Mame Only installation

[michael]

Hey guys –

I’ve got a Neo Geo “Big Red” that I’m slowly restoring, albeit with modern internals. I was running a windows implementation with multi-emulators but then repurposed the hardware for a NAS and am trying to make the Pi a simple and inexpensive replacement. As such, I’m only going to be running mame4all all in this cabinet with the .037b5 rom set.

I’ve tried searching for answers to my questions, but either don’t quite have the right terms or the info is no longer relevant to current retropie installations.

SO .. a couple of questions:

What are the minimum packages I need to compile and install for system functionality and mame4all? (to reduce compile time, obviously)

In this implementation, where do I go for mame.cfg to tweak settings? (especially scanlines)

How do I remove everything except Mame from the emulationstation browser? I notice it comes with Apple and Ports, etc by default – I won’t be using any of those.

I’m using an iPac with the original number of Neo Geo buttons (plus a couple of coin buttons) and I think I’m good to go on how to map those. My only question is whether or not someone can help translate the xbox360 identifiers in /opt/retropie/configs/all to the more conventional mame identifiers.

My hardware:

Raspberry Pi B 512mb
HDMI out to a 22″ LCD
Audio out to a lepai amp + speakers
Ultimarc I-PAC and standard Neo-Geo buttons/sticks

Any relevant links or direct support is appreciated.

[Floob]

RetroPie comes with mame4all, so you can use that ‘as is’ if you want

You can get the mame.cfg file here:
/opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all-pi

This is the scanlines option
display_effect=0

More info here:
https://code.google.com/p/mame4all-pi/

To remove the other emulators, just go into their directory here
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms

and delete any files in the directory – then it wont show in EmulationStation.

[michael]

That all clicks, thanks for the clarity.

I do want to clarify – If all I’m running is mame4all, then I don’t need to run the RetroPie-Setup script whatsoever? just the kernel updates and raspi-config script?

[Floob]

Thats right. You only need to run the other options in the retropie script if you want to update the versions of the software, but they should work fine as is if you are using the ones in the 2.3 distribution.

There is a guide about setting your controller with Mame here:

[michael]

cool, thanks!

[michael]

wow that scanline filter sucks. and audio (was expecting that). when running mame in windows with multiple cores, 6GB of RAM, and full mame configurations it was no big deal to do software shading. the pi is capable, but limited in that regard and it seems that while mame4all is solid with the older rom set it’s definitely limited. i’m also thinking about doing the dedicated neo geo emulator so i can get the full spectrum of neo geo games and not have to sift through the mame list. so I need something consistent and universally available for all emulators.

follow my logic here:

hdmi to vga + 3.5mm adapter. this allows me to connect my little lepai amp to the hdmi audio, which i understand to be better supported.

since I’m using a widescreen monitor that has vga input, converting the hdmi video to vga will allow me to insert an slg3000 into the video chain so that I can get more accurate scanlines and without bogging down the pi’s limited resources.

any issues with this train of thought?

[Floob]

Have you set your es_systems.cfg to output into VGA to try that out?
Thats video mode ‘1’

some details are here:

Using overscan in RetroPie to fit video to your display

[michael]

No issues with overscan – the scanline overlay effect in mame4all just sucks. and trying anything else is probably too resource intensive for the pi, so I’m thinking about offloading that function to a dedicated scanline generator. the slg3000: http://bit.ly/1yw6MvD

[Floob]

Sorry, yes, I just meant the link for the reference of where to change the video mode output from 720p to VGA.

For scanlines, I could try it out on an XRGB Mini I have, but I’d want it to run without that to be honest. The SLG3000 looks like a good option.

Maybe this guy can help?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/90925637@N06/11751114826/

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