A couple of mame questions

kitakyushu

I'm currently using Mame32 (v 0.108u1) to play some old arcade games. I have a couple of questions.

1. how do I save multiple game states with MAME? I've looked at it and it seems to have the option to save one state. I'm wondering if there is a way to do this for several different games so that I can come back to them again at a later time.

2. how do i get CHD files working with this program? Until recently I'd just presumed that CHD files didn't actually work with mame and that they were just available for 'completist' reasons. The red screen whenever I loaded any such game seemed to back this presumption up. Recently however I've read that chd's can be made to work, but that possibly it would require a different program to run them. Is this so?

I guess the essence of this post is (A) how do I do 1+2 with Mame32 and (B) if they can't be achieved with Mame32 then what program should I get to make it work (and work easily considering I'm not too au fait with this platform to begin with).

Thanks

Myrddin

Not sure about savestates, but chd's need to have both the rom & the accompanying chd.

You put the Chd in its own folder in your roms directory, & your rom goes into the roms directory as normal & that should be it.

Bear in mind, Mame32 is an antique these days, & your Chd will have to match whatever build it was made for. There were some Chd changes recently, so the easiest way is to get the latest MameUI & the most recent Chd.

Also, most Chd's don't run anywhere near full speed. Tis the nature of the beast. Some do, like Area 51 etc, but others don't

Relikk

Save states are something like... Hold shift and press F7 to save the current state but after pressing those buttons it asks you to select a slot to save it to, which is usually a number (0-9, I think letters can also be used but I've never tried it).

To load the state you just saved, press F7 then the number or letter you assigned to it.

kitakyushu

Thanks for the replies. I got Area 51 and Killer Instinct to work with their file + chd , but some of the other CHD related games don't load. So I guess it just varies from title to title. The fact that any of the CHD's works shows me that I was doing things the right way at least.

Also the save state advice worked perfectly.

Might be obvious to others, Just a note to anyone reading (including myself as I may come back to this thread) , wrt to save states, you have to have the game of the state you're trying to load already loaded or the state load will fail. So for example if you have a "Pang" game saved in slot1 and then switch to "Rainbow Islands" you cannot load the Pang saved game directly with f7+1 etc whilst Rainbow Islands is running. The correct method is (1) quit Rainbow Islands , (2) load the Pang ROM itself and the (3) load/f7+1 the Pang state.

This surprised me as some other emulators (like winvice for c64) will let you jump right from state to state regardless of the game being loaded first or not.

Anyway, thanks for the replies all!

Relikk

kitakyushu wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. I got Area 51 and Killer Instinct to work with their file + chd , but some of the other CHD related games don't load. So I guess it just varies from title to title. The fact that any of the CHD's works shows me that I was doing things the right way at least.

It could be that your ROMs/CHDs don't match the build of MAME that you are using. The ones that have worked for you have probably never had any changes made to them whereas the ones that don't work have been updated since your ROM collection was built.

kitakyushu

Relikk wrote: »

It could be that your ROMs/CHDs don't match the build of MAME that you are using. The ones that have worked for you have probably never had any changes made to them whereas the ones that don't work have been updated since your ROM collection was built.

So what do I have to do? Would just getting the newest version of Mame32 solve the incompatibility?

Steve X2

If you've got the bandwidth grab the mame set you want (or just the latest one) and get a version of mame that matches it.
I got the latest mame set the other night which is 0.146 (roms are about 40GB and the CHD's are a pretty hefty 220GB).

Of course you don't need to download it all if you only want a few games.

Edit:
Also, MAME32 is very old, it's MAMEUI 32 and 64 now.

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kitakyushu

Just to clarify where I'm coming from. I'm working off the Mame Romset 0.124 (which I think is around 2008). The CHD content of it is around 55gb. I'd no idea the subsequent romsets had blown it up so much (ie to 220gb).

To answers your question TBH the CHD era is pretty much already past my era of interest in Arcade machines (most of my favs would probably be Taito titles from 88-90, so it's not a great bother to me personally if I don't get them running. It's just for demonstration purposes eg when someone asks "oh have you got this game?" etc

I think If I could even get the 55gb worth of 0.124's working then that would be mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned. Would MAMEUI32/64 do the trick?

Steve X2

kitakyushu wrote: »

Just to clarify where I'm coming from. I'm working off the Mame Romset 0.124 (which I think is around 2008). The CHD content of it is around 55gb. I'd no idea the subsequent romsets had blown it up so much (ie to 220gb).

To answers your question TBH the CHD era is pretty much already past my era of interest in Arcade machines (most of my favs would probably be Taito titles from 88-90, so it's not a great bother to me personally if I don't get them running. It's just for demonstration purposes eg when someone asks "oh have you got this game?" etc

I think If I could even get the 55gb worth of 0.124's working then that would be mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned. Would MAMEUI32/64 do the trick?

I assume you've checked you have a valid 0.124 romset using clrmamepro?
Do you have MAME32 0.124 or are you looking for that version?

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kitakyushu

Steve SI wrote: »

I assume you've checked you have a valid 0.124 romset using clrmamepro?
Do you have MAME32 0.124 or are you looking for that version?

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No, this is all a bit new to me tbh. Basically got the romset in 2008 and whatever Mame32 was available at the time, put it all away and haven't really been following developments or gone near it since there. Recently decided to get it up and running.

So for all intents in purposes you can take it I'm a mame novice from the year 2008 who has time-travelled into the future who doesn't know anything about things like clrmamepro etc

I'm currently using Mame32 (v 0.108u1). I take it 108 refers to romset/mame build 108? If I found a Mame32 (v 0.124) would that solve it?

Steve X2

kitakyushu wrote: »

No, this is all a bit new to me tbh. Basically got the romset in 2008 and whatever Mame32 was available at the time, put it all away and haven't really been following developments or gone near it since there. Recently decided to get it up and running.

So for all intents in purposes you can take it I'm a mame novice from the year 2008 who has time-travelled into the future who doesn't know anything about things like clrmamepro etc

I'm currently using Mame32 (v 0.108u1). I take it 108 refers to romset/mame build 108? If I found a Mame32 (v 0.124) would that solve it?

Yeah, mame32 .108u1 is for the .108 romset with update 1.

Here, I've MAME32 0.124a on my server which is as close to .124 as I can get.
I can share the link as its just the emulator and not the roms, sharing emu's is fine, sharing roms will involve a spanking from the mods

www.retrovia.ie/dls/emu/MameUI32-0.124a.exe

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