probably a noob question, but...

[arjay]

a while back, i used mame32 plus! (.107 i believe) and started to collect a lot of roms... i piled close to 40-50 games or so, thinking it would be my "end all" solution for arcade emulation. but now with the arrival of cps3 emulation and such, most of my old roms don't work with .117 or .118, which forced me to delete and re-download a majority of my library.

 

with all these mame releases coming and going so fast, do all of you delete and re-download your roms with each major release? i cant think of everyone going through the same trouble, since i imagine some of you might have massive rom collections. please tell me theres an easier way to do this!

 

oh btw, im currently using Mame32FX .117, if that changes your responses at all.

 

thanks again

RJ

[Agozer]

Personally, I go through the detailed changelogs courtesy of MAMEInfo, and update my romsets when necessary (rename sets/files or redownload if new files have been added).

 

No, I don't redownload my entire collection every time a new major build comes out. That would be stupid and a waste of time and effort.

[arjay]

thanks for replying.

 

yeah i didnt think anyone actually does what i did, it really is a pain to go through of all of it.

 

so i googled 'mameinfo', and im looking at "mash's mameinfo" at mameworld. is this what youre referring to? also, when exactly do you know when to rename or re-download with the info given? sorry if im drawing this out too much, i just want to understand you completely.

[Robert]

That's what he referring to although I never use it.

 

I think it would be a good thing if you learned more about how mame and roms work together. Also, you could download just the changes and use a tool such as ClrMamePro to rebuild your roms for you. I believe the latest versions even can download what's missing although I haven't tried that feature. I never delete any roms - just in case.

[Agozer]

Basically what I do with the changelogs on MAMEInfo is go through them and look for entries that say "Renamed files for set X", "Renamed sets to match X", "Added new Y roms to set X", or something similar.

 

Another way is to visit a MAME resource database like MAWS. Search for your sets there and look at their change history across MAME versions. Granted, 9 times out of 10 the MAME changes affect MAME emulation routines only, and not so much the contents or names of individual romsets and the files within.

 

Like Robert said, rom managers can identify outdated sets fast and easy. I've never used one myself apart from curiosity, and because I don't think I need one. They are not very difficult to use. Furthermore, MAME itself is also a pretty good indicator if your sets are outdated in the sense that romsets that it can't "find" when you scan for available romsets never appear or appear as corrupt or incomplete. When you try to run one of these sets, MAME will tell you what files it is unable to load.

[arjay]

this is awesome, something like ClrMamePro is what i had in mind. however, im sure a program like this is bound to slip up at some point, so its good to have the know how to get in there and adjust things manually. ive had some experience renaming roms and such for Kawaks and Neorage, but i barely knew what i was doing.

 

so agozer, robert, thanks again. i can always come here for some help!

Edited September 2, 2007 by arjay

[Robert]

I use ClrMamePro when building sets for torrenting.

 

For my own use, I wrote my own rom manager because the one set of roms has to work with every kind of arcade emulator, and clrmamepro cannot do that in one pass. As a bonus, I get a roms database which I can run queries on.