Mame Rom Compatibility Lists

[herbfargus]

Mame can be confusing… to say the least. So to add on to the great work that Floob and Roo have done, I’ve created spreadsheets of all the supported roms of each arcade emulator. The lists are derived from the .DAT files on this wiki page: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

I’ve also included links to each spreadsheet on there too as well as each emulator’s wiki page.

These lists can be edited by anyone to keep an updated list of which roms are compatible, which aren’t, and which kinda sorta work. (there is a readme on each spreadsheet that explains how it’s laid out.) They are all listed as functioning by default until its found to be otherwise- just as a note though- a missing rom error isn’t an indication of it not functioning so much as it is an indication of you having the wrong romset- These lists are more for whether or not the game actually plays and how well it runs.

Mame4All-Pi

IMame4All-Libretro

PiFBA

FBA-Libretro

GnGeo

AdvMame .94

AdvMame 1.2

[dankcushions]

Great idea! it would be good to finally know what real-world difference is between the various mame emulators. eg, i’ve found that fba-lr performs fine for neogeo and fba games, and lets me use lower opacity scanlines and integer scaling, so i’m starting to use it over the apparently faster pifba emulator.

One thing though, it might be an idea to include different status columns for pi and pi 2, although i’m not sure if there’s many examples of mame/fba games that perform well on the pi 2, but not on the pi?

[Anonymous]

This is great!
I’ve already tested a bunch of games, how can i help?

[Anonymous]

[quote=101545]
although i’m not sure if there’s many examples of mame/fba games that perform well on the pi 2, but not on the pi?

[/quote]
Actually i believe there are many, i can already think of NBA jam, Mortal Kombat, Street fighter 3.3…

[Floob]

This looks great, thanks herbfargus.
I was thinking it may also be useful to generate a .dat file for lr-fba for NeoGeo, I’m finally thinking about moving to it from gngeo! (Still not convinced its as fast but maybe thats just me).

As you say, Mame/Fba based romsets can be a very confusing topic, hopefully this will go some way to clearing things up.

[herbfargus]

As far as helping feel free to add the results of your testing to the spreadsheets either in the status and or notes column.

I’m definitely open to new ideas to improve the lists, as far as differences between rpi1 and rpi2, would it make more sense to create an rpi1 and rp2 status column or would it be more preferable to just make a comment in the notes section? I’m open to both ideas.

Floob as far as a lr-fba .DAT I found this list in the source code

https://github.com/libretro/fba-libretro/blob/master/svn-current/trunk/gamelist.txt

There are about 2000 more games listed there than in the .DAT file currently listed for lr-fba and as far as .DAT files I’ve found them to be more preferable when they have merge data (like the two .DAT files I added for mame4all and pifba)

[dankcushions]

i think 2 columns might be better, otherwise pi 2 users would’d have to add ‘tested on pi 2’ on everything they update, and if they didn’t, pi1 owners might be misled.

i guess floob has seen this now but i’ve made a dat file for lr-fba neogeo only in this thread: https://www.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/howto-use-datfiles-to-eliminate-clones-etc-from-mamefbaneogeo/

[herbfargus]

Ok I’ve added separate status columns for the Rpi 1 and the Rpi 2. And whoever added the dropdown menu options for the status columns- brilliant! (if you could do that to all of them I would be grateful)

I’ve also added a link to your neogeo .dat file on the managing roms wiki page- thanks for the input!

[dankcushions]

that was me :) good to know a summer job in my teens doing spreadsheets for surveyors wasn’t entirely wasted!

copied to all now. assume that in the gngeo sheet – all greens were ‘ok’ and not ‘untested’. that seemed to be the only sheet with any test data in it as yet – we have work to do! :)

[Floob]

[quote=101564]
Floob as far as a lr-fba .DAT I found this list in the source code

https://github.com/libretro/fba-libretro/blob/master/svn-current/trunk/gamelist.txt

There are about 2000 more games listed there than in the .DAT file currently listed for lr-fba and as far as .DAT files I’ve found them to be more preferable when they have merge data (like the two .DAT files I added for mame4all and pifba)

[/quote]

Thats an interesting mismatch. RGUI reports the fba core supporting FBA 0.2.97.30 which is what the dat file is generated from. Yet, as you say the gamelist in fba-libretro github lists more.

Ah! Maybe its because FBA supports more than just arcade, so you could technically use FBA to run Megadrive and PC Engine etc.. whereas the dat file provided was just the arcade side of things.

[Anonymous]

Added a few games, I erased all clones in my set so i won’t be able to test them (sorry english isn’t my native language)

[herbfargus]

@bazola

Well every little bit helps- thanks for your contributions :)

@floob,

I think you may be right, I had forgotten about the other systems. For all intents and purposes I think keeping the .dat files specific to the arcade games is wise.

@Dankcushions

Thanks for fixing up the sheets, it will help eliminate user error immensely.

[thatguyinfl]

Great idea!

[ekstreme]

This is awesome work guys, I’m very happy to add to this list as I go.

When I get the time I’m also panning on creating dats that filter all the clones and other guff. I hate polluting my game list with all roms know to man. Makes it quite un-playable.

[dankcushions]

[quote=101610]This is awesome work guys, I’m very happy to add to this list as I go.

When I get the time I’m also panning on creating dats that filter all the clones and other guff. I hate polluting my game list with all roms know to man. Makes it quite un-playable.

[/quote]me too! :) when you do, please add them to this thread: https://www.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/howto-use-datfiles-to-eliminate-clones-etc-from-mamefbaneogeo/

i’ve already done some for neogeo and fba for the fba-libretro romset. it’s quite easy using romlister – takes a few mins

[windale]

So it looks like somebody has completely screwed up the Mame4All list. There are loads of Roms missing, you can easily see this by the numbers on the left. The Bios category is also screwed up now because of this, it says ‘NeoGeo’ on games that aren’t NeoGeo.

[dankcushions]

yeah I noticed that. suggest we fix and then protect all but the status columns (on all sheets): https://support.google.com/docs/answer/144687?hl=en (presume only sheet owner can do this?)

[ekstreme]

I’m not 100% familar with romlister, but it looks like it’s not going to be all that helpful as some of the older sets are pre mame xml days.

You will also need to find either the right mame binary\xml and the right ini for the right versions.

I went old skool and and just building a gngeo data now. I eye-balled it removing all clones and non-working sets:)

Stupid question. But where do I upload the dat file too once created? Sorry never edited a wiki before

[Floob]

[quote=101620]
I went old skool and and just building a gngeo data now. I eye-balled it :)

[/quote]

Is there a reason you chose gngeo over fba-libretro? I’m torn between the two. I like the lr-fba in that it will use RetroArch configs and overlays, but I could have sworn gngeo was faster.

[herbfargus]

Yeah I can lock the columns that don’t need to be edited by the community. It looks like the missing ROMs are the ones that were listed as having issues- seems someone deleted them. I’ll see if I can revert back to before they were deleted or at least put them back in by hand since I have backups in a separate folder for when I knew someone would make a mistake (I’ve done this before ha ha)

To get rid of all the clones I usually just build a merged set with clrmamepro and it gives me about 1000 instead of 2200.

[ekstreme]

[quote=101621]Is there a reason you chose gngeo over fba-libretro? I’m torn between the two. I like the lr-fba in that it will use RetroArch configs, but I could have sworn gngeo was faster.[/quote]

Well, I hate to say it, but I’m more of a tinkerer and tweaker than a player as much as I do love playing the games from my youth. I really like the building sets and all that guff, been doing it longer than I can remember.

That being said my limited impression is that GnGeo is it’s kind of rubbish. I want a smooth experience so a retroarch core is going to suit me better and I really didn’t like the popup menu to exit and I’m also having huge issues with my controller.

Also, the effects don’t work for me. I hate smoothed rendering, but any effect I loaded either butchered the screen or looked terrible. Your overlay video is still the easiest and best results I’ve had so far so that helps the argument for fba-libretro. EG, my gameboy overlay without a palette looks so damn nice you’d swear it was a photo.

[ekstreme]

Ouch merged set brings out my OCD. It’s inefficient space use (when clearing out clones) and more memory being used to open the archive.

But you are right, it is a quick way to do it

[herbfargus]

Ok I’ve locked all the columns but the statuses and the notes column. I can do that for all the sheets, the only issue that comes with that is that people can no longer use the filtered views- does anyone have any suggestions for how to solve that? or should I just leave it to people to copy to their own google drive if they want that luxury?

[dankcushions]

[quote=101620]I’m not 100% familar with romlister, but it looks like it’s not going to be all that helpful as some of the older sets are pre mame xml days.

You will also need to find either the right mame binary\xml and the right ini for the right versions.

I went old skool and and just building a gngeo data now. I eye-balled it removing all clones and non-working sets:)

Stupid question. But where do I upload the dat file too once created? Sorry never edited a wiki before
[/quote]
floob posted .xml dat files for all the mame/fba emulators used in retropie: http://smartretro.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=68

it’s very easy to create datfiles from romlister with clones removed – again, please see the instructions on the other thread – https://www.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/howto-use-datfiles-to-eliminate-clones-etc-from-mamefbaneogeo/ – please also add links to your dat files there, as i asked before :) that’s where we are sorting that stuff out.

[gutossn]

Hi! I did configured my PIFBA and selected only ‘world’ roms, the clones or versions was ignored. I’m very happy to play the old arcade games again on my Mini Pi-Arcade! I filled the PIFBA spreadsheet romlist to help the gamers to avoid testing bad roms.

Thank You.

[ekstreme]

Awesome, thanks dankcushions. It would be great if we could generate the dats online for whatever people wanted to filter. But that would be a bit of a process to undertake.

I think I’ll have to have a crack at this romlister

[herbfargus]

[quote=101627]Ouch merged set brings out my OCD. It’s inefficient space use (when clearing out clones) and more memory being used to open the archive.

But you are right, it is a quick way to do it

[/quote]

I definitely agree with you on that point- that recommendation of building merged sets is under the assumption someone has the space to spare. If you’re able to build a parents only .dat file for things I’m sure the community would be more than appreciative.

As far as uploading files, there are a lot of free upload sites you can host them on and then just provide a link on the wiki once you’ve found somewhere to host them, or you can set up a github account and merge them to the repo I just created:

https://github.com/HerbFargus/RetroPie-Dat-Files

Thanks for your contributions to pifba page :)

[ekstreme]

I’m happy to build parent only sets, but I’m also inclined to remove all the what I’d consider crud; quiz games, mahjong, puzzles, adult and gambling to name a few.

I think if we could agree in a base filter it would be a good start

[herbfargus]

I think everyone can agree with that- nobody wants to play those games anyways.

[Floob]

[quote=101634]I’m happy to build parent only sets, but I’m also inclined to remove all the what I’d consider crud; quiz games, mahjong, puzzles, adult and gambling to name a few.

I think if we could agree in a base filter it would be a good start

[/quote]

That sounds good, like herbfargus says its unlikely people would want it, but maybe it could be mentioned in the meta data headers of the dat/xml file what has been removed so we can keep track.

[ekstreme]

Can do Floob. I finished my GnGeo dat last night, but was just too tired to finish testing and upload it. Should be ready this evening.

[ekstreme]

GnGeo filtered dat has been uploaded to https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

[dankcushions]

thanks. i’ve added that to the list in the proper thread – https://www.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/howto-use-datfiles-to-eliminate-clones-etc-from-mamefbaneogeo/#post-101709

[ekstreme]

PiFBA added and uploaded

[dankcushions]

cheers, added them to the proper thread. again, can you do any further datfile updates there rather than this one? https://www.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/howto-use-datfiles-to-eliminate-clones-etc-from-mamefbaneogeo/#post-101717

the thread we’re in is for testing working/non-working mame stuff

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