MAME .149 CHDS?

[Vaughan]

No, I'm not asking for links - this is just an observation.

 

A recent thread on these boards led me to get an update to Mame. I got the latest version at the time (.149), but as is the way of things, .150 came out while I was in the process of grabbing everything.

 

I did a complete refresh - got all new roms, and all the extras (icons, flyers, cabinets, PCB's, etc.)

 

And then I did what I've not done before - I got all the CHD's.

 

First thing is first - if you get everything out there then your Mame folder is going to get to 201Gb. That's what I have right now, and there may well be things I'm missing. The vast majority of that - some 150Gb, are the CHD's.

 

So now I've got them, time to dig into the games! Wow, what a disappointment.

 

Honestly? It's not really worth it. I'm playing on an i7, and while a game or two had sound issues, they all seemed playable. But the games are a little poor, imo. Of those I've played the only one that's worth it are the two Gauntlet games. There's one weird one called Cube Quest that looks okay, and of course Carnevil - but other than that, they''re nothing to get excited about.

 

In fact, I spent a good deal of time last night playing Amidar -which has been in Mame forever.

 

Bottom line - and my advice - don't bother trying to get all the CHD's. It took me weeks, and there's very little return. If there's a specific game you want, just get the CHD's for that. My obsessiveness drove me on, but the disc space could be better used elsewhere.

 

Not that I'm going to delete these now I've got them, of course.

[goldenegg]

First, The full set of CHDs is actually just shy of 290GB.

 

Second, most games with CHDs are not yet fully supported. Just because a ROM is added to a release, doesn't mean it's playable.

 

Part of what the MAME team does is preserve these old arcade games. There's little reason for the majority of people to have a complete ROM set, other than it makes updating to later releases a little easier.

[Vaughan]

Huh, wonder what ones I'm missing?

 

As I noted - I've actually played all the ones I have, so I know the ones I've got are playable. Maybe that's the set I grabbed - the playable ones.........

 

There is absolutely no reason for me to have the full Mame set.

 

I admit to obsessively collecting them all just for the hell of it. I have a "Favorites" folder of under 300 games, and of those play perhaps 30 of them with any kind of regularity.

 

I use MameUIFX - and it only lists 97 games as having CHD's. Maybe their list isn't complete.

[goldenegg]

There are 412 parent games with CHD files and more clones on top of that. You definitely got some type of filtered set. Not sure why MameUIFX doesn't show you're missing games. If you perform an audit, it should return a sizeable list of missing files.

 

Either way, it doesn't sound like there's much reason for you to get what you're missing.

[Vaughan]

Oh, silly me! I filter out Clones since they're.... well clones. So that will account for a number of them.

 

I think I'll follow my own advice at this point and take a look at the games and see if there's anything I'm interested in, and get those. I only got them because I could. My personal arcade favorites are very much in the era of Pac Man and Donkey Kong.....

[Cynicaster]

Yeah, my advice to most MAME'ers is to just get a set of roms + the corresponding version of MAME that works and forget about it. Aside from some weird OCD type condition, I just don't see the benefit of constantly upgrading to the latest version. I've been running v122 on my cabinet for 2.5 years now and it's been just fine. There have been a few games that I need a later version of MAME to play--like some of the later Cave shooters--but for those I simply set up a newer version of MAME in my front end for just those games. So much easier than chasing full rom sets every few months or whatever.

 

As for CHD games, I guess I just don't know many that are even worth having for me. I have Simpson's Bowling and Street Fighter 3 up and running on my cabinet, and they're great games, but honestly I never play them. I'd be interested in hearing about other good games but I think most of them are either emulated poorly, require special controls, or they absolutely suck.

[MrMaddog]

Yeah, my advice to most MAME'ers is to just get a set of roms + the corresponding version of MAME that works and forget about it.

This... I used to always upgrade MAME versions and have to hunt down changed ROMS which was crazy. Now I just pick a web site I get ROMS from (like say Rom Hustler) and only use the version of MAME that works for those ROMS. (ie .148)

 

I never have any luck with CHD's because they are usually bad dumps... Anf there's a couple fighting games I like to play.