Which Mame Romset Version To Use

[h1d3m3]

From what I have read for Retropie 3, it looks like mame4all-pi wants roms from version 037b5. If I wanted to use roms that are versioned 0.79 or 0.160 I’m not exactly sure what I should do, but here is my best guess:

• Get the dat file for 037b5
• Use something like clrmamepro to “repair” the .79 or .160 romset to match 037b5
• Place these repaired roms into the mame4all directory

Is it possible to use the 0.160 or 0.79 sets with Retropie without having to convert?
There are mame extras available as well (for both 0.79 and 0.160). Do those also have to be converted/changed somehow to be used?

Thanks.

[Floob]

You can “rebuild” the 037b5 set using this guide:
https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

You should be able to rebuild most of it from the 0.160
The rebuild will create it from nothing, it just copies out the bits it needs from the source set.

You may find roms called “MAME – Rollback ROMs” helpful as that would contain the differences between 0.160 and changes made previously.

Dont forget there are other arcade emualtors available on RetroPie

MAME versions and romsets on RetroPie

[h1d3m3]

Thanks for the response (I’ve been reading a bunch of your posts..thanks again)

I’m still building my know-how on all of this, so I do appreciate your feedback on whether I have this conceptually correct:

Optimally I want to use 0.160 because it’s the newest, but depending on the emulator I am using, it may not support the roms from that set.

The rpi2 might not be powerful enough to handle some of the roms available in .160, hence why mame4all uses a subset of roms that have been optimized for speed. Other emulators might handle that set better.

I could put different roms in different emulators. Like some of the 037b5 roms in mame4all and others in advancemame, depending on which works better with that rom.

And finally, just so I understand, if I have a rom from 0.79 or 0.160 that I wanted work for emulator X which supports an earlier, I would find the dat file for that emulator, load the rom and attempt to rebuild it. I’m just unclear about what exactly is happening between versions and what the rebuilding process is actually doing. Somehow the rollback set helps here (http://wiki.pleasuredome.org.uk/index.php/Rollback_Set). Ack!

So many tools, so many concepts, head is spinning :-)

[Floob]

The user “Roo” is the expert here, but essentially:

– Every MAME version released supports certain romsets
– A romset is a .zip file with various roms inside, i.e. dumps of the graphics, sounds etc.. within a given game.
– Romsets can change from one version of MAME to another, i.e. a new or improved rom may be added, or one removed.
– So trying to use the 0.160 set of romsets may well not work with an older version of mame, because the contents of the romsets may differ.
– The dat files contain the names of the roms that should exist in each romset, therefore you can build a romset based on one or many other versions.
– The rebuilding process copies out the relevant roms to create new romsets

The most current arcade emualtor on RetroPie is the libretro-fba.

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