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New comp - Multi-format ?


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Hi MGL'ers,

 

So after completely refitting my 2P Upright Mame cab and finally having it live again (happy happy joy joy) but also adding consoles and stuff like C64... I got to thinking..... why not, just for a bit of a change up, have a comp that includes not only MAME games but other score based, retro gaming gems from major platforms like Megadrive, SNES, C64, Atari 2600 ?

 

I know this is the MAME gaming league and all, but we've been running pretty much the same format for a long time, and while this format is a good one, there's nothing like a bit of a change up, and we've never done this in MGL land before.

 

Just to re-iterate I am in no way suggesting a change of format for MGL, just a bit of a change-up for one comp, just for fun. I bet most retro gamers that play in MGL have plenty of faves from consoles or retro-computer platforms. (I can think of a ton of C64 games that would be awesome to play in a comp format.) MAME has been tried in so many different formats now, something fresh - might be fun ? And be a pretty cool novelty comp ?

 

Cheers :)

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I like the idea, but we already have too many people who complain (myself included) about some of the crap nominations that come up. Can you imagine if we included C64, Megadrive, etc. etc. etc. And how do we nominate? We are looking at 10,000+ games across all of the home computers and consoles?

 

And then we get into having to download emulators and ROMs - I know it's not a big thing, but a lot of people have MAME running on setups which other people arranged for them - some of the guys on here may not be computer savy enough to get the emulators and ROMs going, especially not if they are currently running MAME on an arcade cabinet. Doing it on a PC is easy (for most of us) but getting the emulators and ROMs onto a standalone machine which may or may not be internet connected could be a real pain for most.

 

Using a site like RetroUprising is the easy answer to most of the above, but it doesn't help those who are playing on an MAMEd arcade cabinet that doesn't have internet access.

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I'm too old for emulators and think some of what John says is probably valid. Maybe try a mini comp of just emulators first and judge interest? Get together with a few of the emu heads and pick a few "unquestionably universally good games" and see how it is received as a start?
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I like the idea, but we already have too many people who complain (myself included) about some of the crap nominations that come up. Can you imagine if we included C64, Megadrive, etc. etc. etc. And how do we nominate? We are looking at 10,000+ games across all of the home computers and consoles?

 

 

I'm a noob to the MGL and I just installed Mame 0.165 and up to the 0.165 romset and I now have 30,000+ roms. How am I going to ever nominate a Mame game ? There are just too many ! And what about all those clone versions, multi language, and dip settings ? What's an nvram ? What's an ini file? I can go on here but you might think I'm having a lend :lol

 

getting the emulators and ROMs onto a standalone machine which may or may not be internet connected could be a real pain for most. Using a site like RetroUprising is the easy answer to most of the above, but it doesn't help those who are playing on an MAMEd arcade cabinet that doesn't have internet access.

 

So...what do those same people do when they come across a game in the MGL that isn't on their cab ?

 

Maybe try a mini comp of just emulators first and judge interest? Get together with a few of the emu heads and pick a few "unquestionably universally good games" and see how it is received as a start?

 

People will always whinge about games.... that's a given. No matter what kind of comp you run. I like the idea of a mini emulator comp though :)

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I'm a noob to the MGL and I just installed Mame 0.165 and up to the 0.165 romset and I now have 30,000+ roms. How am I going to ever nominate a Mame game ? There are just too many ! And what about all those clone versions, multi language, and dip settings ? What's an nvram ? What's an ini file? I can go on here but you might think I'm having a lend :lol

 

 

Some emulators can be right bastards to get working correctly, now if you're the type of person who downloads massive torrents where it is all setup for you then fine. You are forgetting that of the 30,000 mame roms (there aren't that many surely?) that 28,000 of them are mahjong clones :lol

 

I have no issue with such a comp, I may even join in - but surely the easiest way for all involved would be just running on the RetroUprising website where all the hard work is already done. But you do understand what I'm saying - how is the nomination process going to work? If 20 people participate and we all nominate 3 games, there is every chance that 60 difference games will be nominated. You may as well do anyway with nominations and just pick a game at random. Maybe just stick to one console to start with and see how it goes?

 

I know if the comp went over 10 games, the chance of my downloading, configuring and downloading a particular ROM for maybe 5-6 different consoles would just be more effort than it's worth. Especially when you go to all that trouble and the game turns out to be a turd.

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I considered this some time ago also, not that I can generally find the time to become competitive in a full season of MGL normally. I do like the idea in principle, it ended up in the too hard basket though.

 

MAME has the added advantage of being cross platform so everyone has easy access too it. I have competed on pc (windows & linux), xbox, android and raspberry pi installations over the years, it provides great flexibility for this little black duck when the kids and wife want the big screens i can hide away and use my phone or tablet with a usb controller. Even the retrouprising arcadeOX only functions on windows, while the the java mode requires additional software (which i don't currently have installed).

 

While not an impossible idea it would probably require some additional tech saviness(?) from the competitors than is required by MGL as @John73 stated

 

considerations for such a comp

  • limit it to a system a season in doing so one setup lasts 10'ish games and you can swap those games in and out.
  • provide a portable prepacked version of the emulator preset to MAME keys.
  • ensure the emulator chosen is crossplatform
  • how many current competitors game on pc vs cabinet and have the ability to install additional stuff on their cabinets directly?

 

Emulator wise MESS is possibly an option here where you could just provide the applicable command line and take the hit in performance.

 

And thinking about it we could potentially use this to build up a good resource for emulator configuration tutorials _although_ the emulators chosen should try and be cross platform. I presume some guys are MAC users here???, i am a linux user myself but am quite capable of setting up emulators (although i often avoid it)

 

Be an interesting project to get working.

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I agree with all the above, I would like to see this happen but I'm not ready for it yet and don't know when I will be. I'm interested now that MESS and MAME have been combined in the one app to see how some of the console games would look on my cabs running groovy mame and how I could set up my menu selections in my mala layout. I have downloaded the latest romset but that's as far as I have got so far, last time I updated mame on my cabs it worked well on my Horiz cab but not on my Vert and I wasted hours troubleshooting so that's putting me off but I will get to it one day. Then it would take me ages to sort through the games to select a few that would go in my mala list.......actually the incentive to update is more so I can play the newer Raiden games that have become playable sometime in the last few MAME releases.
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