MAME samples

[raoulangel]

Has anyone yet found where exactly to place the samples?

[labelwhore]

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘samples’ but MAME is working perfectly for me.

[raoulangel]

Play Berzerk, or Space invaders, what do you hear?

[labelwhore]

I was thinking that’s what you meant, but I hadn’t noticed any games were missing sounds yet. The documentation for mame4all-pi says they should go in a /samples directory, but I haven’t come across that directory yet myself.

https://code.google.com/p/mame4all-pi/

That link appears to indicate that the /samples directory should be at the same level as /roms and /BIOS, but obviously it’s not there.

[raoulangel]

I know, because I figure this Retropie / Emulationstation build has modified the file structures. I found a ROMS directory,but it is not in a MAME4ALL directory where it should be, it’s in the retropie dir with other directories in it, one being MAME.. Not sure how MAME4ALL is seeing the folders or attempting to access them but hopefully someone here who works on the images can shed some light??

[labelwhore]

I’ll look around for it myself, but I won’t have a chance until much later today.

[GameRockeR]

Unzip the samples file and copy it to /opt/retropie/configs/mame/samples

[Roo]

no, sorry but that’s incorrect

leave the samples zipped (the names of the sample zips should match the names of the game rom zip files) and they go in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-samples

you can get the correct samples here http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/gp2x.cgi?0,0,0,0,5,2511

artwork goes in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-artwork

get it from http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/gp2x.cgi?0,0,0,0,5,2512

roms go in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame

source: MAME4ALL’s documentation

https://code.google.com/p/mame4all-pi/

[raoulangel]

Thanks for the info.. looks like I have to create those folders.. the MAME4ALL documentation say that the ROMS, SAMPLES etc are subfolders of the MAME4ALL folder which is different from what you say here. I will try this, it would never have occurred to me unless these folders were already there!

[Roo]

RetroPie changes the default paths

Are you using an SD card image? If the folder’s aren’t there it sounds to me like you added RetroPie to a standard Raspbian image. I suggest you get the RetroPie image from the downloads link above.

That said, you can check the paths MAME4ALL is expecting in the /opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all/mame.cfg file

[raoulangel]

Haha, I checked the cfg file, it shows the complete path for the ROMS (home/pi/retropie/roms/mame) but for samples it just says “samples”
No path, no location… I have put it in 3 locations so far and it just doesn’t work. Should I modify the directory in the cfg myself and just put them where I specify?

[labelwhore]

It couldn’t hurt. If it does, just change it back.

[Roo]

my question still stands… why is your mame.cfg incomplete? why do those paths not exist? how did you install RetroPie exactly?

I really recommend you use a RetroPie SD card image

[raoulangel]

Well, i modified the cfg file to indicate the exact location of the samples but no sound in the samples-required games..

I used the retropie 2.3 version, did not change anything

[Roo]

When I got into this, I started with RetroPie 2.4.1 beta, I’ve never tried 2.3. So I’m not sure about that image, but I seem to remember reading that in 2.3 MAME4ALL is not the default MAME emulator.

In every image I’ve used, the directory structure was there already, MAME4ALL was the default and the mame.cfg was correct. I’d recommend trying the newer 2.5.0 beta image. 2.3 is pretty old now.

[raoulangel]

I cannot because I need the GUI, unless someone makes a 2.5 with the GUI which is crucial to me i have to use 2.3

There is no other MAME in 2.3 just MAME4ALL

[Roo]

You can add the GUI to 2.5 sudo apt-get install lxde

But why do you need the GUI? I see a lot of people who want the GUI just to configure WiFi, which is a pretty sill reason to add the GUI back in IMHO. The GUI was removed to save space and keep performance the best possible.

[raoulangel]

Dragging and dropping folders using ftp times out on files larger than 16mb, and I use the GUI for internet browser for downloads and configs, as well as mapping a drive to my network folder to drag and drip which goes MUCH faster and less errors than the ftp.

[Roo]

I don’t mean to offend you, but you’re kind of doing things bass ackwards… :)

I administer Linux servers (among other things) for a living, the normal way to do this is SCP protocol.

Your main PC is Windows? Use WinSCP to connect with SCP protocol. SCP uses SSH which is on by default, so you don’t have to turn on FTP.

http://winscp.net/eng/download.php

If you need super user access (so you can copy files directly to restricted directories on your Pi for example), you can do that too. In the advanced, Environment, SCP/Shell window, add sudo -s to the Shell field. See attached.

Edit files on the Pi with WinSCP (right click, edit) or directly on the Pi command line with nano, which is a very easy to use text editor.

But hey, if you really want startx, you can add it to 2.5 like I said above. But either way, I highly recommend you use the newest RetroPie beta image.

[labelwhore]

Filezilla works well too.

[raoulangel]

I get it, and I will try that.. is there a non-GUI browser for internet access in Unix?

[Roo]

I don’t know of a browser that runs outside the GUI. There probably is, but it’d be a niche product. I just use my desktop to get the files I want from the net and SCP to copy them to Linux.

I view RetroPie a lot like the Linux servers we have at work. We don’t have a GUI installed on those servers – it just adds complexity and eats system resources. It’s really not that hard to administer Linux from the command line, just a little learning curve is all.

[Roo]

Hah, I just installed startx on my test Pi. 282 new packages need to be added to support the GUI. So much bloat… And I have to imagine that all those packages are eating up some of my precious resources. Resources I want for ME so I can play PSX games :)

[raoulangel]

Can retropie be modified so that when powered on it skips the retropie and emulationstation and just runs mame at startup of the unit?

[Roo]

Sure. But your going much deeper into Linux now :)

I would disable EmulationStation from automatically starting using the ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh script

When you do this, the script will modify /etc/profile and remove this last line

[ -n "${SSH_CONNECTION}" ] || emulationstation

Which in English means “if this is not an SSH session, start emulationstation”

You’ll want to add back in that same command, but in place of emulationstation, add the command to launch mame. Something like

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all/mame

You need to specify the path to the executable since it’s not in your default path locations

[labelwhore]

You would need some sort of interface to choose the roms, unless you want to start them from command line each time, or simply start up one specific rom. That’s what emulationstation is for.

Or am i missing something? If you start mame4all without specifying a rom, is there an interface that allows you to choose the rom?

[Roo]

mame can do that too. you press tab inside mame and you can select a game to load

[raoulangel]

I thought pimenu in mame4all was for the gui?

[Roo]

I don’t know anything about pimenu… Never heard of it before

I just tested on my 2.5 installation , if I launch mame from the command line, it gives me a menu to select which game. When I quit the game it goes back to that menu.

What I said earlier about using tab must be only newer versions of mame

[raoulangel]

Roo, you said here:

I would disable EmulationStation from automatically starting using the ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh script

When you do this, the script will modify /etc/profile and remove this last line

[ -n “${SSH_CONNECTION}” ] || emulationstation

Which in English means “if this is not an SSH session, start emulationstation”

You’ll want to add back in that same command, but in place of emulationstation, add the command to launch mame. Something like

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all/mame

Not sure what you mean by “disable emulationstation using the ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh”, I found the .sh file but is there a command I run, or just open it and edit it and remove something?

[Roo]

you run it. type

sudo ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh

* select setup
* select auto-start emulationstation
* select original boot behavior

[GameRockeR]

If you are using 2.3 retropie just copy the samples right here:

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all-pi/samples

As I said earlier, you NEED to EXTRACT the samples and copy it right into that folder, the path I mentioned in my first post is for latest retropie (2.4.2 and above). Leaving the file as mame4all_1.0_samples.zip does nothing.

And no Roo, sorry… this isn’t incorrect, I just tested myself with donkey kong rom and berzerk (some robotic voices and sfx in berzerk), those samples need to be copy it as dkong.zip and berzerk.zip in samples folder.

[Roo]

[quote=87336]If you are using 2.3 retropie just copy the samples right here:

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all-pi/samples

As I said earlier, you NEED to EXTRACT the samples and copy it right into that folder, the path I mentioned in my first post is for latest retropie (2.4.2 and above). Leaving the file as mame4all_1.0_samples.zip does nothing.

And no Roo, sorry… this isn’t incorrect, I just tested myself with donkey kong rom and berzerk (some robotic voices and sfx in berzerk), those samples need to be copy it as dkong.zip and berzerk.zip in samples folder.
[/quote]

yeah misunderstanding. I didn’t assume he had mame4all_1.0_samples.zip – I read your post as extract the files out (so you have effect00.wav, effect01.wav, etc) which you don’t want to do.

[quote=87207]Unzip the samples file and copy it to /opt/retropie/configs/mame/samples[/quote]

that path isn’t a good place to put samples in any version of RetroPie :)

look at /opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all/mame.cfg in v2.4.1, 2.4.2 or 2.5.0 – it shows where it is configured to pull samples from. which is /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-samples

I’m not trying to start a fight, just to give valid, working information

[GameRockeR]

no worries, I want to clarify how my setup works :D

[raoulangel]

Thanks to all for the assist! Samples working, I am working on the snaps and cfg files next. I do have another question but I will start a new topic. Again Thanks Roo! Been playing with the startup stuff, got myself some reference materials and learning some new stuff.

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