Games not loading in AdvMAME

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triggerhappy
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Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by triggerhappy » Sun Oct 11, 2020 6:32 pm

I have noticed that a handful of arcade ROMs will not launch successfully from the Attract-Mode menu, all of which are running under MAME 0.106. These include:
  • Gauntlet (2 Players, rev 6)
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Turtles in Time (2 Players ver UDA)
  • The Simpsons (2 Players)
It's not clear whether the culprit is the same in each case, but they all behave pretty much the same way: basically, the screen goes black for a moment, suggesting the game is loading, then it immediately returns to the Attract-Mode menu.

Being a newbie, I'm not sure where to check for debugging info that might shed some light on the problem. Does anybody know what might be going on, and more generally, how can I see the error output for failed ROM loads?

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by dee2eR » Sun Oct 11, 2020 10:29 pm

Have you got the parent roms for each of those games? Those games are each the clone of the 4 player versions (depending on how your roms have been organised may or may not be the issue).

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by triggerhappy » Sun Oct 11, 2020 10:44 pm

Good question... Not sure. Where are the parent ROM files supposed to be located?

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by dee2eR » Mon Oct 12, 2020 12:22 am

Just in the rom folders with the other roms. They maybe hidden in the menu due to the romscanner script (I know I had the four player versions hidden on 2 player software at some point).

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by triggerhappy » Mon Oct 12, 2020 2:31 pm

Thanks, dee2eR. Gave that a try, and it worked for Gauntlet, but still having issues with Simpsons and TMNT2. Could be I don't have the correct ROM sets, or maybe something else is going on. I'll continue to post re. my progress on those.

Re. Gauntlet, both the 2-player (clone) and 4-player (parent) versions now appear in my Attract-Mode menu. Is there a way to hide the parent ROM in the menu as you mentioned?

They both display in the menu as "Gauntlet" which is a little confusing.

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by dee2eR » Tue Oct 13, 2020 12:26 am

Have a look in /boot/launchers/ScanRoms_V007.sh there are some arrays at the top to hide unwanted parents, clones, etc.

It could be romsets causing your other issues but I'm not sure.

------
For games where you have multiple versions and they all have the same title you can edit /boot/launchers/aml/[emulator].aml (the reference file used by the rom scan script), find the rom you want to edit and add whatever identifyer you like.

You can also highlight the game in the menu and press 'e' and directly edit game sin the menu however any edits done this way will be lost when you rescan the roms - if you change the aml file as above the romscan won't break the changes.

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by triggerhappy » Tue Oct 13, 2020 4:13 am

Thanks again for the first-class support, dee2eR. Really appreciate it!

Got those other ROMs working, so I'll see if I can tweak the scanning script to hide the parent ROMs in question (making sure to make a backup of the original script beforehand). If that proves too problematic, I'll fall back to the other option of editing the reference file.

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by triggerhappy » Tue Oct 13, 2020 3:47 pm

Looks like there was already a commented arcade_hide statement present in /boot/launchers/ScanRoms_V007.sh designed to hide the parent ROMs in question, so I just used that. :)

Something else I've noticed is that when I launch the child ROM (Gauntlet, for example), adjust the video output resolution to fit my vertical display dimensions, and select 'Save for this game' from the menu, those settings are not preserved like they would be for other games when I exit the game and launch it again. In other words, I have to adjust the resolution every time I open the game.

Is there a way to prevent the video settings from being lost every time I exit the game?

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by triggerhappy » Tue Oct 13, 2020 4:23 pm

Oh, and also where do game-specific video settings get written?

When I save them in a game, it says they are saved to /<game_title>. However, I can't seem to locate those files anywhere.

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Re: Games not loading in AdvMAME

Post by triggerhappy » Tue Oct 13, 2020 7:09 pm

Nvm. Figured out that my advmame.rc file ownership was incorrect, which was preventing the custom settings from being written. :oops:

All good now.

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