752]

Thanks for all those answers WitchHunter. That clears it all up for me then. Just verified things with romcenter and mame 0.148 and I am missing 2 rom files and nothing else now. Time to go find those 2 and im all set.

[Zorlon]

If you use MameUI you can check your roms directly in MAME using the audit option that will tell you if you are missing anything or if a rom is incorrect

MAMEUI is just a gui version of MAME the version numbers are exact to the version of MAME it is just made easier for windows users, they also do a front end "IV/Play" though I have never used that myself but if the features are the same it is worth getting that instead

http://www.mameui.info/

[darknight_723]

"6) Keep separate. If you like you can put roms+samples+artwork inside the same zip, but when you try to update your romset Ctlrmame and Romcenter detect the artworks as unneeded files and you’ll waste lot of time to rebuild your set. Also most of DATs files used to check you collection want them separate."

Ok so I have a question I am not sure about. Can I put mame samples in the same zip as their corresponding roms, and mame will recognize this? I had always thought the samples had to be in their own directory, but if they can be merged with the roms I would like this better.

[Zorlon]

Way to bring up a dead thread...

Please do not revive older threads

closed.