installing MAME cab. games

[lexmark]

How do you guys get the games into your MAME cab. that you want to play?

do you install all 6000+ games then somehow filter the ones you dont want?

 

or do you ...just install the roms,chd ,art,ect for the games that you want and then add other games in a similar fashion later on ?.

 

or do you put all the games you want into the favorites folder & direct the front end to that folder??? :unsure

 

thanks

[dmworking247]

Its a tough call... I started by getting just the roms I wanted and adding to it, but the downside is that games need to be 'compiled' for the version of Mame you're running or you'll find the ocassional title that doesn't run. The other thing is you only get the games you remember/know and can miss out on heaps of other great titles.

 

So I ended up getting the complete set, and ever since I've been deleting useless games (majong, bootlegs, etc) from my Mala game list. The roms themselves are still there, although if I had a way to delete the specific rom and know it wasn't a parent rom of other games, I'd do that too.

 

The downside of having 'all games' (and this could be just me) I often sit there just flicking through the list and not actually knowing what to play... (too much choice=overwhelming)... so I tend to play off my 'top 30' games list in Mala.

[lexmark]

'Overwhelming" yeah i know what you mean .I would imagine that most would have maybe 2-400 games available but only regulaly play about the same 20 odd

[dmworking247]

Yep, whats worse is of the '6000' you mention in MAME, once I've (manually) deleted a lot (but not all) of the duplicates (eg set 1/2/3 but keep set 4, etc) and bootlegs, and bloody majong games... I'm down to 3000 and shrinking.

[tardisx]

My dream (well one of many) is to build a front end which tracks what people play, and sends the data (anonymously) over the internet to a central server. You'd be able to pull up the worldwide lists of what's popular and base your decisions on that.

 

With some clever tricks I can make it smarter. For instance, I don't like fighting games, but fighting games are probably going to be rated highly. Rather than say 'fighting games suck' (which involves categorising ROMS every which way - futile), I could say that I don't like one particular fighting game 'X', which would reduce my personal ranking for that game. It would also use the database to reduce the ranking for games which people ranked highly as well as game 'X'.

 

Does that make sense?

 

At any rate, it would be neat to have an internet-driven popular list of games, all driven simply by people choosing what to play.

 

I know you're all thinking that my dreams are weird :-)

 

Lastly, I'd like my front end to load random games, just to show the attract screens while my cab is idle, showing each one for say 10 minutes. Do any existing front ends do that, or do I have to be the first? :-)

[headkaze]

My dream (well one of many) is to build a front end which tracks what people play, and sends the data (anonymously) over the internet to a central server. You'd be able to pull up the worldwide lists of what's popular and base your decisions on that.

 

With some clever tricks I can make it smarter. For instance, I don't like fighting games, but fighting games are probably going to be rated highly. Rather than say 'fighting games suck' (which involves categorising ROMS every which way - futile), I could say that I don't like one particular fighting game 'X', which would reduce my personal ranking for that game. It would also use the database to reduce the ranking for games which people ranked highly as well as game 'X'.

 

Does that make sense?

 

At any rate, it would be neat to have an internet-driven popular list of games, all driven simply by people choosing what to play.

 

I know you're all thinking that my dreams are weird :-)

 

Lastly, I'd like my front end to load random games, just to show the attract screens while my cab is idle, showing each one for say 10 minutes. Do any existing front ends do that, or do I have to be the first? :-)

 

There is already a front end that does all that ;)

 

GameEx Live! shows what games people are playing with a screenshot. It shows what is there most played games.

 

There is Most played games by GameEx users which is a running list of the top 100 games.

 

GameEx has the attract mode you speak of. In fact there is a new release about to come out that will have bezels at the bottom of the game in attract mode that will show you game info such as the MAWS Hall Of Fame ratings. You can drop a coin in during attract mode and start playing the game.

 

Speaking of MAWS, you should check out there online database here. It has ratings for games you can search.

 

I'll attach a screenshot of the new feature that I wrote and that Tom will be introducing in the next release of GameEx. So what you will see is real Mame games running in attract mode (not videos like most other FE's) which you can mix with video too if you like showing you game info at the bottom of the screen.

[Davefjedi]

Yes Game X sounds all good and proper but can it make me bacon and eggs for breakfast ?

:D

[tardisx]

There is already a front end that does all that ;)

 

GameEx Live! shows what games people are playing with a screenshot. It shows what is there most played games.

 

There is Most played games by GameEx users which is a running list of the top 100 games.

 

 

It does look neat. Too bad I have a completely rational hatred of Windows :-)

 

At the moment where I am (London) I don't even have a windows machine to try it on, when I arrive back home in Adelaide I will give it a shot :-)