Right, I do this so you don't have to.
Spent a fair while tussling with MAME this afternoon to get it to my required configuration but I'm finally there, (I'd done quite a lot of tweaking over the years on my last collection), so if anyone now wants a shiny bang-up-to-date version of MAME that'll work agreeably out of the box, now is the time to pop a portable 500GB hard drive in the post to me. (All I'd ask is that you pay for return postage and packing, and I'd use Recorded Delivery due to the intrinsic value of the drive.) I've lashed out £95 but I've got what I wanted out of it so I'm happy, and it's always good to spread around some emulation fun
PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED (should note here this is in no way the fault of Retro Burner who has supplied an impeccably complete collection, it's just down to the complexity and nuances of MAME itself).
Three versions of MAME were supplied, I'm way out of date on MAME (last updated 9 years ago) so figured I'd better give them all a whirl. There was MAMEARCADE, MAMEARCADEUI64 and MAMEUIFX32 (all at version 0.164 as per the ROMset). I quickly binned off MAMEARCADE as that seems to be a sort of limited frontend designed for MAME cabs or something like that, where you haven't got a keyboard and mouse.
So then it was trying to choose between MAMEARCADEUI64 and MAMEUIFX32, both seemed to have their positives. The ARCADE version understood the history.dat file (which populates a pane in the UI with game history and trivia, specs, cheats, and suchlike, and is quite useful), but the FX variant added in autofire and high scores (but lost history.dat), and had a nicer UI, stuff like that. (The ARCADE version is actually closest to the official build, the FX variant is unofficial but adds in extras.)
Autofire and high scores made FX the default winner so I focused on that, but high scores didn't seem to be working, and the lack of history.dat support was bugging me, especially since it worked fine in my FX version from 2006.
So I was flitting back between the two versions trying to work it all out, but the settings between the two seemed to be intertwined somehow, despite them having their own .ini files.
Turns out that whilst they have their own .ini files, they also have some shared .ini files in subfolders, and don't like sharing them. So ARCADE for example doesn't understand what autofire is because it's not officially supported and wants history.dat in a particular place. Set autofire to on in FX, then launch ARCADE, and it'll turn off autofire in FX via the shared .ini file. Try to tell FX where history.dat is via the entries that used to work, and ARCADE will simply delete it out of the .ini file without telling you it's done it.
Then there's fun stuff like turning off the 'anti-aliasing' style filter which I really don't like because I prefer the old big pixel look. This was spilt across two different options screens in my last version of MAME, but has now become a single setting called 'Bitmap Prescaling' on a different options screen, which has the helpful tooltip of 'There is no help topic associated with this item'.
Meh, you get the idea..... (And the whole process was made a lot more awkward by the two versions fighting over shared .ini folders in subfolders, in the end I Treesized the motherfucker to find out what the fuck it was they were modifying.)
Oh yes, and it turns out FX needs the history.dat file in a subfolder called 'dats' whereas ARCADE will read it straight out of the folder its own exe resides in, and also you need hiscore.dat in the dats folder, which wasn't supplied and I got from this amazing website that dropped through a timewarp from fifteen years ago. (This has always been the case TBH, but like I'm going to remember that from nine years ago.)
http://highscore.mameworld.info/ - <<< Established 2000 and I swear the page design and HTML hasn't changed since then, but it's still regularly updated!
And another thing hiscore.dat can conflict with nvram files so I've done a purge on nvram files and allowed it to create new ones where necessary.
ANYWAY IT'S ALL DONE NOW and I've copied over the results to the media centre PC so I can play MAME with a 360 pad on the big telly. (ARCADE has been relegated down to a 'dontusemame' subfolder.)
It's a complete collection so all artwork/resources is there for cabinets, samples, manuals, marquees, flyers, history, etc.
If anyone wants it just let me know, it will now operate on a pretty simple basis.
1) Plug the hard drive in.
2) Double click on mameuifx32.exe
3) Choose your game, pick up a 360 pad, and play.
4) Your high scores will be saved if supported, history.dat works, autofire is supported, and all the extra niceties that FX supports will be present.
MAME has definitely moved on since my last update, there are 1000+ new fully working games in the collection (up from 2800 to over 4000), and stuff like Virtua Racer (which was just about included but horribly broken and unplayable) is in there and works perfectly. (Even down to the extent that the shoulder buttons on the 360 pad are accelerate and brake, right out of the box.)
It's going to take me a while to work through it all but this is the sort of challenge I enjoy
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